Haw Creek by Colin Miller

This story may sound familiar but it’s not. It’s about someone obsessed with sound and memory, who wrote and recorded an album by himself, in the house he grew up in, with hand-me-down instruments from kin, down in a Blue Ridge Mountain valley outside Asheville, North Carolina. That’s where this story takes place and (if he ain’t on the road) that’s where Colin Miller is at right now.

Now let me tell you about his first full-length album. You’ve never heard it before. It’s called Haw Creek, out with Ruination Records this September.

First off, you cross Haw Creek to get to Colin’s house. It don’t look real big but they say it’s deeper than what you think–like a vein growing. And here’s another thing: I heard a geologist say the Appalachians are so ancient, they've been eroded down so much, we can see into the heart of them.

One night, I was with Colin on his porch. He’s always observing, looking for meaning, he’s quiet but don’t like small-talk. He said, “I like to create living disembodied things.”

Haw Creek opens with a lullaby, Colin singing: No one ever dies. It’s called “Sweetheartmetalbaby” and it’s just Colin and his acoustic guitar. And then some strange unidentifiable swirling sound, and then backup singers humming in harmony, a mantra, a spell. The beat, like moth wings fluttering on the screen door, trying to get in.

Colin inherited his great-grandmother’s pump organ. And his grandmother’s piano. There’s a worn-out paperback on it, duct-taped on the spine: Educational Vocal Studies by John D. Brunk, Mennonite Hymns, published 1912. This is the piano Colin learned to play on, his mama too. It’s the piano Colin used on MJ Lenderman’s self-titled album. Maybe you know this and maybe you don’t, but Colin Miller engineered and produced MJ Lenderman’s self-titled album and his latest: Boat Songs. He engineered and produced Wednesday’s I Was Trying To Describe You To Someone and Indigo de Souza’s I Love My Mom too.

In recording, Colin’s always using the room as an instrument. But with Haw Creek, Colin uses the whole place. Capturing moments in sound and then expanding or contracting them. A skink slinks under the steps, cawing birds keep you from sleep, echos bleed into each other, the refrain pedal is pushed to the floor. Erosion of the self, creating a space for discovery. Exploring known and unknown memory. Manipulating time and distance.

Back in the day, Colin’s grandpa found this dulcimer in Kentucky—it spoke to him. So he brought it home and it became his favorite instrument. Growing up, Colin was fascinated with all the sounds his grandpa’s dulcimer made—it was speaking to him too. So after his grandpa passed, Colin brought the dulcimer to Haw Creek. And on “Never Wanna,” you hear it front and center over a laid-back 90s beat, while Colin croons in auto-tune: Never wanna be alone with you.

On “Off the Mountain,” Colin splits his voice into legion–a possession–but it’s sexy, a slow burn. Together the voices give an ultimatum: If you go off the mountain, you won’t be comin back to me.

I never asked who all these songs were about. I figured Colin woulda told me if he wanted me to know. There’s enough hurt in Haw Creek, you can hear it. And on the cover, it’s night time, like you’ve stumbled on Colin in the dark. One of the Mennonite hymns from the songbook on his grandma’s piano: Twilight is stealing over the sea, shadows are falling dark on the lea, borne on the night winds, voices of yore, come from the far-off shore.

“If Yer Dreamin” is built off an initial sample base: Colin’s great-grandmother’s pump organ and his grandpa’s dulcimer. Then there’s this recording Colin captured: overhearing his mama laughing and making dinner, while he sits in another room. But you wouldn’t know any of this from listening. “If Yr Dreamin” is all crashing together, fractured, cutting in and out. Like some Otaku/Tim Hecker/Stravinsky moment. Like if Bon Iver had pushed 22, A Million deeper into chaos. The Appalachians were created when plates collided, a deformation and restructuralization–this process is called orogenesis: origin–genesis. Before “If Yer Dreamin” ends, a steady rhythm develops, working away, eroding the mountain of consciousness and then it’s gone. The literary critic Richard Howard writes that “forgetting is equally significant” as remembering, “the process of dismembering…is what gives remembering its point. To scatter makes it possible to recollect.”

The pump-organ sample from “If Yer Dreamin” carries us into the next track, “Fallin.” And we find ourselves in the prettiest moment of Haw Creek. There’s pedal steel guitar player extraordinaire (and Colin’s old friend from high school) Xandy Chelmis. And Xandy’s pedal steel is hardly moving, just barely turning but leaning into a classic country love song.

There’s this huge open clearing in front of Colin’s porch. It used to be a tobacco field but now it’s hay and when the wind blows, it waves like the ocean. Beyond that, you can see a baseball field, the tops of mountains. You can watch a car coming towards you from a long ways off. Space, distance, isolation.

“Just to Be Around You” starts like this: I did donuts outside of your work at the Dollar Tree. I know you saw me. And the mornin light kissed my dirt bike. Makes me think of Arthur Russell or Sufjan. A tender longing for connection. And these lines from Mark Richard’s story “Strays”: “At night, stray dogs come up underneath our house to lick our leaking pipes…Sometimes, when my brother is quick, he leans out and touches one slipping away.”

Colin spends a lot of time on the porch, blasting his boombox. Playing Asheville’s 105.5, The Outlaw: Legends and Young Guns. It’s mostly classic country from the 80s-90s and folks calling in about the price of gas. When he was visiting kin in Kentucky, Colin sent me pictures from the Keith Whitley display at the Kentucky Music Hall of fame. He got tickled at a framed check. It was from Keith to Kroger for $7.28. Keith Whitley started playing in Ralph Stanley’s band before lightin out with his own neotraditional country sound in the late 80s.

Haw Creek closes with “Nosebleeds”—a honky-tonk moment with Xandy again. A clever cross section of David Berman/Frank Stanford/and old-time-hymn lyricism at a basketball game: You possum ‘round like an aging team that cuts into pure chaos when they play for keeps. That wasn't the sea you saw turning red, that was me losing everythin in the nosebleeds. There’s even catchy dance-a-long hand claps.

Everytime Colin leaves the Ingles, he buys a scratch-off. He’s got enough to paper a wall. He wouldn’t buy ‘em if he didn’t have hope, if he didn’t believe it. Living disembodied things.

There’s these Sheryl Crowe-like guitar chords on “I Don’t Love You No More.” It’s the happiest Haw Creek gets. Chopped with a bunch of drum and bass breakbeat samples, layered over and over again. Nodding to The Weepies as well as LTJ Bukem. But it don’t sound like what it’s saying. Don’t go playin dumb why I don’t want your ass around, Colin sings. It’s hard to imagine Colin talking like that to anybody. For him to write something like that, he must really mean it.

The last time I was at Colin’s house, we hugged goodbye and then he said, “Wait, I gotta show you something.” We went out on his porch and the field of waving hay had turned to an empty expanse. Felt like it went on forever. There was nothing but darkness, then Colin blew a train whistle. It echoed out into the valley. And out of nowhere, a light flickered on across Haw Creek, like saying “hello” to a friend. Colin started waving at it, and I did too.

- Ashleigh Bryant Phillips

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