A local favorite, folksinger, storyteller, and auto harp virtuoso Adam Miller presents a free sing-along program of Traditional Folksongs of the Winter Holidays. The program features songs that grew out of (and were used in) the old-time English-speaking American Christmas folk tradition - a Christmas not of Santa Claus and tinsel trees, but of homespun worship and festivity. The songs are noteworthy for the genuineness with which they express the Christmas attitudes and values of the people who sang them long ago, at the darkest time of the year.
An artist whose kind has dwindled to an endangered species, Adam Miller is a renowned old-school American troubadour and a natural-born storyteller. One of the premier auto harpists in the world, he is an accomplished folklorist, song-collector, and raconteur, who has amassed a remarkable repertoire of more than 5,000 songs. Miller is a masterful entertainer who never fails to get his audience singing along and accompanies his rich, resonant baritone voice with lively finger-picking acoustic guitar, and stunningly beautiful auto harp melodies. Skillfully interweaving folk songs and the stories behind them with the elegance of a documentary filmmaker, he has distinguished himself as one of the great interpreters of American folk songs and as a storyteller par excellence. And he is that rare performer who appeals to audiences of all ages.
Traveling 70,000 miles a year, Miller performs over 200 concerts annually in 48 states, from the Everglades to the Arctic Circle. More than 1.5 million students have attended his Singing Through History! school assembly programs. He has performed live in over 2,000 American public libraries.
“Between these ears are more songs than any of us have ever heard!” says Keith Anglemyer, emcee at the Walnut Valley Festival. The Tennessean said that it was “exceptionally inspiring to witness this true master of eclectic art forms and keeper of the flame of endangered American traditions…” George Winston calls Miller “one of the great auto harpists and folksingers of our times.” Pete Seeger admired his “wonderful storytelling!” A concert promoter in Melbourne Beach, Florida, said Miller’ stage presence “…will charm even the most die-hard iPod-loving kids or reluctant significant others.”
The Sitnews in Ketchikan, Alaska, said his show was “Impressively educational but also alluringly entertaining.” The San Francisco folknik described his autoharp playing as “superb and imaginative.”
NPR called him “a master of the auto harp.” The Syracuse News Times said his performance was “mesmerizing.” The Grand Traverse Insider called him, “A National Treasure!”
In a contemporary musical landscape peopled with singer-songwriters and their often short-lived offerings, Miller’s iconoclastic, time-honored traditional ballads and folksongs are a breath of fresh air. They evoke a bygone era when most music was homemade. Folksinger Sam Hinton praised Miller’s “impeccable taste” in selecting the right songs to sing with the right audience. A reviewer at the Walnut Valley Festival wrote, “Adam Miller holds his audience spellbound without a lot of trappings. It’s just him, his auto harp and guitar, and his signature Panama hat.”
Adam Miller began his lifelong pursuit of collecting old songs while still in grade school. Armed with an audio-graphic memory and a kaleidoscopic musical curiosity, his childhood ambition was to learn every song he heard. Today, with a repertoire of thousands of tunes, his traditional folk songs and ballads are the songs of America’s heritage: a window into the soul of our nation in its youth. A performer who enlightens as well as entertains, he points out fascinating connections between events in history and the songs that survived them. And like radio’s Paul Harvey, he manages to give you “the rest of the story” - providing the often surprising provenance of seemingly innocuous folk songs.
“His storytelling is so riveting and engaging – it rivals Garrison Keillor’s,” says Frank Hamilton, co-founder of Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music and former member of The Weavers. Miller’s repeated appearances at the Walnut Valley Festival, the Kansas Storytelling Festival, the Tumbleweed Music Festival, the California Traditional Music Society’s Summer Solstice Festival, and the Kentucky Music Weekend have made him a national favorite.
Miller has recorded eight audio CDs that receive airplay across North America and Europe. The San Francisco folknik said of his 2017 album, The Radio's Taking Our Songs Away: The Irrepressible American Folksong in the Age of the Selfie, “If this recording proves anything, it is that when all is said and done, the old songs, and yes, even the old stories, are the very best.”
Immersed in the Oral Tradition, Miller is mostly self-taught, and learns just about everything by ear. Throughout his long career, Miller has documented and kept alive the thousands of songs and stories he has collected in his travels. Some of these forgotten songs, like “California Joe” and “The Frog Song,” are so obscure that no one else sings them anymore.
6:00 p.m. on Tuesday, December 12, 2017, at the A. K. Library, 125 W. Vine Street in Redlands, California.