I write this in the midst of a nasty flu bug. Without giving any gross details, I’ve spent the last 48 hours in my apartment watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer and drinking Gatorade.

A few weeks ago, I got together with a few Harlowe bandmates and worked on a few of my songs. I have a number of fragmented ideas that needed either a thumbs up or a thumbs down. With their help we fleshed out a new song and arranged a new version of an old one. Since Brittain Ashford has been recording her new record at the house, drums with quality microphones allowed us to easily put our arrangements to tape.

They’re still a work in progress- Mark left on tour before he could add vocals to one of the songs. But they’re both far enough along to share.

Bob Reynolds: Drums
Mark Robertson: Electric Guitar, vocals
Andrew Campbell: Bass, vocals
Me: Acoustic Guitar, vocals

New Song: Madness

Old Song: Untitled

Let me know what you think.

Also, Harlowe and the Great North Woods is playing this Sunday night at Ella St. Social Club here in Portland.

Alright, time to open another Gatorade and watch more Buffy.

I have a wonderful recording setup these days. The time it takes to grab my microphone, open up Logic, and press record can happen in less than one minute.

Yesterday I was looking at something I’d written and decided to work it into a melody. I grabbed my guitar, played around for a few minutes, then recorded it real quick so I wouldn’t forget.

I didn’t intend to add other instruments and make a song out of it.

Gin and Lies v.1

Put me in a cage
tell me I’m dead
I never want to see the sky again

I held onto the airplane
I thrashed against the side
My body was breaking

I drank gin and body of lies
and everybody died
I held a gun for the very first time

Fired 6 shots into the side of a barn
Felt blood flow and the feeling was warm
My body was breaking

If you’re wondering how a picture of me and Ryan Knight with our shirts off relates to this song, it doesn’t relate at all.

I just get the impression that blog posts without pictures are boring, so I like to scan my wife’s flickr account and link something.

This picture is of us in Krabi, Thailand, stinking it up in a hot, humid mosquito net watching Tropic Thunder on a netbook. That might sound cool, but that specific night ranks as one of the top five worst nights if my life. Illness + cramped, muggy quarters + clogged, filthy toilet + sleeplessness = Terrible.

Maybe the picture does relate to this song.

I have mixed feelings about this song. I feel the same as the day I beat Marvel vs. Capcom on a single quarter; I feel proud of my accomplishment, but just as easily I feel embarrassed.

I won’t say much more. I’ll just admit to using auto-tune on my voice and a warranty card for the lyrics.

Apogee’s All Right (2009)

Here’s a song that my wife Kim wrote a few years back. I don’t know what melody she had in mind, I found her lyrics and chord changes and recorded it before asking her. Actually, I’ll post exactly what I found:

C          C
I dedicate all my nights
Am                 G
To call your name, to know your face
C                 C
So where are you? Where'd you go?
Am            G
In my arms or in my
C            C
Rotting soul

C                  C
I'll carry you and that August day
Am                     G
In the back of my mind and to my
C               C
Swollen grave
Am                     G
Where all the children sing so
C               C
Loud and brave

C                C
Who's gonna care when we all die?
Am                         G
When you've got the bullet in your brain?
C                C
Who's gonna stop and wonder why
Am               G
No one is saying "I'm so happy
C                C
To be alive"

C              C
And after they all say goodbye
Am               G
Who's gonna open the champagne and say
C                C
"Cheers to life! Cheers to love!
Am                         G
Here's to all those things I've been
C                  C
dreaming of."
Am                          G
Yes, here's to those things I'm
C                   C
Dreaming of.
Am         G
This is my ode to
C                    C
Life and love.
Am            G

You can hear what my version sounds like, or you can record your own and send it to me. I show you mine, you show me yours.

Loud and Brave

Kim wrote another song, actually recorded herself singing it, then made a video for it. You can find it here on her blog.

Also, I didn’t get any response for the last song I posted. I know the lyric says, “find love in the graveyard,” but I swear it’s not about anything morbid or disgusting.

This is the first song of a new download category called, “Song Sketch / Works in Progress.” These will usually be simple recordings of songs I’ve just written or songs I’ve written in the last year and feel stuck with the progress. In the case of this song: I like what I have, but it doesn’t seem like a lot. Maybe you’ll agree, maybe you’ll think it’s fine.

Eastern Side v.1 (2009)

Here are the lyrics as they are in the recording.

calm down on the eastern side
feel up and down your spine
find love in the graveyard
feel that moonlight coil

calm down on the eastern side
calm down on the eastern side

she’s gone away like dawn
she’s gone away like dawn
she was bright
but she died

fall light on the eastern side
fall light on the eastern side
fall light on the eastern side
fall light, fall light

P.S. – Happy Birthday, Mom.

When I first started playing shows acoustically in 2001, the only piece of merchandise I had was a 6-song cassette I labeled, Chris Miller tape #1. I don’t recall how many I sold. I think I ended up giving most of them away. When I ran out, I went without any merchandise at all.

Then I arrived for a show one night and a friend had put together a CD of my songs for me. He painted the discs green and created CD inserts with a blurry black & white photo of me playing guitar. He made about a dozen copies with songs from tape #1 as well as other recordings that were floating around. It was awesome. Travis Day, that was a cool thing to do.

It was also a good thing, because I realized this week that I don’t have most of those old songs on my computer anymore. Travis must have known that in 8 years, I’d be frantically reliving the nostalgia of my younger days by uploading musical recordings of myself to the Internet. Good foresight, Travis, I’m impressed.

I found my copy today and was surprised to hear songs I’d completely forgotten about.

To start with, I’ve uploaded one that highlights several of the qualities that truly defined my early acoustic recordings:

-Singing at the peak of my range, even though it hurt.
-Recording a song without tuning my guitar.
-Overdubbing a second instrument and then making it sound annoying by fading it in and out.

I hope you’ll enjoy!

Nothing in Your Eyes (2001)

*additional note* The sticker in the photo above was made for me by Daniel Wolden. I found it in the CD insert. He deserves cool-credit along with Travis Day.

*additional additional note* The above song has the same chord progression and guitar riff as another song I used to play, Crowded and Cold, which I included on my 2005 CD. It’s something I do a lot. I get a musical idea and will write several similar songs that include that idea. I generally stick with the one I feel the best about and phase the others out. Crowded and Cold was kept, Nothing in Your Eyes was phased out.

Six years ago I agreed to play music at a Valentine’s Day party for friends. Chris Rider joined me with accompanying keyboard and we called ourselves Fanatical Friends. That was the only show we ever played. All the songs were stupid, but there was one that I really liked and later recorded on a Tascam 4-track. I never felt comfortable playing it again because it never seemed relevant; it was never Valentine’s Day. And for being a love song, it was pretty pessimistic about love.

every love turns out bad
every love turns out sick.
we don’t have to turn out that way.
we don’t have to turn out that way.
I love you so damn much…
won’t you be my Valentine?

Last year, I tried to record the song in a new way: I changed some of the lyrics, played it slower and made it more depressing. Today I was listening to both for the first time in over a year and I can’t tell if the newer one is any better. I’d be curious to hear what anyone else thinks. When I spend any decent amount of time on something I always lose perspective. Without a bandmate or reliable friend to tell me it’s a turd, I’ll keep on trying to polish it.

Valentine’s Song (2003)

Lay by Me (2008)

Oh yeah, the songs have different titles. Obviously.

*edit* I don’t recall why I say “bitch” at the beginning of the first song. It was a long time ago, maybe that was funny in 2003. I don’t know.

*photo added 10/21/09 – I’d forgotten we wore fake mustaches. Thanks, Bre

I just wrote the About Me section and I’m gonna repost it here as an introduction for what this blog is gonna be about.

“Hello Internet,

My name’s Chris Miller and here’s an idea I had: go into the closet and find forgotten, old band recordings to put on the Internet and put up recordings of songs I’ve never released as well as songs I’m recording today.

I guess it’s not that evolutionary of an idea, but here’s the part I’m excited about: I thought it would be fun to share both the polished final products of song writing as well as the rough, early sketches of songs.

One of the things I’ve been trying to do lately, as a creative exercise, is to write and record a song from nothing to final product in one short session. Sometimes these songs are terrible, but sometimes they turn out pretty cool. My hope is that I will post these session songs on a regular basis. I won’t post everything, I’ll be sure to leave the exceptionally terrible stuff on my hard drive.

One other thing. I’ve been writing and recording songs both alone and with bands for over 10 years, and most of the time I’m not always completely proud of the way things turned out. So, I’m here to acknowledge that some of the stuff on the site makes me cringe when I hear it. A specific example: my drumming for ‘my life cinema.’

The point is, I’m swallowing my pride and putting it out there, because it isn’t doing any good in my closet or on my hard drive.

Oh yeah, what is El Gato Guapo? I suppose I’m retiring the Green Hills Alone moniker and picking up a new one. Green Hills Alone was about writing songs on acoustic guitar in the simplest way possible. El Gato Guapo is about writing songs in as many different ways as I can. For those of you who didn’t take Spanish in 8th grade, El Gato Guapo means “The Handsome Cat.”"

SOOOOO,

To start things off I’ve uploaded 3 EPs with more to come in the near future.

2005 Green Hills Alone EP

2003 Mercy Mile EP

2000 My Life Cinema

I have the 1999 Boys of Summer master but it’s on cassette. I have to find a tape player with stereo outs so I can bring that demo into the digital world.

And for something that nobody’s really heard. I present a song I recorded on June 7th, 2009. I liked the music but had no lyrics so I quickly scanned my computer for something and apparently found some stream of consciousness prose about not feeling creative. Awful, right? Since the song was only 40 seconds I just repeated the block of lyrics a second time. Now you know how lazy I can be.

Big Bang (2008)

Thanks for checking this out. The site still needs a lot of work, but I was eager to share what I had so far. I also want to acknowledge the other musicians who share creative credit for a lot of this music. As the site develops I hope to share a little bit about each of these bands and also tell you what these other musicians are doing now.

Oh yeah, thanks to Kim for setting this up. She designed this site and is telling me how to update everything.