For Crying Out Loud

Scott Miller & The Commonwealth | Format: MP3 Download

Product Details

• Original Release Date: April 14, 2009
• Label: F.A.Y Recordings
• Copyright: 2009 F.A.Y Recordings
• Total Length: 40:25
• Genres:
• ASIN: B00262S3FE
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #110,385 Paid in MP3 Albums (See Top 100 Paid in MP3 Albums)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Virginia native culls label rocks on his own, May 4, 2009

By 

Jim Clark "Jim Clark" (Tupelo, MS) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: For Crying Out Loud (Audio CD)

By Jim Clark
Publisher, Lee County Courier, Tupelo, MS

Scott Miller is an ordinary guy who has done extraordinarily well.
I met Scott at Hal & Mal's in Jackson in early 2004. It was a chance meeting, kind of a mystical happening.
I had recently reviewed his second CD Upside / Downside. It's become one of my favorite traveling albums. Anyway, I was at the Mississippi Press Association and someone suggested we eat at Hal & Mal's.
Scott was playing there and we met. We were both into music and history so a friendship was born. Many of his songs are influenced by his upbringing in Appalachia and his love of the past. He was in Jackson as part of his Amtrack Crescent tour. He and his band, The Commonwealth, made 15 stops over a three week period wherever the Amtrack paused including Union Station in Washington D.C.
It turns out Scott and I think alike, probably not a good thing.
When we started The Courier, my wife Linda and I had stable jobs, paid vacations, etc. I was salary plus commission and doing well ... oh well, step into the unknown.
Scott recently did the same. He had been signed with Sugar Hill, primarily a bluegrass label with clients like New Grass Revival, Ricky Skaggs and Sam Bush. Scott had it made too. He quit. Scott started his own label F.A.Y. Recordings and released For Crying Out Loud this month.
"My wife thought I was crazy," Scott said. "I had this nutty idea of demoing a fresh batch of songs on my Marantz hard-disc recorder, then I pressed 1,000 CDs and did a handmade cover for each.
"Hey, I didn't have anything better to do," Scott said and laughed. "then I made them available off my website for $20 each. I sold every one of them."
So with $20,000 in his pocket he paid for the recording of For Crying Out Loud. The result is a continuation of the Virginian's crazy life set to song with some of those history tidbits thrown in like "Appalachian Refugee" and "Sin in Indiana."
The CD has that same rowdy, swaggering edge to it that accompanies most of Scott's work so it came to me a surprise when Scott shared where most of it was conceived.
"My wife's father was dying here in a Knoxville hospital while I wrote a lot of this," he said. "I would get up around five or six and take my mother-in-law into the hospital to sit by him, go to the commissary and get her a waffle, then drive to my writing room and write for a couple of hours before going back to relieve whoever was there with him, sometimes all night. Anyone who's been through long-term and/or terminal illness knows your sleep patterns get weird; hospitals are lit all the time, so your days get confused."
One song that I'm sure was spawned by that emotional setting was his duet with Patty Griffin, "I'm Right Here My Love." It's a beautiful touching song.
But for the most part -- Scott Miller & The Commonwealth are a full-tilt garage rock band, Appalachian style. The opener is the tongue `n cheek power-chorder "Cheap Ain't Cheap," a hand clapper about being newly unemployed.
"It's a blackly humorous song about the economic meltdown," Scott said. "which I had predicted years ago but wasn't smart enough to do anything about -- like buy stock in cardboard boxes that people use to put their desk junk in when they lose their jobs."
I've got to sit down and visit with Scott on a couple of occasions since and have always enjoyed the comradeship. I also always delight in the notes he sends my way, always typed on his Underwood #5 manual typewriter. It's something he collects - manual typewriters. He also has a fondness for mules, but doesn't collect them ... as far as I know.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Pop, rock, country and blues from former V-Roy, April 14, 2009

By 

hyperbolium (Earth, USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: For Crying Out Loud (MP3 Download)

From the top: this is not Scott Miller of Game Theory (or the Loud Family), nor is it the Scott Miller who's self-released five blues albums throughout the last decade, nor the Scott Miller who played drums for Agent Orange. It is, in fact, the Scott Miller who sang, played guitar and wrote songs for the late `90s power-twang band, the V-Roys. Since the group's demise, Miller's been recording solo albums and performing with a revolving aggregation called the Commonwealth. After three studio releases and a live set on Sugar Hill, this self-released album features a similar blend of country and rock influences, though with acoustic power chords mostly replacing electric.

The album opens with the ranting anthem, "Cheap Ain't Cheap (For Crying Out Loud)," expressing a sideways anticipation of the New Depression. The album's up-tempo numbers include driving acoustics, New Orleans-tinged country-rock, and the Blasters' styled roots of "Claire Marie." These are interwoven with singer-songwriter tunes that include the Celtic harmony duet "I'm Right Here, My Love," sung with Patty Griffin, and the solo closer, "Appalachian Refugee." The acoustic works turns darker on the expose "Sin in Indiana," and the low twanging "Double Indemnity" harbors noirish secrets in its blue notes.

Miller can seem like a glass-half-empty romanticist; blowing blue harmonica as he declares his faults on "Let You Down" and shying away from opportunity on "Heart in Harm's Way." But the sentiments are coy in their hope that honest declaration and cautious refusal will ward off imagined disasters; think Nick Lowe, Ben Vaughn and Tom T. Hall (whose "I Can't Dance" is covered here). Miller transitions smoothly between pop, rock, country and blues, and though at time you'll wish he'd alight on one for more than a song at a time, the next tune always sweeps you away. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Scott Miller: Knoxville's Viceroy, June 8, 2009

By 

J. Hooten (The South) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: For Crying Out Loud (Audio CD)

"For Crying Out Loud" is Scott's best record to date. Don't forget that every album he has created is filled with classic songs that stick in your head or cause you to hum long after the needle has left the record, but this latest effort is solid all the way through. "Cheap Ain't Cheap" is a great way to start off the album- honest, blunt, to the point, a great thesis statement on the current economy, not to mention the music biz. "Sin in Indiana" is another well-written song with an assorted mix of motley characters that anyone could find truth in. "I'm Right Here, My Love" -wow, just listen and you'll know what i mean. The closing set of songs "Feel So Fair to Midland" and "Double Indemnity" is such a kick-a** way to wrap it all up. Buy this album and then check out the rest of Scott Miller's work.