By Anthony Shaw

Phil Miller is an English musician/composer based all his working life in London, whose guitar style has been compared variously to BB King, Henry Kaiser, and even Barney Kessel.

Anyone coming to Phil Miller after the turn of the millennium is a lucky soul. An artist who has devotedly pursued his muse along such consistent tracks for so long must be hard to find. The appearance in February of the latest of his self-sponsored CD's shows his determination to maintain his output, regardless of the vagaries of popular taste and economic clime. In fact the album, titled Out of the Blue, is something of a retrospective affair, dedicated to his late brother Steve Miller with whom Phil started his career in the late 60's. It charts a selection of works very typical of his band In Cahoots, but set within structures clearly based on blues traditions. A review of his latest work is available at AAJ, and for those too eager to dally the homepage at www.philmiller-incahoots.co.uk has plenty more information, including a lengthy transcript interview by Ken Egbert of Tone Clusters, for which I too am considerably indebted.

The Miller brothers grew up in a musical household in North London, close to the heart of the explosion of blues founded British pop and rock. The elder Miller (often confused with his celebrated American namesake) was soon in demand in London clubs, and before long was joined by Phil, long-time local friend Pip Pyle on drums, veteran saxophonist Lol Coxhill, Jack Monck and then Roy Babbington on bass, and Carol Grimes singing under the collective name Delivery, going on to produce the album Fool's Meeting (B&C 1970 and rereleased on Cuneiform-Rune 115). As a member of Delivery Phil Miller acquired his first author's credits, a healthy exposure to life on the road when the band backed Otis Spann and Eddie Boyd in Britain and Europe and, maybe most significantly, a taste for playing improvisational music, ranging from their own numbers to pieces by Keith Jarrett and Tony Williams.

Phil Miller's introduction to a wider audience came in 1971 with his association with Soft Machine's recently departed founder Robert Wyatt, who needed a guitarist for this new project Matching Mole. Readers familiar with this name will know him as a seminal figure in the development of 'the Canterbury sound' from which Phil Miller's early work in this band, and subsequently in Hatfield and the North and in National Health, is inseparable. The thoroughly electric, velvet yet potentially vicious tone of his guitar hovers ever-ready to tear the melody apart, or push a chosen motif to the fore. His work during the 70's and early 80's with the likes of Wyatt, David and Richard Sinclair from Caravan, and Dave Stewart and Allan Gowan in National Health, laid the foundations for his playing and writing style which he has explored since with his band and with his own projects - complex structural forms combined with extensive improvised passages on reeds, trumpet, bass, drums, and of course guitar, often humorously entitled, all formulated with considerable compositional inputs from colleagues: a fluid conspiracy of musical schemers, forever 'in cahoots'.

In the projects reaching publication since the establishment of In Cahoots in 1982, Miller's output has revolved around a nucleus of musicians, including ex-Softie Elton Dean on sax, ever-faithful Delivery partner Pip Pyle on drums, and since 1988 Fred 'Thelonius' Baker on fretless bass. To this basic quartet are frequently added Pete Lemer on keyboards straight and synthethised, and Jim Dvorak on trumpet. Over the years the band has also included at times Richard Sinclair, founding Softie Hugh Hopper and Steve Franklin. After the first 'solo' two discs Cutting Both Ways (Cuneiform 1987) and Split Seconds(Reckless 1989), which involved his 70's colleagues Dave Stewart on keyboards and Barbara Gaskin singing, the current line-up with has been stable for over 10 years, and accompanying Miller also on his 'solo' work viz Digging In (Cuneiform 1991).With various patterns of In Cahoots he has recorded Live in Japan(1993), Recent Discoveries(1994) and Parallel(1999) all on his own label Crescent Discs (not to be confused with Dan Latarski's Crescent Records!!).

During the 90's Miller was involved in two other important projects - dueting with his bassist Baker, who plays very tasteful classical style guitar (see Double Up on Crescent 1992); and a cross-channel linkup with Paris-based colleagues from Gong, Pip Pyle and French reed maestro Didier Malherbe, along with another old Soft Machine stalwart Hugh Hopper on bass, in Short Wave. The former association has been more enduring, taking Miller and Baker around Britain and Europe, while Short Wave's claim to European fame is the live CD Shortwave recorded in France in 1994 on Gemini. They also toured Japan in the 1990's and with no small success.

Mr Miller is currently tied up with organisational and planning schedules, but promises to be on stage later this year with colleagues, performing new material from Out of the Blue, with venues under consideration in Britain, France, Holland and Belgium, and under contemplation in Scandinavia - I hope!

PM: Yes we did a couple of gigs in Finland with National Health, and they were really good - 700 people all sitting rapt. What more do you want?

AAJ: So you wouldn't refuse another gig in this part of the world?

PM: No, that would be fine.

AAJ: Another thing I noticed on the web pages was a European Tour….

PM: Yes it's planned for the end of September, beginning of October. That's what I've been doing for the last couple of months. And Pip has been working to muster a couple of gigs in France.

AAJ: OK so where do we start this thing?

PM: Do I do a historical gallop through the past?

AAJ: Well, I came to your newer music through Hatfield and the North. Are the origins pre-Hatfield?

PM: Well obviously you take on board everything you come into contact with - through your career. I started playing in a blues band with my brother (the late Steve Miller), playing with a boogey-woogey pianist, then we met up with Alexis Corner and did a few gigs with him (and Delivery) and met Lol Coxhill through that. That led to one thing and another, and we met Carol Grimes. When that fractured apart I met Richard Sinclair, who had a similar background. I think that Hatfield was a stepping stone for what I'm doing now. It was a good musical period - I have many fond memories of the time. They were all very decent musicians. Robert Wyatts' Matching Mole was an especially formative period, interesting - and taxing!

AAJ: Were you not from a younger generation than Wyatt?

PM: Well slightly - 3 - 4 years I suppose, but I don't think that really comes into it. Some people in their 20's are now playing better with much more ability than I had when I was 35! But I think it's much easier to learn music nowadays. The teaching structure is in place - it can handle just about any promising student who cares to present themselves. But I don't know if it turns out the most creative musicians, though it certainly makes for proficient ones. I'm always a bit wary of formulae.

AAJ: But hasn't the business changed since those times?

PM: Well musicians redefined themselves to a certain degree. I think there's less emphasis on being able to master an instrument and more emphasis on getting an end result. But there are some interesting ideas about what constitutes music nowadays. And in the end they all meld together to make a constantly changing idea about what music is, which I think is a good thing.

AAJ: Have your priorities changed much over the period of your career?

PM: Yes I think they have come a full circle. I've spent quite a lot of time trying to get into midi stuff with a view to composition and being able to create certain musical backdrops or whatever. Though I'm much more interested in playing.

AAJ: Is it true that you've always been more orientated to playing rather than composing?

PM: Well it's true with Hatfield I didn't do too much - I chipped in with a bit. But it was more about working together as a unit. Even if someone did come up with the first idea, the emphasis was on translating it into something else. But that's actually quite a good way of working - piecing it together can be a lengthy process, but it can produce some interesting results that, sitting by yourself with pencil and paper would take a lot of time, and especially imagination - trying to figure out what is required to set up a certain mood: how many voices you need, how many sequences… .

AAJ: How much is the process with In Cahoots different from that?

PM: Well it is different - it has to be different - economically and pragmatically. Developments happen over quite a long period of time with frequent bursts of inactivity. Things build up - knowledge of what you're writing for - all depending on what the last bunch of writing was about. But I suppose I mainly use bits of paper, but eventually you have to transcend that. Obviously it's got to have something more in it, something unknown, even if it's only the drums; which of course is quite a major part.

AAJ: Is it true that your writing and your work with In Cahoots has changed - has fused?

PM: Well it's always been my project - a vehicle for my writing. The reality is that it's my burden carry, to call the rehearsals….

AAJ: How do we introduce your music to people in the US?

PM: Well it's some sort of extension from Hatfield and National Health. Pip and I have been a constant. There's a fair bit of improvising - there always has been. I was working with Alan (Gowen) after National Health folded, and one of the pieces written then I am still performing (Arriving Twice), as well as one of Allen's own pieces (Above and Below from Gowen's Before a Word is Said). And there's some very intricate writing and scoring, so anybody who liked Hatfield will probably find something in it.

AAJ: Presumably you are still categorised as a Canterbury band?

PM: Well I'm happy to live with the label - it's limiting and naive, bit I can live with it.

AAJ: And you're still in contact at least with Pip Pyle from those years.

PM: Yes Pip was playing on Out of the Blue. He's still active in France - writing and trying to get a band together to perform things.

AAJ: How about acoustic work? How much have you done with Fred Baker?

PM: Well we put out a record a decade ago (Double Up Crescent 92). And we've been gigging quite a lot. It's the most taxing thing to do. I really like playing acoustic, but it's got to exist independently of monitors and mikes. But right now all my time is going into trying to drum up some reviews for the new project!