Colin Miller – “Cadillac”

Mtn Laurel Recording Co.

I highly doubt I need to extol the virtues of Colin Miller to anyone reading this website. Maybe you know him as MJ Lenderman’s steady-handed drummer, holding down the rhythm section with subtle panache. Perhaps you know him from that awesome split of Bonnie Prince Billy covers he did with Merce Lemon at the top of 2024. If you’re a real one, you have probably spun his fantastic solo record, Haw Creek, or one of the many singles and EPs that preceded it. Regardless of how you’ve come to know Miller’s work, his recurring presence in the Asheville music scene has been a subtle throughline for the last half-decade of indie rock emerging from the Appalachian town. 

As captured in the Wednesday documentary, Rat Bastards of Haw Creek, the members of Wednesday, MJ Lenderman et al. had spent the past years living off the titular Haw Creek, a collective slice of countryside somewhere outside Asheville that operated as a shared space to live, work, and make music. That’s also where Miller got the name for his first album, which served as a dedication to the piece of land that was a conduit for so much creativity and free-flowing living. 

When the owner, Gary King, passed, the land was sold, ousting Miller and all the other rising indie rockers to find sanctuary elsewhere in the Carolinas. This hit everyone hard, but Miller especially, as he’d lived there for 13 years. His upcoming album, Losin’, was created in the wake of this life-altering loss and subsequent change, memorializing King and the countless moments spent in this pastoral locale. 

Lead single “Cadillac” is a tasty, twangy cut framed with Xandy Chelmis’ ever-brilliant pedal steel. Miller’s low-pitched singing guides things forward as he paints scenes of shirtless Fourth of Julys, NASCAR crashes, and sucking down coffee. Details come through oxygen tanks, lazy eyes, and fake teeth–a loving and honest depiction of the person who had marked the last decade-plus of Miller’s life. “There goes all my hope for you,” Miller repeats before a piano-forward instrumental break. 

Despite the clear grief and loss on display, the song floats by as an easy listen, light and breezy, the perfect soundtrack as the Carolinas warm up for the spring. By the end of the track, Miller lays out the stakes in the most plainspoken of terms: “It’s a good day at the wreck yard / It’s a bad day for my heart.”