Singer-Writer Trying to Get the Words Out : O.C.-Bound Bill Miller Seeks Slot in Music for Native Americans

In the realm of rock ‘n’ roll, Bill Miller is the first of the Mohicans. The Native American singer-songwriter hopes many more will follow, and not just from his own tribe.

Over the last three years, Miller, who opens for Tish Hinojosa on Tuesday at the Galaxy Concert Theatre, has shared a festival bill with Pearl Jam (he found a friend and fan in Eddie Vedder) and opened on tour for Tori Amos and the BoDeans.

His two major-label releases, “The Red Road” and “Raven in the Snow,” place him on a very short list of current (and, for that matter, past) American Indian rockers who have gained national exposure.

It’s because of that marginal presence in the music world, Miller said, that Native Americans could be forced to suffer an indignity such as “Indian Outlaw,” the Tim McGraw country hit from 1994 that played stupidly on stock Hollywood images.

“I thought it sucked,” Miller said over the phone last week from a Denver hotel room, a bit of an edge entering his otherwise affable, upbeat conversation. “It just uses every cliche and every negative stereotype possible. It’s too clowny. If it had been [about] any other race it would have been stopped. But there’s not enough representation of Indian people in the music industry. People think, ‘You’re gone, you’re extinct, we can use it.’ ”

Miller has made it his mission to counter such assumptions by proclaiming a vision of endurance and recovery for Native American people.

Like a modern Isaiah, he surveys the shattered condition of the nation’s most dispossessed and socially beleaguered minority, and sings prophetic, spiritual anthems of hope and determination and forgiveness. Though his songs are rooted in his own people’s struggles, they can apply broadly to anyone trying to recover from a great blow.

“The Red Road” was essentially a folk album, with traditional Native American flute airs and drum rhythms coloring his singer-songwriter approach, or standing alone as instrumental set-pieces.

“I was going to rock out on that album, but my dad died while I was making it,” said Miller, who grew up on a reservation in northern Wisconsin, the son of a Mohican father and a German mother. “The moods and colors and feelings in my life at the time didn’t lend themselves to rocking out in any form.”

“Raven in the Snow” is a full-on rock album that touches on the heartland and anthem-rock styles of such sources as the Byrds, Bob Dylan and Don Henley. One track, “After the Storm,” flexes some Pearl Jam muscle, complete with brooding cast and sweeping scale. A recurring instrumental improvisation, “In Every Corner of the Forest,” yields a rich, coherent merger of rock and traditional Native American elements.

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At 41, Miller finds himself in a tricky position for an artist. On the one hand, the Nashville-based singer is well aware of the imperatives that come with being a prominent member of a people that has been shunted aside and needs desperately to be heard. At the same time, he realizes it is vital, as a singer-songwriter, to heed one’s own, personal voice, and to make music that will be appreciated not just for its ethnic source or subject matter, but for its intrinsic quality.

“The Native [identity] is somewhat of a sellable item now, which kind of bothers me, and then it kind of doesn’t,” Miller said. “I would like people to see other sides. I get stuck in categories. A huge [radio] station in New York interviewed me. I thought it was going to be [broadcast] on their mainstream rock [programming] and it ended up at 1 a.m. Sunday in their Native American hour.”

The pressures of being a solitary spokesman or a token figure would ease if Miller were to become less the lone ranger (if we can invert Western myth for a moment) and more like one among many in a widely recognized posse of American Indian rock and pop artists. At this point, only a few Native rockers--including poet John Trudell and the bands Red Thunder (from New Mexico) and Song Catchers (from Seattle) have had much national exposure.

There are a lot more Native Americans playing rock than is generally known, Miller said.

“I’ve ended up meeting quite a few on this journey, younger kids who are into rock ‘n’ roll. I met some heavy metalers in Louisiana, and they were excellent. I want to see more of our people. Hopefully, we could turn it into a kind of Motown; we need to co-op with each other. There’s a lot of underground groups people haven’t heard. One of my purposes is to help them get a deal or showcase.”

For Miller, Native American role models were few as he learned to play on a $15 guitar his father bought him when he was 12. There was the Southern California band Redbone, and Miller also cites Jim Pepper, who got airplay in the ‘70s for a glorious folk-rock arrangement of the traditional chant, “Witchi-Tai-To,” (also done, less memorably, by Brewer and Shipley) and Jesse Ed Davis, one of the leading rock session guitarists of the ‘70s. Mainly, Miller took his cues from the Ventures, Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Byrds and other rock heroes of the day.

Miller didn’t learn to play the traditional flute that’s now a part of his repertoire until he left the reservation to attend a series of art schools in Wisconsin.

“When I got into college, I started missing home and I picked up the traditional instruments,” said Miller, who played in rock cover bands during his college years. “I taught myself. It’s hard to define this, but I picked up the flute and it was always in me. It was a beautiful experience growing up, listening to the flute players and the drums.”

But poverty, blatant racial prejudice and beatings from his alcoholic father were also a part of Miller’s upbringing. With a 1990 census count of 1.8 million, Native Americans suffer from rates of poverty, teen suicide and death from alcoholism markedly greater than other American ethnic groups; Miller said he was nearly a casualty himself, having attempted suicide twice by the age of 19, then drifting into heavy drinking in his early 20s.

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Miller was able to step back from the edge, finding refuge in a lasting marriage to his college sweetheart (they have three children, ages 7 to 16). In 1981, having given up his art studies to scuffle for a living as a coffeehouse musician, Miller caught his big break. He had a chance meeting with Michael Murphey, the country-rocker (and now cowboy singer) whose affinity for Native American issues has been clear since his classic 1972 song, “Geronimo’s Cadillac.”

The two hit it off, and within a week, Miller was touring as Murphey’s opening act. It was at Murphey’s behest that Miller moved to Nashville in 1985. Murphey was also decisive in getting him to incorporate traditional Indian elements in his songs.

“There was so much racism in Wisconsin, I thought, ‘I’ll never be able to sing about my people.’ It took a guy like Murphey to say, ‘This is incredible music, you should be doing it and reflecting your culture.’ ”

Miller released four albums on a small, Nashville-based label, Rosebud Records, and toured on the folk circuit. The cumulative work paid off in 1993, when he signed with Warner Bros.

Mass stardom, however, has not arrived. “The Red Road” has sold 22,000 copies to date, and sales for “Raven in the Snow” total 7,200, according to SoundScan.

Miller feels frustrated by his lack of exposure on the late-night network television shows and in major magazines.

“I hear, ‘You’re not platinum’ or ‘We’ve done our Native article this year.’ These walls have come up against me. What do they think I’m going to do? Are they afraid I’m going to hoot and holler on TV?”

The response from other Native Americans “has been nothing but encouragement,” Miller said. “I’ve gotten a lot of great letters from people. They want one of our own to succeed. I feel I’ve [already] done that by being sober 15 years and getting on this label.”

Miller said he has grappled with himself over whether personal expression in his music should take a back seat to the need to promote Native American causes.

“I have thought that way, but when I do [neglect the personal] I end up stumbling. I’ll go with whatever fits my heart, whatever colors are on the palette. There’s no way I can escape Indian issues because I grew up with it. I’ll keep writing about people’s struggles, in a positive way.”

* Bill Miller opens for Tish Hinojosa on Tuesday at the Galaxy Concert Theatre, 3503 S. Harbor Blvd., Santa Ana. 8 p.m. $15-$17. (714) 957-0600.