When people meet Clinton Miller, they perceive him as soft-spoken and humble.
The perception goes away when Miller hits the stage and his voice echoes throughout the venue.
Miller, an enrolled member of the Stockbridge-Munsee Tribe, has been a musician for most of his life, teaching himself to play the guitar at age 12 and recording his first music with a four-track recorder at 14.
“I think I was just very impatient,” Miller said of his self-teaching. “I had all of this stuff within me, and I was determined to get there quicker than I probably should have.”
Listening to his recorded music helped Miller figure out ways to improve it, he said. He recommends the technique “even if you don’t know what you’re doing.”
Miller also was 14 when he gave his first public performance — with older brother Bill’s college band. He had saved up for nine months to buy a Les Paul electric guitar.
Miller’s guitar performance received good reviews from the audience, he recalled.
“I think it was because this 14-year-old kid was holding onto a Les Paul,” Miller said. “It was pretty nerve-wracking for me, because there were 200 to 300 people in this room, and it was my first gig. Once I heard the applause, though, I was hooked. I knew I had to keep doing this.”
Miller put out his first solo album, “Heaven is a Lonely Place,” in 1999. He now has a dozen albums to his name and another one due out late this year.
“Before (going solo), I had just mainly played as the lead guitar in bands, but I wasn’t really satisfied with that,” Miller said. “I felt I had different things to say.”
Miller said he pursued music as an extension of his visual art work. He considers music the “soundtrack” for whatever he’s feeling and creating.
“I started my art at a really young age,” Miller said. “I did a lot of drawing, and I got into watercolor painting a little later on, and music was another outlet for the stories and images.”
Miller is heavily influenced by music from the 1970s, particularly progressive rock bands and movie soundtracks. “The French Connection” soundtrack is one of his favorites because of the experimentation.
“They were still experimenting a lot (in the 1970s),” Miller said. “They were adding such a strangeness to the movies and the sound.”
Miller doesn’t consciously try to compose music reflecting his Native American heritage, but he admits it comes through. He wrote about his Stockbridge-Munsee heritage in his 2002 album “Rez Boy.”
“After that, I just went back to doing progressive pieces,” Miller said.
Some of Miller’s pieces, songs with a lot of detail in lyrics and melody, can take up to two or three years to evolve fully, he said. Others just pop in his head instantly.
Miller said he tried writing lyrics before the music but found it’s easier to reverse the process.
“I find it helps me to get the message out better,” he said.
Miller, who lives near Bowler, is a familiar face at venues around northeast Wisconsin, with regular appearances during open mic nights at Glas Coffeehouse in Shawano and a solo concert scheduled in August at North Star Casino in Bowler.
Now 41, Miller shows no signs of putting away his guitar. He tries to continue his musical evolution by finding lost bands from the 1970s, as well as newer groups.
“I keep searching for new bands and new sounds, and trying to mix the old with the new,” Miller said. “It’s a constant journey to find inspiration.”
