Puremusic Interview with Buddy and Julie Miller  (continued)

PM: Could we talk a little about your faith? I know you're both said to be committed Christians, but there are so many kinds. How does Christianity show up in your life, and how does it play out?

JM: For me, I'm not a very religious person, as far as playing it by anybody's book goes. I'm more like this desperate soul that found the ultimate friend. Mother, father, sister, brother, lover.

PM: In Jesus, specifically, right?

JM: In Jesus. I'm from Texas. I felt Jesus touch my heart as a little child, but along the way I got the impression that Christianity was a club for people in the south that enabled them to feel good about themselves. So I split from all that, and for a while, I just ran. I was just as wild as wild can be, a leaf in the wind. It's amazing I'm alive. I was so self-destructive. But then I would spend hours and hours in bookstores, just looking for books with the answers I was after. I'd go to gypsies, self-help programs, psychiatrists. Until one day I'd gotten myself involuntarily locked up in this mental hospital. I was trying to get out. "Thank you very much, I feel better now," kind of thing. But it wasn't that simple, I had to talk with the head guy of the place, Bergen Pines.

PM: Bergen Pines, in Jersey?

JM: Right. So the head guy asked me, "If you had three wishes, what would they be?"

PM: "Is this a trick question?"

JM: Right. [laughing] I think he wanted me to say "I want out of here," just so he would know that I really wanted to go. 'Cause people say that they want to leave at those places but don't always mean it. But something came over me. I looked down at myself, where I'd cut myself with a broken beer bottle, and where blood had poured out, and asked myself, "What am I doing?" And the spirit of truth was tugging on me to wake up, and I looked at him and said, "I just want to know what the truth is. There's something that just IS, that's beyond something that's just true for you or true for me." And it rolled out of my mouth something just like that. This also coincided with the time that Bob Dylan was having his conversion experience and putting out Gospel records like Slow Train Coming, which a friend sent me. Many things of this nature took place in my life in this particular period. It was also the time when Emmy Lou's Roses in the Snow came out. Buddy brought it home, and there's this precious voice singing:

Those who have strayed were sought by the Master
He who once gave His life for the sheep
out on the mountain, still He is searching
bringing them in, forever to keep

I just wept, and wept. Something had been pulled away from my spirit, my soul, like a veil was lifted. I was receiving something from God, though I didn't know what it was. I felt crazy, in a new way. God started coming at me from all directions, wherever I looked. Outside this bar in upstate NY one night, spirit spoke to me. "I never wanted your life to be this way," and I saw how sad my life had been, and become. "I always wanted us to be together." That was my moment. The next day, and the next few days, I knew that "I want Jesus, where is He? What am I supposed to do now?" It's a long story, but that's the gist of it. And for me, it's become like a heart rending friendship.

PM: I guess once you've had a real conversion experience, there's no turning back. That's amazing.

JM: I called up Buddy. "Buddy, you won't believe this, but I just gave my life to Jesus, and I can't go back."

PM: What were you two to each other at this time, were you already together?

JM: Yeah, we were living together in Union City.

BM: Yep, we'd come up from Austin.

PM: "I've given my life to Jesus," that had to be pretty shocking.

BM: Yeah, it was shocking. But at the time, we had police out looking for her. We were playing at this club, and she hadn't shown up. She was kind of on the edge, you know. But the more we talked about it, the more I could tell that a real change had come over her.

PM: That something had happened.

[At this point in the interview, Buddy was speaking so reverently that his voice is barely audible on tape. Although his actual words are not captured, repeated listenings with the equalizer jacked around reveal that he was talking about having a new point of reference in their lives, a new reason to live right, and to gauge what really mattered.]

PM: I very much like the way that your Jesus awareness shows up in the tunes. It's a really good way. Even people that are not attuned that way can hear what you're saying. Without proselytizing or preaching, you're definitely testifying.

JM: Well, it thrills my soul to hear that, it's my deepest heart's desire. Give it to those who want it, and don't push it on anybody that's not ready. God's the one who speaks to people. He sure waited until I was ready.

PM: When you run across stories of conversion, you often see that people get good and out there before they're ready.

JM: Yeah, go try it all out before you're ready to do it My way.

PM: Do you guys have or make time to read? What are you reading, and what are you listening to?

JM: I see Buddy do a lot of reading when we get on a plane. He opens up those emergency instructions and reads them cover to cover. [Buddy's laughing]

BM: I collect them.

JM: No you don't.

BM: I can show you my collection.

JM: He means if only stealing wasn't wrong, he'd collect them.

BM: Oh well, I guess I won't show you my collection. I don't really read much these days.

PM: Manuals.

BM: Yeah, manuals, stuff like that. Or a magazine or book about music, sometimes. I used to read... [wistfully] I want to read again, I just can't seem to get there. I read for a reason now, to fall asleep.

JM: I buy books now. [laughs] I'm not reading the kind of intellectual books that people read when they say they read a lot. I read a lot of books that are written by Christians.

PM: What does that mean?

JM: There's this author, Brennan Manning, that I like a lot. [When we were done, Julie gave me a copy of Abba's Child, by Manning. NAVPRESS, P.O. Box 35001, Colorado Springs, CO 80935] I don't read much fiction, it sort of bothers me. I mean, you can make up anything. Life is short, I want to read something that's true, that really happened.

PM: Will you write songs that are fictional, or are they all in the "real" domain?

JM: They don't necessarily happen to me, or aren't necessarily happening right now, but they come from a place of experience. Without that, I don't get that sense of fulfillment, somehow.

BM: You don't seem to be going in the "story song" direction.

JM: I want to be able to write story songs...

PM: I hear this more and more from songwriter friends, though, that they don't have time for fiction. It's curious. Many of us are getting all the fiction we need from movies, perhaps.

JM: I think that's right.   continue

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