LEADVILLE – One of the best-known Native American musicians in the country, Bill Miller, will perform at Colorado Mountain College Leadville on Jan. 22 at 7 p.m.
The concert is open to the public, and community members are encouraged to attend. Tickets are free in advance and can be picked up at CMC Leadville at the front desk of the New Discovery Building. They will be $10 at the door on the day of the show.
In addition to being a celebrated Native American recording artist, Miller is also an excellent performer, songwriter and world-class native flute player. He has produced more than 12 albums and has received numerous musical accolades, the most notable being three Grammy Awards and six Native American Music Awards (including a Lifetime Achievement award), and he has led Wisconsin’s La Crosse Symphony Orchestra.
Miller also wrote songs with artists such as Nanci Griffith, Peter Rowan and Kim Carnes and has toured with Tori Amos, Eddie Vedder, the BoDeans, Richie Havens, John Carter Cash and Arlo Guthrie.
A Mohican Indian who calls home the Stockbridge-Munsee Reservation in northern Wisconsin, Miller began playing guitar at age 12. His music was a way out of the poverty of the reservation. After playing in teen rock bands, he turned in his electric guitar for an acoustic one and began playing folk and bluegrass, later blending in Native American musical conventions.
Besides his musical interests, he is also an accomplished storyteller and painter. His work has appeared in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian and many renowned galleries nationally.
He performed the title track on “Look Again to the Wind: Johnny Cash’s Bitter Tears Revisited,” a tribute album to Cash’s 1964 “Bitter Tears: Ballads of the American Indian.”