Buddy Miller. It almost seems too simple, but given his natural ability to make the link between passion, finger and notes happen as quick as a wink, it is entirely possible to write the name Buddy Miller and have an image, a feeling, a knowing clearly come into your head. Buddy Miller’s guitar takes up a huge amount of space in whatever song is lucky enough to have him on board. Notes and chords, bent, coaxed and nurtured, are the fabric. He has a way with the guitar that separates him from other players. Intuitive is a word that fits the nature of the sound’s appearance but it doesn’t really sum up the experience. His presence in a song is subtle. No over-the-top, look-at-me flash and fire, Buddy Miller tends to make his playing inclusive rather than stand out. His art is to add, fill in and expand on the song. A team player that makes a big difference but never as stand out. His playing is like a color that brings out your eyes. The presence of the color is not the star of the show; the spotlight belongs to the eyes. Without the infusion of the green, the brown or the blue as a catalyst, the eyes can blink, flutter and roll on full spin cycle and catch nothing more than light and the occasional bug if the window is down.
In between production collaboration and playing with Robert Plant and Patty Griffin as well as performing with a host of artists such as Emmylou Harris, Buddy Miller found time to put together Buddy Miller’s Majestic Silver Strings. The album puts forty fingers of happiness to work at massaging out the wrinkles and bumps in the road of life. As familiar voices chime in, Buddy is joined on the project by Bill Frisell, Greg Leisz and Marc Ribot, forming the Majestic Silver Strings. It would be a lot easier to list names who have not been the recipients of these guys playing talents, both on record and in live performance. Like Buddy, they are musicians who are there for the song. Looking for grandstanding? Try looking, or hearing, someplace else. The blending of guitars pours off the album. The resulting sound moves like a stream ripe with the melt of winter snow. The course is laid out, the water follows the borders, but along the way its natural fluidity jumps, playfully leaps and maintains a determined path.
The sons of the silver strings are joined by an A list role call of vocalists, reinventing classic country songs. You may have met many of these songs long ago.....they have changed. Gospel 
singer Ann McCrary shares a mic with Buddy on “No Good Lover” as the guitar stutters, shakes and rolls up the carpet for a rockabilly rave up. The NYC collective Chocolate Genius lays a percussive groove across label grabbing vocals and rides alongside the guys strings on “Dang Me”. The retelling of the track is a world away from Roger Miller’s original hit and is masterfully reconstructed. The framework varies so much that I would be willing to bet you will ask yourself if that opening verse was in the original version.
Like kids, it is hard to pick a favorite on The Majestic Silver Strings album. The songs are vignettes, sketches of life. Balancing memories and future decisions amid an acoustic note tag, Lee Ann Womack weighs in on altering moods on “Meds”, Shawn Colvin foregoes options and comes to terms with reality in “That’s the Way Love Goes” and the benefits of basking in the glow of someone special is spelled out by way of a bullet point list as Patty Griffin duets with Buddy in “I Want to be With You Always”. Emmylou Harris (“Why I’m Walkin’”) and Julie Miller (“God’s Wing’ed Horse”) add vocal worth. The boys in the band are represented by the voices behind the strings as Buddy offers “Cattle Call” and Marc Ribot matches playing passion with vocal emotion on “Barres de la Prison” and “Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie”. The two join up on the roof raisin’ “Why Baby Why”.
The Majestic Silver Strings have taken songs you know and made them into tracks that seem vaguely familiar. Like any invention, idea or forward thinking vision, the end result rests in the ability to perfect on what has gone before. This is not a re-visiting but a reforming. For more on The Majestic Silver Strings and a full rendering of the lineage these guys carry, the New West Records website holds the answers. Danny McCloskey
