Ben Miller Band

Ben Miller Band

Ben Miller Band is a group from Joplin, Missouri, active since 2005. Its music draws on bluegrass, blues, blues rock and delta blues, and it also incorporates folk, country and elements of Appalachian mountain music. The band develops a sound shaped by the energy of bluegrass, the feel of delta blues and a rough, stripped-back approach to instrumentation.

Line-up and instruments

The group’s line-up includes Ben Miller on lead vocals and guitar; Scott Leeper on homemade one-string washtub bass, drums and backing vocals; Rachel Ammons on lead and backing vocals, violin, cello, guitar and electric cactus; and Bob Lewis on guitar, bass and percussion. The band also includes Doug Dicharry in its history, with the line-up and roles changing over time.

Ben Miller begins as a poet and songwriter and starts playing guitar at 16. He leaves Curlew, Washington, and performs on the streets of northern Europe, developing a one-man-band style that includes guitar, banjo, harmonica and foot percussion. His songs cover subjects such as prostitution, methamphetamine, scripture and the meaning of life.

Scott Leeper starts on drums at 7 and performs with his family’s band, The Leeper’s, by the age of 10. He later plays in a duo with his brother, works as a solo country performer and backs various blues artists before joining Ben Miller Band on the one-string washtub bass, made from weed-eater string attached to a wooden pole.

Doug Dicharry starts trombone in the sixth grade, continues music studies in college and grows up moving around the world as an Air Force child. His background ranges across punk, ska, progressive noise and marching bands. In high school he plays trombone in several groups while teaching himself drums. He later makes an electric washboard and plays drums, trombone, trumpet, mandolin, percussion, electric washboard and electric spoons for the band.

Formation and activity

The band forms in Joplin in 2005 and is active through the present. It builds a reputation for using unconventional homemade instruments without treating that approach as a novelty act, and it performs widely, with a heavy live schedule and a sound described as original and tightly developed.

Recordings

Ben Miller Band releases the albums 1 Ton and 2 Ton in 2010, Heavy Load in 2012 and Any Way, Shape or Form in 2014.