It has been six years since Mara Miller released a full-length record under the moniker Bosque Brown, and two years since she finished recording the new one released yesterday with barely a heads-up. When last we heard from her she was issuing songs on a cassingles-only label out of Fort Worth. Until months ago Miller hadn't even picked up a guitar. And during her first gig in years, at Dan's Silverleaf in Denton two weeks ago, she didn't last long.
"It ended with me walking off the stage in tears because my voice had gone out after three songs," she says. "We tried." At the moment, she has no gigs on the books. She also has no label. And, no website.
Her new record, Us, is her third in a decade, and her first without a label. She is doing all the promotion herself via emails sent to fans in the music-writing press who've said kind things about her in the past. The missive was generous, self-deprecating: "I thought I would pass it along to you in case you're interested. No worries if it's not your thing."
But, of course, it is my thing; that's why you're reading this. It should be your thing too. Stream the record in its entirety below. Then, buy it here.
It's a mesmerizing, haunting, wrenching piece of work written and recorded during what she calls "a turning point." Miller says, "I got real sick for a while." The recovery was tenuous, difficult. As she was recuperating, she learned she was pregnant. Her daughter is now 10 months old.
"When I was writing, at the time I was struggling and sad -- often -- but there was always hope," she says. "I would wake up to a new day and be hopeful this day would get better. When I wrote in the past, the first record [2005's Bosque Brown Plays Mara Lee Miller], I had some serious depression issues. With this new record, it was realizing life is hard and I have to be OK with it and make the most of it. I can't wake up to a trouble-free life. I can't strive for perfection. Every day is not perfect. The new record is sensitive and self-aware, but I am not in the depths of despair.
"This record means more to me than the others, maybe because I wasn't trying. On [2009's] Baby, I was trying. This time, I wasn't."
She chose this week to release Us because a song from the record appears in a documentary about a tree house called The Cinder Cone that made its online bow today. During her absence Miller's had several songs featured in films, chief among them Dallas director David Lowery's celebrated Ain't Them Bodies Saints.
Miller says the record, recorded long ago, still feels brand-new. For starters, she's yet to play it for anyone -- certainly, not live. She was about to tour Europe when she found out she was pregnant. She declined the offer to stay home, to rest and heal from the illness she discusses only generally.
And, she says, "I am still on the high of getting well and getting through that period of sickness It's shaping who I am becoming. Even though things have changed, I am not sick and alone in my house alone. I am reflective of that time period. It was such a drastic thing it'll be such a long time before I am detached from that time period. It's been a celebration of being well and looking back on what I went through."
She has been rehearsing again with her sister, pianist Gina Milligan, who will join her when those shows are written on the calendar. They do not want to tour: Milligan has two young children of her own, and Miller's not about to take a baby on the road. But Miller is itching to play again.
"I am excited to play," she says. "I feel like, in a way, it's the first time I am playing as an adult." She laughs. "I am about to be 35, but having a child changes you a lot. I am excited to play again -- and with my sister. That was originally the plan when I started way back when I was 21. That never happened, so it's exciting to see that happen now, finally."
