The Clayton Miller Blues Band L to R Larry, L.D., Clayton, and Cole is a family act who played at FSU on Nov. 17.

Blues resurgence at FSU

Many people believe that the genre of blues music has become a thing of the past, only recently creating a resurgence within popular listening once again.

The performance of the Clayton Miller Blues Band on Nov. 27 only added to the interest of blues music, especially at Ferris State University.

To put an exclamation point on the end of the semester, the Music Industry Management Association brought in a very talented, professional band out of West Lafayette, Ind.

Recently opening for the Kenny Wayne Shephard Band, in their hometown, the Clayton Miller Blues Band had much to prove. Although they have only been together since early 1999, the band has been turning heads and performed true to form, delivering and exclaiming the message that blues is here to stay.

The group is made up of four members of the immediate Miller family. Involved are the three sons and the father, with their mother filling in as road manager.

Every individual plays an important role in the band. Cole, the drummer, is a 16- year-old who is very involved in other aspects of music outside the drums. He also plays bass and guitar. The father, Larry, lays out the bottom-end of the band playing the bass guitar.

The two most obvious stars of the group are Clayton Miller and his brother L.D., who is a nine-year-old prodigy.

L.D. is the harmonica player in the band and is just incredible at it. He has only been playing since spring break of 2000, but has progressed so quickly at the instrument already playing on-stage with the likes of blues legend Buddy Guy and others.

He also plays the guitar and the harp, having performed on the harp with such acts as Mississippi Heat, Governor Davis, the Blues Ambassadors and Mike Kelsey.

The definite leader of the group is the 20 year-old guitarist Clayton Miller. He called out a great deal of the cues during the performance and decided what songs to play.

"Along with being the leader, he is also the main songwriter and most serious," Clayton's mother said.

The way the group came about, his mother said, "... was by total coincidence. Clayton started playing a great deal and his brothers and father learned instruments to back him up and perform with him, helping him out with his individual efforts towards music."

Having a set of lungs must run deep in the gene pool with this family, because belting out soulful blues was like second nature to these boys. All of them sang except the father. Even L.D., the nine-year-old, was letting loose!

Although the three sing, the two main singers are Cole and Clayton.

The concert lasted one hour and there were approximately 75 people in attendance, which is a great turnout. Along with the full band performance, the band also plays acoustic shows that are supposedly extremely good.

Talking to Clayton, he said that they really had to hold back as far as playing goes.

"Anytime I started getting louder, going off, my guitar would start losing tone," he said. Being such a small, confined venue, it seems that the volume level would definitely have to be regulated, which can become very difficult to feed off of. He actually said that they were not too used to these kinds of regulations; blues is definitely a type of music that needs energy present to feed off of.

Even though they were very restricted as far as volume level goes, the guitar still sounded great and blended extremely well with the harmonica.

There were some flaws in the performance, however. At times it was rather difficult to hear the harmonica and it was hard to also hear the vocals every once in a while.

The drums were rather loud in comparison to the overall sound, but was pretty evident with the size of the venue and the restrictions left on the other instruments involved.

Another part of the overall sound was the volume of the guitar, which was pretty justifiable due to the scheme of the guitar-ladened tracks.

And what was the overall scheme of the band's sound? Simple bass guitar riffs, with walking bass lines, filled up the bottom-end of the sound. The drums kept the mildly paced beat with little amounts of fills, which was all that was needed to accomplish that aspect of the sound. The harmonica was played quite often, but left out in some songs and seemed to be purely improvisational. The guitar was the main part of the sound, giving Clayton ample opportunity to solo and improvise in nearly every song.

The overall end product was very good and was full of good dynamics spread throughout the entire performance. This band definitely delivered and was, in my opinion, the best band to come here this semester and will hopefully come back to Ferris State in the near future.

They have a full-length live CD available for purchase off of their website.

For more information about the band, go to their website at claytonmillerbluesband.com.