Comments (0) Best Folk Artist - 2006
Jeff Miller
As founder of the Folk School, Jeff Miller is responsible for the most important resurgence of traditional American music in St. Louis in decades. But long before that institution came along, Miller was legendary as one of the purest and, not so paradoxically, fiercest claw-hammer banjo players in town, picking with the Big Note String Band, the Twang Brothers and fiddler Lynn "Chirps" Smith. You'll find him at contra dances and fiddle contests and even bar mitzvahs (when he trades his banjo for a mandolin in the Yidn Klezmer Band). For Miller, folk music isn't meant to be studied and dissected and preserved in archives; it's for sharing, swinging and dancing till dawn.
