Biography of Adam Miller
Folksinger and Storyteller
An artist whose kind has dwindled to an endangered species, Adam Miller is a renowned old-school American troubadour and an award-winning storyteller. One of the premier autoharpists in the world, he is an accomplished folklorist and song collector who has accumulated a remarkable repertoire of more than 5,000 songs. A masterful entertainer who never fails to get his audience singing along, Miller accompanies his rich, resonant baritone voice with lively fingerpicking acoustic guitar and stunningly beautiful autoharp melodies. His time-honored traditional ballads are a breath of fresh air, evoking a bygone era when most music was homemade. Skillfully interweaving folksongs and the stories behind them with the elegance of a documentary filmmaker, he has distinguished himself as one of the great interpreters of American folksongs and a mesmerizing teller of tales. And he is that rare performer who appeals to audiences of all ages.
“Between these ears are more songs than any of us have ever heard,” said Keith Anglemyer, emcee at the Walnut Valley Festival.
The Tennessean said that it was “exceptionally inspiring to witness this true master of eclectic art forms and keeper of the flame of endangered American traditions.”
The Sitnews in Ketchikan, Alaska, said his show was “Impressively educational but also alluringly entertaining.”
George Winston calls him “one of the great autoharpists and folksingers of our times.”
Pete Seeger admired his “wonderful storytelling!”
NPR called him “a master of the autoharp.”
A Walnut Valley Festival reviewer observed, “Adam Miller holds his audience spellbound without a lot of trappings. It’s just him, his autoharp and guitar, and his signature panama hat.”
A concert promoter in Melbourne Beach, Florida, said Miller’s stage presence “will charm even the most die-hard iPod-loving kids or reluctant significant others.”
Traveling 70,000 miles a year, Adam Miller has performed in over 2,000 American public libraries in 48 states, from the Everglades to the Arctic Circle. More than 1.5 million students have attended his Singing Through History! school assembly programs.
Miller has recorded nine audio CDs. His storytelling album, It Might as Well Be a Myth, received the 2019 Storytelling World Resource Award for the non-fiction story, Woody Guthrie: When the World’s on Fire. The San Francisco folknik said of his album, The Radio’s Taking Our Songs Away: The Irrepressible American Folksong in the Age of the Selfie, “If this recording proves anything, it is that when all is said and done, the old songs, and yes, even the old stories, are the very best.”
Adam Miller’s performance is a quintessentially American experience. The way he explains it, “Folksongs travel through History, and History travels through Folksongs.”