Rob Miller’s story exudes rock-and-roll aura.
His first concert ended with someone vomiting on him (it was an Alice Cooper show). Decades later, Miller helped define an entire corner of American roots music as the co-founder of Bloodshot Records, the Chicago-based independent label that became synonymous with what he dubs “insurgent country.”
In his new memoir, The Hours Are Long But The Pay Is Low, Miller traces a winding path through the music industry, from playing drums in a struggling touring band to running Bloodshot for more than 20 years. Along the way, the label released around 300 albums and became a flagship home for artists blending traditional country with punk attitude. Like many good rock yarns, the story includes some tragedy, ending with Miller selling the label amid turmoil involving his business partner.
The book eschews a strictly chronological narrative, instead jumping between moments from Miller’s childhood and adulthood to create a thematic portrait of his views on music, culture and place, and is laced with plenty of self-deprecating humor. It concludes with a set of appendices covering everything from the bleakest country songs Miller knows to the worst demo pitches Bloodshot ever received (names mercifully redacted), as well as a complete list of bands that played the label’s infamous South by Southwest showcases.
In the book, Miller describes his youthful expeditions to quirky, out-of-the-way record stores as a portal into an alternate universe, where weirdos and misfits like him had a voice. He eventually fled his native Michigan for Chicago, where he ran a painting business and tried to leave the music world behind. Instead, he discovered a burgeoning local scene of country and roots artists that he felt needed documenting, prompting him in 1994 to co-found Bloodshot Records.
He soon realized there was deep overlap between the country-adjacent music he encountered in Chicago and the punk rock that shaped his adolescence. The book devotes an entire chapter to that shared terrain, beginning with The Cramps and their cheap-horror-movie blend of rockabilly and punk. The trail runs through bands like X and The Gun Club before looping back to Gram Parsons and Buck Owens, ultimately landing on the unlikely common ground between Black Flag and Hank Williams.
“Maybe I was alone in drawing lines from Black Flag to Hank Williams, and maybe that was a line best drawn with a crayon in a nice, soft room, but the intensity tugging deep in both was unmistakable to me,” Miller writes. “Why did people respond to punk? Its immediacy, its simplicity. Why did people respond to country? Its immediacy, its simplicity.”
That philosophy formed the foundation of the Bloodshot sound.
Miller lays out an approach not only to independent music, but to independent thought, rejecting cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all “content.” He applied that same exploratory mindset to food. As Bloodshot built a nationwide network of artists, venues, record stores and fans, Miller forged a habit of seeking out the best and weirdest local cuisine, and The Hours Are Long is filled with mouth-watering descriptions of memorable meals on the road.
“If you’re willing to go to some weird record store and seek out Argentinian guitar music, then you’re also willing to drive 30 miles out of your way to find a better chicken sandwich,” he told Studio One. “It’s all part of the same mentality.”
The book does not dwell on Miller’s 2021 decision to sell Bloodshot. Media coverage at the time detailed a split between Miller and co-founder Nan Warshaw following allegations of harassment involving Warshaw’s partner. Instead, the memoir strikes a more aspirational tone about surviving the hardscrabble world of independent music.
“You have to be an optimist because you believe so fervently in what you’re doing that you just keep going,” Miller said. “I didn’t want to end the book with the pointless ugliness that my ex-partner engendered toward the label. It was gross and awful and unnecessary. I wanted people to put the book down and say, ‘I can do this.’”
Miller now splits his time between Michigan and Chicago. He said he’s still “figuring things out” after finishing the book, though he keeps at least one ear tuned to the music world. He currently hosts a radio show, Miller’s Cave, where he spins selections from his personal record collection.
The Hours Are Long But The Pay Is Low is available now from 3 Field Books, an imprint of the University of Illinois Press.
