“Swingtown” – Steve Miller Band
(Words/music: Chris McCarty/Steve Miller, available on Book of Dreams, Capitol 1977)

I’ve never seen the Steve Miller Band, but everyone I know who has seen them over the past decade gives a similar synopsis – they were a lot of fun, they “jammed” far too much, and Steve Miller uses a different guitar for virtually every song and has a story for each one.  I have little desire to ever see them live, so I’m fine with taking my friend’s word for it.  Still, I appreciate the lengths that Steve Miller goes to validate himself as a masterful guitar player.  It’s wonderful to show off your talents (and he is talented), but it’s Miller’s songs that pay his bills.  At his best, Steve Miller’s songs sound simple and offer little room for improvisation.  When you’re writing snappy pop-rock songs, there isn’t much time for extended guitar solos.  I guess this is how Miller ends up devoting a chunk of his show to a free form blues jam – getting it out of his system so he can get back to the pop songs that made his career.

However, it’s unfair to brand Miller’s best songs as “simple” alone; there’s a great deal of care in the arrangements.  Take “Swingtown” as an example – it’s a simple song about dancing after a long week of work.  However, the arrangement redeems the song from mediocrity.  “Swingtown” flows in a circular pattern by constantly building itself up to a climax only to do it again.  The instruments come in one at a time, vamping on each other until the entire band’s playing.  Once the entire band’s in, Miller presents the song’s best melody without words.  It might seem like a cheap move at first, but in a song that extols the virtues of dancing, Miller’s wordless singing sounds like the beacon summoning the crowd to their feet.  By the time he’s trying to convince the crowd to dance, they’re already moving along with him.

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