BY BRITTANY DANIELLE for WEEKLY VOLCANO 5/1/26 |
After years of writing in private, the Tacoma artist releases her first full-length record and returns to the place where it all began for a hometown performance.
Karen Miller has been writing music for most of her life, but for years those songs lived quietly, tucked into voice memos and notebooks, waiting for their moment. What started as a private practice, shaped by her love of literature and storytelling, has grown into a body of work numbering in the hundreds. Over the past five years, that work has moved out of the bedroom and onto the stage, from open mics and songwriter rounds to full solo performances of her own.
Formerly a book pricer at Kings Books, Miller used to sit in the back, behind the bookshelves, getting books ready to sell while she listened to the songs she wrote play back from her voice memo app on her phone, dreaming of one day releasing her own full-length album and playing it live.
The day has now arrived, and Miller’s first full-length album is out May 1 on all platforms. A huge feat personally and professionally, she has finally achieved that dream and does not see herself stopping anytime soon.
Miller has given us tastes of her personality and songwriting style. She has given us different personalities to follow with “Johnny Gasoline” and “Astrology Girl,” taken us down familiar roads of nostalgia with “Bad Dancing in the Kingdome,” and related to our daily struggles of weaving through life with “The Maze.”
An avid reader, it is clear that Miller gained the skills of storytelling through her relationships with books and reading. She can take a regular happening and turn it into a moment that lives in song, giving us relatable instances of emotion, human experience, embarrassment, triumph and grief.
Miller writes in a folk style that creates familiarity while she acknowledges the quirks and turns of life with her tongue-in-cheek humor and understanding of how sometimes this stuff is really hard. It makes you laugh while realizing how absurd the human experience can be and makes you cry when you see your experiences are widely understood by others.
Her lyrics take us to a place where we have all been before, whether we are reminiscing about childhood, sarcastically talking about an old love interest or wishing we were someone else entirely. Miller is a master at making the familiar seem a little less awful and giving us a reason to smile.
An advocate for mental health and perseverance through the struggles that come with it, Karen Miller has known what it feels like to be isolated. To change the narrative for others dealing with similar feelings of loneliness, she has aptly named her album “Call On Me” after her title track. She said that the messaging is about being there for people, from a personal knowing and understanding that interpersonal relationships are crucial in this life for forward movement and survival.
Miller looks back on this accomplishment with pride, and she hopes others feel connected to her and to others so they know they are not going through this life alone and that many of these experiences are shared.
She has grown since her first time playing live and has found that having the work of a record keeps her grounded, focused and trusting in herself. Trust that she has a purpose, trust that she does not want to end her own life, and proof that she can make something that reminds her there are good reasons to stick around.
While it takes years to lock in a first album, and some of the songs are over 10 years old, Miller shared that some of her favorite songs were written and recorded right there in the studio while processing the recording experience.
Miller said that while she had recorded songs before as singles, it was a different experience to record for a full album. It has changed the way she looks at song forms and songwriting. She has blossomed from the “bedroom rockstar” to a fully realized performing and recording artist.
While finalizing the record, Miller tapped into the community of musicians she had met along the way, calling on many of them to help her with the sounds she needed.
Working with Nic Casey on production and instrumentation opened her up to writing to make space for other musicians and trusting herself to know what she wanted to hear from them. Miller called on Lea Fetterman, Lindsey Jackson, Karen Laura Peters, Owl Scary, Cassie Q. Kohl, Emma Yoder, Michael Thomas and Brady McCowan. With a team she trusted, it was easy to let go, have people help realize her vision and allow them to contribute parts of themselves to her music.
Karen Miller met many of these people through her open mics and songwriter rounds, but she also gives credit to Momentum Musician for the relationships she built while learning more about recording, marketing and arranging.
“Call On Me” is more than a debut album; it is proof of what can happen when an artist commits to her voice and allows others to be part of the process. It carries the weight of years of quiet work and the momentum of someone who is no longer waiting for permission to be heard.
On May 9 at Kings Books, the place where much of this journey began, Miller brings that work back to the room that helped shape it. The songs are ready. The story is already in motion. All that is left is to show up and listen.
Keep up with Karen Miller at www.karenmillermusic.com.
