Darry Miller & The Veil

By John Duffy
Press photo

Darry Miller readily admits he kind of did things the wrong way around.

With two EPs under his belt and a tight band behind him, Miller displays the kind of determination and confidence of a well-seasoned frontman, despite the fact that he only started performing four years ago. Enamored with Motown at a young age, he had never sung in front of more than one person before he entered a Lampeter-Strasburg High School battle of the bands contest at the age of 18 in 2008.

After high school and a brief period at culinary school, Miller studied audio engineering via an online course offered by Berklee College of Music, ultimately ditching that to put all his efforts into performing.

He found an investor - a family friend who owned an online car dealership - to fund trips west to record the growing clutch of self-penned songs he was accumulating. He went to Los Angeles with the song "Everly" as his ace in the hole. The first producer he met told him to go home.

"He said it was horrible, basically," Miller remembers. But on a similar trip to Austin, TX, he caught the ear of former bassist for the band Lifehouse, Sergio Andrade, who was running a small studio with the drummer for Seal, Ramy Antoun.

The song - a nifty pop-folk arrangement, complete with harmony vocals and horns - came out well. But Miller knows the producers had little real interest in him. "I don't think they would have put the time into it if they hated the song or me," Miller says. "But their job was not to develop me as an artist. They were there to record a song."

So back in Lancaster with a finished track and no real way to perform it, Miller was lost.  A short time later, his investor support disappeared, and he was on his own.

What do I do now? he thought.

"It was a necessary ignorance, I guess," Miller reasons now. "It was part of a naive way of thinking that has probably made me more seasoned by the fact that I tried to sidestep
so much."

In the end, he ended up doing what he should have done all along: got himself a band - now known as The Veil - and started playing shows. "In the end, I've accomplished more on my own with my own money than with anyone else writing the checks."

And making the choice to buckle down and play showed Miller there was a place in the scene for his sound. "The local scene is very folks-y and very indie at the same time," he says. "There's not much in between. Pop hasn't found a good fit yet in the scene."

He also estimates that today's music buyers tend to base purchases more on songs than brand loyalty.  "People buying songs instead of albums means it's not so much about artists anymore as it is about songs."

The ease at which some people dismiss craftily written songs is easy to understand, Miller agrees, but he's convinced that writing to a pop formula is not confined to the disposability that forever infects Top 40 radio.

"People everywhere tell me to find my niche, and at the same time other people tell me not to pigeonhole myself," Miller laughs. "I'm still trying to figure out how to do that."

Miller's 2009 debut EP, Green, was credited to Darry Miller & The Veil. And while the band's membership has shifted, the current core of the group - lead guitarist Dylan Madar and bassist Josh Kirwin, formerly of The Fervour, as well as Derek Jenkins on keyboards and drummer Alan Greiner - has come a long way toward turning Miller's pop sensibilities into reality.

"The irony is that none of them come from a pop background," he says. With metal and indie credentials, the sound of Darry's songs is noticeably bigger in person.

In November, the band released a three-song EP that shows evidence of that growth. Miller still at times sounds like an Adam Levine acolyte, and his pop credo has become far more focused.

"No one is ever trying to outshine anybody," he explains. "The emphasis is always on the melody and the vocals, and what the vocalist is trying to convey."

While some of the music Miller released in 2009 bore the mark of an artist still trying to find his feet, several new tracks point to more restrained, darker arrangements, not to mention a far more professional production. "Ticking All Your Time" starts off sounding like Coldplay, while "Dark Garages" takes its sweet time growing from a whisper and a gentle acoustic guitar into a tense power ballad.

"Quite the Substance," however, features a brash keyboard riff akin to Bon Jovi's "Runaway." According to Miller, it was just something he found on the piano one day and decided it needed to be explored. "I said, 'We're gonna go Bon Jovi on their asses …'"

And even with the experiences that have led him to become more focused on the art of songwriting rather than the craft of career-making, occasional glimpses of the facile fame Miller once courted still crop up.

Last fall, he was invited to audition for a band being put together by actor and sometimes-racecar driver Frankie Muniz, who showed interest in hiring Miller as a frontman. Miller dashed off demos of three new songs to send to Muniz. "I really got excited about what that could mean … playing on late-night TV, touring; that would have happened within a year."

But as negotiations dragged on, the singer wrestled with what a gig like that might imply. "How am I gonna tell my best friends - the guys who play music with me - that I'm not playing with them anymore?" he remembers asking himself.  

Since late December, Miller hasn't heard from the Muniz camp. And he's fine with that. "I took a mental vacation over the holidays and really thought about things." In the end, Miller decided the relationships built through his own music - rather than those of another artist - are the ones he would rather nurture for the long haul.

"I'm not saying I wouldn't ever consider an opportunity like that, but I'm okay with it not happening," he says. "In the end, it's about choosing a path. Do I want the easy way? At the same time, there are no guarantees. There may be shortcuts to fame, but none to credibility."