Tuesday, June 4, 2024

Singer/Songwriter Molly Miller will be joining Janeane live on KUCI 88.9fm over the summer - details TBA!

Guitar is everything to Molly Miller, who has been playing music since age seven, originally performing in a family band with her four siblings and drawing inspiration from artists like Jimi Hendrix, Mickey Baker, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe. In high school, she got into jazz, an obsession that continued into her years studying at USC, where she eventually earned her BA, MA, and doctorate in musical arts. A few weeks after graduating in 2016, Jason Mraz asked Molly to play with him. The same year, she became the chair of the guitar department at the Los Angeles College of Music. 

Since then, Molly has balanced performance and teaching, becoming a professor of studio guitar at USC in 2022. Along with Mraz, she’s played with artists such as the Black Eyed Peas, Scary Pockets, Sin Bandera, and Pomplamoose at the Hollywood Bowl, Royal Albert Hall, and Coachella, andMolly Miller Trio has toured as an opening act for Mraz and performed at Monterey Jazz Festival, Dizzy’s at Lincoln Center, and SF Jazz.


Molly is now out on the road promoting her forthcoming Molly Miller Trio album The Ballad of Hotspur, released on May 3. The instrumental Americana Jazz album is tinged with surf rock and showcases Molly's exceptional creative phrasing and genre-blending. The trio paints sonic landscapes that could be Ennio Morricone scores for a Quentin Tarantino-style western, to avant-garde and heavy-hitting guitar and drum work that is reminiscent of legendary afrobeat drummer Tony Allen.

The album draws its name from a character in Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part 1, based on the 14th-century English knight Sir Henry Percy, who fought in numerous battles against the French in the Hundred Years War. He was given the nickname “Hotspur” as a tribute to his speed in advance and readiness to attack. The album was written during the pandemic trading tracks back and forth, then into Valentine Studios in Los Angeles, after over a year of writing, to record all the songs in two days, to capture the dynamic energy of the group’s live show. Molly and the trio will be doing headlining shows through May, and then will be opening for Jason Mraz through the rest of the summer, where Molly will be doing double duty, opening for Jason and playing in his band. Links to the music are below. Thank you for giving this your attention. I appreciate it and look forward to hearing from you.


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“her mastery of the musical vocabulary, spoken fluently as a second language” - GUITAR.COM


“California native Molly Miller has the chops…but she takes a straighter path to musical enlightenment - one steeped in creative phrasing and genre-blending, like the music she plays in the Molly Miller Trio.” - GUITAR WORLD

“Eloquent and passionate, Miller’s style blends moody chord voicings with cathartic single-note lines and reverb-drenched dynamics.” - VINTAGE GUITAR

“ What sets her apart is her exuberance and contagious joy, which is immediately evident and impossible to ignore when watching her play.” - FRETBOARD JOURNAL

“ I sat up front through the whole show and was totally blown away. Her compositions were amazing. She had that Western country soloing intertwined with jazz lines mixed with funk and blues. The chordal movement on her guitar was like watching Chet Atkins play.” - JAZZ GUITAR TODAY




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