Interview with Molly Miller
Contents
Molly Miller is a guitarist based in Los Angeles, California.
String Theory
Max Raskin: I know you’ve been playing a lot of tennis recently. Is there anything you can focus in on as much as guitar?
Molly Miller: No, not at all. I’ll do other things to try to feel more normal, but tennis is a new hobby. It’s the first real hobby I’ve had maybe ever.
MR: How long have you been playing?
MM: I played as a kid and then a little bit in high school. I haven't really played in like 15 years, then I started playing again the last year and a half.
MR: Do you have a teacher?
MM: I had my second lesson today.
It's actually has been interesting to see the parallels between tennis and guitar. For most things in life you don't have to be that focused, but guitar is the one place where I’m focused. Whether it’s teaching or on stage, I’m super present. Everywhere else I don't have to be. And tennis is the first time outside of guitar where I actually have to be focused.
And also the mind games that exist. You can get into the flow state with tennis in the same way you can with guitar. I'm much better at it with guitar, but it’s fun to see how much you have to learn to be able not to think and just engage. There’s so much you have to think about to then not think about it.
MR: There’s this book called The Art of Learning – it’s a book about performance psychology by this young chess grandmaster who later became a world champion martial artist. It was the kid from Searching for Bobby Fischer.
What kind of racket do you use?
MM: It’s a Clash from Wilson. My sister makes fun of me because she says I pretend like I'm a super serious professional tennis player and that I am not good enough for that racket – I’m good, not great.
MR: Do you wear a visor when you play?
MM: Yes definitely. I wear one when I'm running as well. I really dig the high ponytail life. My main go-to is a bright neon purple Nike.
I started playing tennis again a couple years ago. I was out at a show, and I started talking smack to a friend about how I would crush him in tennis. I always tell him he changed my life because he got me back into tennis.
MR: When you’re practicing guitar or tennis where do you keep your phone?
MM: I recently started a couple things to better my practice sessions – I put my phone on silent and my computer on no Internet. It’s been super helpful.
MR: What are you trying to learn in tennis?
MM: It’s funny because I went to my teacher and I said, “I want to be better.” And I know as a teacher, I hate when people say that. It doesn’t mean anything. Tell me what you want to do. Do you want to get better at a style? Do you want to have more fretboard fluency?
I got to be more specific. On the tennis court I’m what you call a pusher. I don’t have any moves – I’m not an aggressive player, I’m very passive. So we worked on being more aggressive with the ball and some net game as well today.
Where or When
MR: What's the last thing that you obsessively worked on with your guitar?
MM: I dive deep into songs. The most recent song I worked on is “Where or When.”
MR and MM: [sing the song together]
MR: What version?
MM: This is actually the move – you do like ten versions. I listened to every version available. I play in a bunch of different keys. I decide what range and what vibe I’m going for. One of my favorite things is learning new songs and deciding how I'm going to approach them.
MR: What’s your favorite “Where or When”?
MM: You’re not going to love my answer: Julian Lage.
MR: I like it when he plays standards. I love his “I’ll Be Seeing You.” The reason I listened to it so much is because there’s nothing else I really like of his.
MM: Listen to his World’s Fair record – he plays “Where or When” in C. But I don’t want to play it the way anyone else has played it.
MR: Are you going to put a video up of it?
MM: Yeah, I can.
This was a very lo-fi impromptu apartment version from one night when I decided to go live on Instagram – not something that happens often.
MR: This is one of my favorite things I’ve seen you play. My favorite versions of things are rarely the most polished production-wise. I think about this Freddie Hubbard recording on YouTube of “Take the ‘A’ Train.”
MR: What’s your favorite video of yourself on YouTube?
MM: It’s funny – do you mean what I’m the most proud of? Or have had the most comments about? It's hard to know what is informing what. I probably get the most comments on this video of me playing with Jason Mraz in Brazil. There's like 60,000 people and it’s a raging solo. I’m wearing cutoff shorts and running around stage. But I also love some of the solo guitar videos.
MR: Which is your favorite solo guitar video?
MM: There’s a couple that come to mind. “Surfer Girl” has the most hits. I really like my version of “Like Someone in Love.”
Matcha-a-day Keeps the Doctah Away?
MR: Do you drink coffee in the morning?
MM: Matcha. I typically have two matchas a day. Pre-quarantine sometimes three because I like to get revved up on caffeine.
MR: Where do you get your matcha from?
MM: I've searched high and low for the best matcha and how to get a nice frothy matcha – not too latte-y. I use homemade almond milk from the Sababa cookbook. There’s two matchas I use: Kettl Shinme and Matchafull.
MR: What was the last book you read?
MM: I just read Educated: A Memoir. It’s by a woman who grew up in an isolated Mormon community in Idaho, and it's her story of becoming educated. Now she's a PhD and went to Harvard. Her story is crazy.
Also, I got a peak of my student’s soon-to-be-published book – her story is really beautiful – she was 27 years old about to climb Kilimanjaro with her brother. She was a med student at USC, marathon runner – just one of these perfect people. She went to the doctor’s to get her blood taken before doing the climb and she found out she had incurable leukemia. It's her story of having an incurable cancer that comes back three times. It is really a beautiful story of hope.
MR: Is she still alive?
MM: Yeah. I got really close with her – I get really close with my students.
MR: What’s the last song you listened to?
MM: Marie, Maria. I discovered it on my Discover Weekly on Spotify. During quarantine I realized how much I like dad rock.
MR: What’s dad rock?
MM: Leon Russell, J.J. Cale, Ry Cooder, and the Wood Brothers. J.E. Sunde is another guy I like – it’s not quite as dad rock-y. It's kind of 70’s throwback singer-songwriter.
MR: What were your top three most listened-to songs last year?
MM: “Something Special” by Steve Miller. That’s kind of the zone I’m in. “I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight” – Richard and Linda Thompson and “Doctor, My Eyes” by Jackson Brown. I’m in this 70’s I-got-feelings-and-emotions moment.
But after that it’s a transcription that relates to you. The fourth most listened is “Honky Tonk Part I” – that Bill Doggett song. I transcribed it and you transcribed it too.
MR: I learned it from you!
MM: And then “Rainbow Connection” – I did this thing for for a trio of brands this year. It was Disney music played on a on a Taylor guitar sold at Guitar Center. I arranged and performed three Disney songs. It's Molly Miller's Disney playlist.
MR: It’s pretty incredible that you listen to Jackson Browne more than something you had to obsessively listen to to learn.
MM: I get really into one song. I think you’re probably like this too. I want to feel and get into a zone. All three of those songs I just named were part of that zone for me this.
MR: For me it was Django’s music this year. I love my teacher, Stephane Wrembel. It’s very personal finding a teacher.
MM: Same problem with finding a therapist. You should try a few and settle on someone.
MR: Do you recommend therapy to people?
MM: I was an anti-therapy person until actually like a month or two ago. I come from a family where we don't believe in therapy. Ironically, my grandfather was sort of a renowned psychiatrist.
MR: What was his name?
MM: Milton Miller. He did a lot of work with psychiatry and also bringing it to Asia. But I was really anti-therapy. I finally started going after I had I had an episode on a plane – I passed out on a plane from anxiety. It was a self-induced panic attack. It’s called vasovagal. And then I started having this recurring panic that it's going to happen again - I travel a lot, so I had to sort it out.
And so I started – I tried one therapist and it was horrible. Then I went to another one who I liked enough and I’d go sporadically. I'd go once a month, once every couple months. I thought I didn’t really need it. But I don't know. I mean, I guess it's okay. We've had a couple breakthrough sessions and actually for the first time last week I set it up so I'm going every three weeks, which for me is a big deal. I’ve been learning a lot. This is coming from me where like a year ago, I'd be super fucking anti.
MR: I remember you, me, and my friend having dinner like two years ago and you were very against it at the time.
MM: Super anti- because my whole life, my family's kind of like, “You just deal with it, you figure it out. Grow a pair and just work through it.” That had always been my mentality. I think that mentality had actually started to have a reverse effect where I just kept pushing things aside, and it started sneaking up on me in different ways that I did not like.
It’s true, I'd be fine if I never saw a therapist again. It's not that I wouldn't be okay. But it is nice to have one. I've finally embraced that.
MR: What about meditation?
MM: This is one of my New Year’s resolutions. One thing I've been working on with my therapist is doing five minutes of nothing in between things. I've tried meditation a bunch of times and it feels like such a chore. I really struggle with it. I started getting these chronic headaches, which were stress headaches. I would get a headache that wouldn't go away for a month. I’d have all this anxiety around the headache, and then I’d take Tylenol and Advil, and then I'd have a stomachache, and I'd be nauseous, and it’s just this cycle.
I realized it’s self-induced. To control it a little bit more . . . I had to stop, which is really hard for me to do. Because I'm so wound up and have so much energy and I'm so used to go, go, go. My body is now showing me my M.O. is not working.
MR: How do you stop?
MM: What I've started doing, and I'm not perfect, is in between things, I'll put a timer on for five minutes and lay down. If I'm really not wanting to do it, I'll do three minutes. Sometimes I'll put the three minutes on, and at the end I say, “Well, I guess I could do two more.”
Let's say I’m practicing, and then I have to teach a lesson at noon. Before, I'd practice until noon, and then I'll go right into my lesson. What I've been trying to do instead is practice until 11:50 and then for five minutes, go pee, get water, and whatnot and then do five minutes of nothing. So that's kind of my goal.
Queen’s Gambit Feminism
MR: What shows have you recently binged?
MM: I watched the Queen’s Gambit, and I liked it.
MR: Did you identify with her at all?
MM: Yes, actually, I really did. My sister kind of made fun of me because I felt it. It’s me and 50 dudes everywhere I go. I really identified with her.
MR: Her femaleness wasn’t the driving thing in the show at all.
MM: Which is as it should be. I always think I’m not a woman who plays guitar, I’m a guitarist who happens to be a woman.
MR: Have you ever read any feminist books?
MM: Not a lot because the same way I'm kind of resistant to therapy. I'm sort of resistant to certain things and concepts that could actually serve me. But at the same time, I have these really beautiful moments with students and people and women who say how meaningful it is for them to see me on stage because I am a woman.
It kind of hit me recently . . . I didn't have a female mentor until I was 25. At 25, I started working with Patrice Rushen who is a phenomenal piano player and songwriter and Jennifer Condos, who's an amazing bassist in my trio. Notice no guitar player. So I had no female guitar players ever that were mentors. And I've been in plenty of awkward situations where it would be really nice to have a woman to be like, “Yeah, this is weird. What do I do? They asked me to take my jacket off and cut my skirt off.” But I never thought about it. I just thought, “Damn you’re the only girl – you just gotta sort it out.” And I think that's my M.O. for most things – you just got to sort it out.
I shouldn't be so resistant to the thought of support or a conversation.
MR: Have you ever read any of those self-help books?
MM: Super not into them. I dated someone for a minute who kept trying to get me to read them and I told him they’re really not my vibe. I think it's once again that same sort of like bullheadedness.
I've read some music ones like Free Play, Effortless Mastery, and There’s No Traffic on the Extra Mile. That is a line I try to live by.
Tillamook and Major 7ths
MR: Do you eat snacks?
MM: I'd say the biggest part of my diet is bread and cheese. My mom makes homemade sourdough that's amazing. You don't know how much bread I consume. I consume a lot of bread and also cheese. Tillamook extra sharp cheddar, that’s my go-to. I eat the cheddar with my bread.
MR: Do you floss?
MM: Every day.
MR: And what kind of toothbrush do you have? Electric?
MM: I go manual, the electric tickles my brain.
MR: Do you ever make yourself voice notes to remember a tune in your head?
MM: Yeah, but what I do more is I'll make videos of myself on my computer because I kind of like to see what my hands do. That’s part of the choreography.
MR: Is there a guitar exercise that is the longest-running in your life?
MM: I just started a new one because I feel I need to change it up. I've been doing this same routine for the last couple of years where I sit down with my instrument and spend like five to infinity minutes just exploring. Then I’ll sight read and then do songs.
MR: But are there any finger exercises that are like cracking your knuckles – you just need to do it?
MM: I started working out of a book for the first time ever really, Joe Pass’ Guitar Style. I saw Larry Koonse for a lesson recently – he’s freaking phenomenal. I asked him to help me with rhythm changes. I get into my head with rhythm changes and I need to break out. He recommended this Joe Pass book to work on some more lines and not being so arpeggiated and chord tone-focused and it's been cool. I took a lesson with him a couple years ago. In that lesson he showed me this enclosure thing that I have used for a couple years as a warmup. Doing enclosures around scales – using a scale and enclosing each note.
One other thing that I started doing probably eight years ago that I find if I can do it well, it means I'm connected with my instrument. I do major 7th and major 9th arpeggios with the root on the sixth string going up chromatically for an octave from G to G. That helps me really pay attention to my tone because there's string skipping happening too. So I think if I'm in the zone with that, I’m good.
MR: You’ve become a much more creative player since I’ve known you – you can tell you’re really pushing yourself. What’s that about?
MM: Two things come to mind – I am still obsessed with guitar. I work at it every day. The process excites me. I practice, I listen, I grow. And I think that will never stop.
The other element is my work – I make conscious decisions about what gigs I say yes to and what gigs I say no to. I only accept a gig, tour, or session if I know I will enjoy it or I know I will be challenged by it. I want to always be evolving on my instrument and never get dark on the thing that gives me meaning – the work I take and don’t take informs that. This decision-making process is inspired by Derek Sivers' “Hell Yes” or “Fuck No” concept.
MR: What thickness pick do you use?
MR: For the Django stuff I’m using this 3mm thing.
MM: I find that I lose my tone with those.