Biography All Music Guide Wikipedia
All Music Guide:
The son of Roger Miller (famed for the perennial "King of the Road"), contemporary country singer/songwriter Dean Miller was born in Los Angeles in 1966 but raised in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Launching his performing career as a solo act on the Santa Fe club circuit, he relocated to L.A. in the early '80s, joining an acoustic unit dubbed the Sarcastic Hillbillies while attending college and pursuing a simultaneous career in acting. Although the band was a popular attraction on the West Coast country scene, Miller's bandmates did not share his enthusiasm for performing, so he recorded a solo demo and moved to Nashville; there he spent half-a-decade as a staff songwriter at Sony/Tree Publishing followed by two more years under the auspices of Blue Water. Finally, in 1995, Miller signed a recording contract with the Liberty label, issuing his eponymous debut two years later. The album didn't sell well and Miller was soon dropped from the label. Another deal with another unnamed label was signed but went nowhere. Miller eventually had to find work outside the music industry but he wasn't giving up. He wasn't going to compromise his art either, and it kept him from inking a deal until the Koch label approached him in 2004. Free to record and release the album he wanted to, Miller got down to business and released Platinum in 2005.
Wikipedia:
Roger Dean Miller, Jr. (born October 15, 1965, in Los Angeles, California) is an American country music artist, known professionally as Dean Miller. He is the son of Roger Miller, a country pop artist who had several hit singles between the 1960s and 1980s. Dean Miller has recorded three studio albums (one of which was not released), in addition to charting four singles on the Hot Country Songs charts and writing singles for Trace Adkins and Terri Clark. His highest-peaking single was "Nowhere, USA", which reached #54 in 1997.
Biography
Although born in Los Angeles, Dean Miller was raised in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He got his musical start in local clubs around Santa Fe, before moving back to Los Angeles in the early 1980s and joining a band called the Sarcastic Hillbillies. At the same time, he attended college, in addition to briefly pursuing a career in acting. Miller later moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where he worked as a staff songwriter for Sony/Tree Publishing.
By 1995, he was signed to the Nashville division of Liberty Records (which was later assumed into Capitol Records Nashville). Two years later, his eponymous debut album was released on the Capitol label. The lead-off single "Nowhere, USA" received significant airplay in Chicago even before its release date; however, it and two additional singles failed to reach Top 40 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks (now Hot Country Songs) charts. Another single, "Wake Up and Smell the Whiskey", was co-written and previously recorded by Brett James, who would later become a popular Nashville songwriter in the 2000s. In addition, the album sold poorly, and Miller was dropped from the Capitol roster not long afterward. In 2000, two country artists charted with singles that Miller co-wrote: Terri Clark's "A Little Gasoline" and Trace Adkins's "I'm Gonna Love You Anyway".
In 2002, Miller signed to the newly-formed Universal South Records, where he recorded his second album, Just Me. The lead-off single "Love Is a Game" peaked at #58, and the album was never released. Miller later left Universal South's roster as well.
In 2005, he was signed to the country music division of Koch Entertainment. His third album, titled Platinum, was released that same year. This album included the track "Right Now", which the band Rushlow had previously recorded as the title track of their 2003 debut album, as well as the non-charting single "Hard Love". Koch Entertainment closed its country division in 2005, however, and Miller was yet again without a record deal. Miller has not recorded any albums since Platinum.
