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There should be some sort of prize — similar to that of the smoking jacket and membership in the “Five Timers Club” awarded to actor Tom Hanks on that old “Saturday Night Live episode — awarded to Scott Miller by the regional media.

The Virginia native has called East Tennessee home long enough to qualify as a local boy, after all. And from his early days at Hawkeye’s in Knoxville through his time with The V-Roys up to and including his acclaimed solo career on Sugar Hill Records, he’s been written about by every local publication under the sun.

Since 2001, he’s been featured three times on the cover of Weekend. He’s graced the cover of Knoxville Magazine and been written about in Metro Pulse, the Knoxville daily, City View and who-knows-what-all other publications. And given his well-known discomfort with the spotlight, you would think Miller, who performs Saturday at The Bijou Theatre, would run out of things to say. Or at least start turning down all of those interview requests.

“Really, I don’t care anymore,” he told The Daily Times during a recent interview. “I’ve always got something to run my yap about. Writing about it — that’s ya’ll’s job.”
He chuckles, a good-natured sound that belies any sense of insecurity of self-doubt he might have once had. For those who have known him a while and are familiar with his two personalities — the best friend/drinking buddy he comes across as on stage and the pensive, hates-to-have-his-picture-taken reluctant rocker off of it — it comes as something of a surprise.

Miller, it seems, has turned a corner. Over the past year — since the release of his third studio album for Sugar Hill, last year’s “Citation” — he’s settled into his role as one of East Tennessee’s most well-known performers. In doing so, he said, he’s found it’s not such a bad gig after all.

“I don’t know — something just clicked, and I’m just a little more comfortable with it all,” he said. “It doesn’t feel like I’m fighting life or fighting destiny anymore. This is what I’m supposed to be doing, so it’s kind of like a day at the office. Not that I don’t enjoy it. I mean, who wants to see an entertainer up there miserable?

“You’re taking people’s hard-earned pay, and I think that’s something that East Tennessee teaches you. These musicians like Ryan Adams, who said he wouldn’t be back after he played in Knoxville the last time, crack me up. These are hard-working people spending hard-earned money to see you! Get up there and earn it!”

Miller’s story is old hat for those who keep up with him: Born in Virginia’s picturesque Shenandoah Valley, where his father still owns a 200-acre farm to which he hopes to return one day, he came to the University of Tennessee to go to school and found that his nimble fingers, mellow voice and affability in front of a crowd made him a popular performer at Knoxville college dives such as the now-defunct Hawkeye’s.

With The V-Roys, Miller and his bandmates teetered on the verge of breaking out but instead crashed and burned. Bassist Paxton Sellers and drummer Jeff Bills had grown tired of touring, so guitarist/co-singer Mic Harrison and Miller opted to go their separate ways. Sugar Hill signed Miller during sessions for his debut album, “Thus Always to Tyrants,” and after its summer 2001 release, it was warmly embraced by critics, eventually winding up on Top 10 lists in Billboard and The New York Times.
Full of rollicking songs that carried on The V-Roys’ tradition of bemoaning women over a $2 draft, it also included several ballads and a few historical songs about the Civil War.

His sophomore effort, “Upside/Downside,” continued his streak of luck. The song “Amtrak Crescent” was the last song the popular radio station 100.3 The River played before signing off the air before turning over the reins to Citadel Communications, and Miller mounted a successful tour aboard the real Amtrak Crescent, making a tour documentary and playing dates from New Orleans to New York. A gig as the house band for Jeff Foxworthy’s now-canceled “Blue Collar TV” show followed, but when Comedy Central gave it the ax, Miller found himself without a steady paycheck and under the gun to make a new record.

What followed was “Citation,” written while he was holed up in a Fort Sanders apartment and recorded with Jim Dickinson, the legendary Memphis producer famous for his work with Big Star and the Replacements. It’s a fine album, but the pressure of writing on such a short deadline seems to have cured Miller of procrastinating on the next one.

“I’m not going to get caught again with three weeks left,” he said. “I’ve been writing, and hopefully I’ll have some new stuff to play on Saturday. I always keep my little notebook handy, and if I hear an idea or a title or a phrase that catches my ear, I’ll write it down. So far, I’ve been flipping through that thing, harvesting ideas from that, so I’ve not even had to go looking for anything.

“I decided it’s time to write one about my wife, so I’m waiting on that one to come to me. I want to try to get into some stories, too. Steve Earle does them — those stories that are more third-person kinds of things. We’ve got two pets named Walker and Kitty, and I decided those would be good names for an outlaw couple. I’ve got the first line — ‘Kitty was a hothouse flower, and Walker was a weed’ — so I’m going to start from there and see where it goes.”

In the meantime, fans aching for new material can satiate themselves with “Reconstruction,” a live album released earlier this year. Like Miller’s first proper solo record (the live “Are You With Me?”), it mines his solo material as well as a few V-Roys gems. The difference is that “Reconstruction” features Miller’s backing band, the crackerjack aces known as the Commonwealth. Recorded at The Down Home in Johnson City, it’s an album that finds the band at the top of its game, and is the next best thing to standing at the front of the stage, holding up a beer while Miller peels off guitar licks and spins a yarn or two between songs.

“We wanted to put out a new product every year, and putting the live record together was relatively simple — boom-boom-boom,” he said. “We set up a big band tour to get it out there, and then I got the call to spend the summer opening shows for (singer-songwriter) Patty Griffin.”

He hopes the new album will be released in early 2008; whether it’ll be on Sugar Hill depends on whether his contract with the roots-music label is renewed in October. Not that Miller is sitting around fretting over it. He’s more relaxed-sounding than he has been in years, despite the hectic schedule he keeps these days.

“This is the first full week I’ve been home since January, and after the Bijou show, I’ll be back on the road with Patty for the rest of the summer,” he said. “I tell ya, man, it’s crazy. But I’m loving it.”