There haven’t been a lot of upsides to the pandemic, particularly where live music is concerned. But long-running rock legend Steve Miller did find one silver lining to being forced off the road.
“Back when I was a kid, when ‘The Joker’ was a hit and I was touring, I thought, ‘oh, when I get to be 50 years old, I’m gonna have all the time in the world [to go through my old tapes]’ … and I kept putting stuff in this warehouse,” Miller says in an interview with The Coda Collection, an excerpt of which debuts below.
But 50 came and went, and Miller – now 77 – never got around to digging through his vaults thanks to a constant touring schedule. So when the pandemic forced him off the road in 2020, he finally took the dive into his archives and discovered a hidden gem from Steve Miller Band’s 1977 tour behind the Book of Dreams and Fly Like an Eagle albums.
“All of a sudden… came this jewel of a concert where the band is just at its best,” says Miller of a 1977 show at Landover, Maryland. “The guitar work is spectacular. It’s 1977, people were smoking cigarettes wearing bell-bottom pants and everyone’s got hair down to here, that part is kinda funny, but what’s going on onstage is really inspirational.”
The Breaking Ground concert film and its companion recording, Steve Miller Band Live! Breaking Ground: August 3, 1977, arrive Friday, May 14; the album is out via Sailor/Capitol/UMe and the film is available via the Coda Collection on Amazon Prime Video.
