Millish
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Millish

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This band has not uploaded any videos

Music

The best kept secret in music

Press


"Cross-Pollination"

"We call this set of jigs, 'The Jigs' quips Tyler Duncan of Millish, before launching into yet another cluster of impossibly rich and complex tunes. This blend of the matter-of-fact and the pyrotechnic delightfully informs an evening spent with this local band.

Millish has been playing for just two years, mining a vein of Irish music, melting it down, and adding cultures with the zeal of a slightly deranged chef - somehow, in these musicians' capable hands, a classic Irish jig gets paired with music of Scotland, Brittany, Bulgaria, and Spain, as well as good old American rock 'n' roll. Purists, please stay home with your record collections; cultural amalgamation is a hard job, but someone's got to do it.

I first saw the band the winter before last at Conor O'Neill's pub on Main Street. A recent ice storm kept percussionist Glenn Bering from attending, but the remaining three - Duncan (on uilleann pipes, bodhran, and a variety of whistles), Saline-bred fiddle whiz Jeremy Kittel, and guitarist Jesse Mason - whipped the corned-beef-and-cabbage-munching crowd to a Celtic frenzy.

I caught them again last December at the Ark. Kittel was off to college, ably replaced by fellow Salinian Brad Phillips, another fiddle-prodigy type with a friendly smile and confident chops. They delivered a solid, fun-spirited, beautifully prepared set of tunes filled with unexpected twists and turns. As with most Irish bands, the music is often played in sets, with one weaving into the next - except with Millish there's little doubt as to where one tune ends and the next begins. The lovely "Dinner at the Duncans" morphed into a spooky and nameless Bulgarian hymn ("We don't know the name of it because it was written in Bulgarian") filled with ghostly guitar effects. One tune even turns into Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven." At first it's a joke, but one the band quickly takes very seriously, churning out quite an impressive version, complete with Bering's inventive drum solo. What a pretty song.

Ghostly guitar effects? Drum solos? "Stairway to Heaven"? It does bear mentioning that except for Bering, long a fixture in Ann Arbor's music scene, Millish is indeed a youthful band. Mason's twenty one; Duncan and Phillips are certifiable teenagers. But just when you start nodding indulgently, Millish one-two-punches you with Dave Brubeck's "Blue Rondo a la Turk," Celtic style.

My notes, scrawled in the dark and sometimes illegible, describe something Millish does as sounding like "a Lilliputian traffic jam." I can't quite remember what it was, but I think I'll be going back to find out.

- Ann Arbor Observer


Discography

EP (2003)
Millish (2005)

Photos

Feeling a bit camera shy

Bio

Frank Zappa once stated, "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." Rather than attempt to describe Millish's music, it would be more worthwhile to cite the musical ingredients that create their music.

Millish is comprised of State Champion bluegrass fiddler Brad Phillips, National Award-winning jazz percussionist Mike Shimmin, World Champion Uilleann piper Tyler Duncan, and blazingly inventive acoustic guitarist Jesse Lee Mason, all of whom share an active interest in jazz. Never forcing a preconcieved notion of "fusion," the band has let their music coalesce over the past four years, and it's already turning heads worldwide. Their debut album earned them an International Acoustic Music Award - before it was even released.

Millish is united by a single musical goal: to participate in the evolution of modern music. Judging by their accolades, they're well on their way.