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THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2013
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
LOCAL MUSIC
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY GEORGE MULLINE
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY GEORGE MULLINI
Senior Taryn Miller has gained local popularity through the campus radio station. Miller is a member of four bands, but experienced recent fame through her solo project, Your Friend.
Student tops radio charts two consecutive weeks
DYLAN LYSEN
dlysen@kansan.com
On a cold night in early November, local musician Taryn Miller sat on her back porch in North Lawrence and talked about her life for almost 20 minutes. Before she ever mentioned the musical project that has found her some local fame, she continued a conversation like a long-lost friend who you haven't spoken to in awhile.
"Were not roiling are we?
"Yeah, I've been recording everything."
"We're not rolling are we?"
"Oh." Miller said and then laughed. "Dammit."
laughed. Dammit.
That's Taryn Miller: a 22-year-old University student with the stage name Your Friend. She's quick to befriend someone before she shyly talks about the work she's put in that found her as the most played musician on KJHK's music charts for two straight weeks. Instead she wants to talk about other bands she likes, or poets she's read, or how the friends she makes music with are her real inspiration.
But right now Miller is the top played musician on the University's campus radio KJHK. The station's music director Jake Waters said he hasn't seen a local artist at the top of the charts since he started working at the campus radio station in 2011.
Miller said that Waters sent her a text message to tell her that she hit No. 1. She didn't really understand it, because she wasn't sure how the station determined which song was the top track. Waters said the charts list the most played song for the week, and she is played on the station about 15-25 times a week. She was No. 1 on the Oct. 29 and the Nov. 5 charts at the station.
"That's huge to me." Miller said. "I don't know how to feel about it, because I feel really humbled that they would play it as often as they do. But there's so much music out there that's coming out left and
right. For it to take up airtime is kind of crazy."
Miller's relationship with the station actually began more than a year ago when she played a live set at the station last fall. Back then she still stylized her stage name as Y[our] Fri[end]. She dropped the brackets a few months ago, but that hasn't stopped people from being confused by her name.
"I didn't even think about how much is in that, like the ideas about being someone's friend." Miller said of the clever stage name she stumbled upon. "It does piss people off, though. People will tell their friends that they are going to see Your Friend, and they will say 'Who's my friend?'"
Miller's stage name couldn't be
more appropriate, though, because she can't stop finding herself creating music with her friends. She began playing guitar when she was 14, has been writing music since she was a freshman in high school, and now she plays multiple instruments in
four musical projects. She performs constantly. Last week she played Thursday night, Friday night and then again on Sunday night. She plays with one of her bands Oils tonight at the Jazzhaus.
"I'm in CS Luxem, Oils, my project, and I'm playing drums in another band now called Hush Machine," Miller said.
her own music for Your Friend.
That's Taryn Miller: a busy musician that wrote and recorded her EP "Jekyll/Hyde" in her North Lawrence home and self released the record on Aug. 17. She's a musical handyman playing bass in her roommates' alternative band Oils, guitar and vocals in smooth rock band CS Luxem, drums in "shimmer guitar" project Hush Machine and on top of that she writes
But her personal project may be the hardest to explain musically. She uses six guitar pedals to make certains sounds to create music that may only be identified as "ambient." Miller's roommate and bandmate Andrew Frederick had to take a few seconds to think before he could come up with the right words.
"She has a great ability to create a space with her voice and with her melodies."
"It's sort of atmospheric, in that her voice creates the atmosphere," Frederick said. "She has a great ability to create a space with her voice and with her melodies."
So far, it doesn't matter how you describe her music because people are going to listen regardless. Miller hasn't even performed outside of the state yet but she said she's been
ANDREW FREDERICK Bandmate and roommate
hearing from fans across the country and even in the UK.
Once she graduates in December she hopes to get out of Kansas and on the road, but those plans
aren't cemented yet. She still has a full-time job at the local record store Love Garden and wants to keep living in Lawrence.
Miller has been getting bands from the area asking for her to help them get shows, or for her to come play with them. As her popularity increases, she will still act as the same old Taryn Miller, a local musician who grew up in Winfield, Kan., and likes to create sounds with her friends.
"I've been really trying to respond to everybody", Miller said. "I don't want that to happen, where I'm ignoring people."
That's Taryn Miller; your friend
Edited by Ashleigh Tidwell
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