Meet The Counselors
Rhett
Miller
Rhett Miller is a revered singer-songwriter known for his more than three decades fronting the popular rock band Old 97’s who were honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award during the 2025 Americana Awards at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium. After two independent releases, Miller and the 97’s signed to Elektra Records and released the critically acclaimed Too Far to Care. Their 13th studio album American Primitive was released on ATO Records in the spring of 2024. Between projects with the Old 97’s Miller has released eight solo albums, most recently 2025’s A lifetime of riding by night.
In addition to his songwriting, Miller has branched out to write short stories, essays and articles that have been featured in Rolling Stone, Bookforum, Sports Illustrated, McSweeny’s, The Atlantic and Salon. He has also published two children’s books via Little Brown Young Readers.
Rhett’s podcast, Wheels Off: Conversations about Creativity, which recently passed 200 episodes, features well-known guests from all areas of the arts. Rhett has appeared in films, most recently Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, in which he performs a song he cowrote with director James Gunn. His songs have been used in countless movies, television shows and commercials.
Rhett teaches songwriting at The New School in Manhattan, conducts an annual Songwriting Is Magic retreat in the Catskills, and has led workshops elsewhere, notably at the Sanibel Island Writers Conference, Chicago’s historic Old Town School Of Folk Music, and at the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University. When not on tour, Rhett Miller resides in New Paltz, New York with his wife Erica and their two children.
He can be followed on Instagram, Facebook and X (@rhettmiller). Information about his solo music projects can be found at www.rhettmiller.com, while information about Old 97’s can be found at www.old97s.com.
Conversations with Rhett & Songwriting is Magic! Guest Artists
Josh Ritter
Josh Ritter is a renowned singer, songwriter, musician, artist and best-selling author. One of today’s most thoughtful and prolific voices, he has released eleven studio albums including 2019’s widely acclaimed ‘Fever Breaks’ of which NPR Music praised, “He remains a hydrant of ideas while embodying an endless capacity for empathy and indignation, often within a single song.”
His twelfth studio album ‘I Believe in You, My Honeydew’ will be out 9/12/25. New songs “You Won’t Dig My Grave” and “Truth is a Dimension (Both Invisible and Blinding)” from the forthcoming record are out now. Two-plus decades into his celebrated career, Ritter has written music that has transcended generations including luminaries such as Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Bob Weir covering his songs.
In addition to his work as a musician, Ritter is also a national best-selling author, having released two novels to date: 2021’s The Great Glorious Goddamn of It All and 2011’s Bright’s Passage. Released to critical attention, Stephen King wrote in The New York Times Book Review that Bright’s Passage “shines with a compressed lyricism that recalls Ray Bradbury in his prime…This is the work of a gifted novelist.”
Amanda Shires
A truly singular creative force, Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Amanda Shires has made an extraordinary career out of restlessly pursuing her deepest instincts and passions. Since getting her start playing fiddle with the legendary Texas Playboys at the young age of 15, the West Texas native has brought her nuanced songwriting and boundless originality to a series of critically acclaimed solo albums, collaborated with the likes of John Prine and Justin Townes Earle, and earned the 2017 Emerging Artist of the Year prize from the Americana Music Association (AMA). Amanda is the founder of The Highwomen - a supergroup she performs in alongside Natalie Hemby, Maren Morris and Brandi Carlile. Shires approaches every undertaking with equal parts precision of craft and unbridled humanity. Her anticipated new album will be released in the fall of 2025.
Amanda has received unanimous praise for her album Take It Like A Man. Written and recorded during lockdown, Take It Like A Man is a fearless song cycle of ruthlessly candid tunes documenting Amanda’s life as a woman during a tumultuous time. Produced by Lawrence Rothman (Angel Olsen, Girl in Red), the album features guest vocals by Maren Morris and Brittney Spencer.
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The New York Times called it “electrifying” adding it “ought to make this wildly underrated country-music Zelig into a household name.” The LA Times noted, “She’s become a coveted presence at the intersection of nervy artistry and activism, folk and country acclaim, rock attitude and Nashville influence.” The music was also featured on many “Best of 2022” lists including NPR, The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, Stereogum, BrooklynVegan and more. Her national U.S. tour in support of the album brought raves from the likes of Variety who included her show at LA’s famed Troubadour in their “50 Best Concerts of 2022” round-up. Her electrifying national TV performances included stops at The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, The Late Late Show with James Corden, Ellen and multiple appearances on CBS Mornings.
Amanda followed Take It Like A Man with Loving You, a collaborative album with the late, pianist and singer Bobbie Nelson. Recorded prior to Nelson’s passing, Loving You is “a reflection on the life and music of Bobbie Nelson,” says Shires. The single, “Summertime,” an emotive and stirring rendition of the Gershwin classic, features a guest appearance from Bobbie’s brother Willie Nelson. The project fulfilled Shires’ mission to pay respect to the only woman she saw working in a band and pursuing a career as a sideman. “I first saw Bobbie playing when I was 16 or so at some festival somewhere in Texas where I grew up,” she explains. “I saw her perform many times over the years and always admired the way she played so effortlessly and with so much strength and confidence. She radiated music. Much of my path seemed possible because I saw a woman working and making a career of music at a young age, and that woman was Bobbie Nelson.”
Growing up in Lubbock, Shires first discovered her expressive musicality at the age of ten, when she learned to play a fiddle that her father purchased at a nearby pawn shop. Within the next few years, she’d begun taking lessons from Frankie McWhorter of the Texas Playboys, a turn of events that soon led to her joining the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame-inducted group. Naming Leonard Cohen among her most enduring inspirations, Shires also started developing her distinct songwriting voice, and at the encouragement of outlaw-country hero Billy Joe Shaver—a fellow Texas native who invited Shires out on tour in her early days—she relocated to Nashville. Her solo albums include 2009’s West Cross Timbers and Sew Your Heart with Wires (a collaboration with alt-country artist Rod Picott). In 2011 she returned with Carrying Lightning.
2013’s Down Fell the Doves landed on Billboard’s Americana/Folk Albums chart, spotlighting the highly sophisticated lyrical chops she honed in part by earning her master’s degree in creative writing from Sewanee: University of the South. As her following flourished, Shires joined forces with multi-Grammy Award-winning producer Dave Cobb for the making My Piece Of Land, a 2016 effort that paved the way for her AMA prize.
Over the next few years, Shires achieved a great number of triumphs, including contributing to John Prine’s final studio album The Tree of Forgiveness and winning a Grammy Award for Best Americana Album for Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit’s The Nashville Sound (a chart-topping 2017 release whose hit single “If We Were Vampires” won the Grammy for Best American Roots Song).
She reunited with Cobb for 2018’s To The Sunset, a wildly unpredictable body of work. Just a year later, she founded The Highwomen, with the shared intention of creating a more inclusive and equitable space in the country world. With the arrival of their 2019 self-titled debut, the band hit #1 on Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart.
Along with scoring a Billboard 200 top 10 hit with The 400 Unit’s Reunions (a 2020 release that graced over a dozen best-of-the-year lists), Shires made waves with her standalone single “The Problem,” a powerfully empathetic song about a woman’s right to choose, a cause that she remains steadfastly and articulately outspoken about.
In 2021, Amanda released the free-spirited yet emotionally raw holiday album For Christmas, which also garnered rave reviews, and displayed her penchant for creating the kind of unsparingly honest music that ultimately gives rise to connection and compassion.
Aaron Lee Tasjan
Get Over It, Underdog. Aaron Lee Tasjan was experiencing the worst bout of imposter syndrome of his career when he sat down and wrote Todd Snider a vulnerable email asking for advice. Tasjan, despite writing and recording some of the most astute Americana rock songs of the last decade and being nominated for a Grammy, just didn’t see a future for an independent singer, songwriter, and guitarist like himself.
Snider read Tasjan’s email and immediately replied: “I think I have some ideas. I’ll write you back tomorrow.”
The next morning, Tasjan awoke to a signature Todd Snider missive for how to move forward as an artist. It was a novel-length email that read like the battle plans for the Invasion of Normandy. Do this, Snider wrote. Then this. But never that. The specifics don’t matter — besides, that’d be giving away the secret — but Tasjan devoured his mentor’s words and took them to heart.
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He began writing feverishly, unbothered by expectations and immune to any pressure to match his acclaimed albums like In the Blazes, Karma for Cheap, or his most recent, 2024’s Stellar Evolution. When he was through, Tasjan had Get Over It, Underdog, his most inspiring LP to date. Produced by Tasjan and his longtime sound engineer Mark Miller, the album is a celebration of the power of songwriting, the unbreakable bond of friendship, and the determination of the dark horse.
“I went to the ultimate oasis for a singer, songwriter, and troubadour: Todd Snider. And he said, in very Todd fashion, ‘You can find your path forward by going backwards,’” Tasjan says with a laugh. “But he was right. I set aside my ego, played shows solo without my band, and wrote a lot of songs. In that process, I found my confidence again.”
Tragically, however, he lost his mentor. Snider died shortly after Get Over It, Underdog, was finished, leaving a void in the folk-rock scene that will prove nearly impossible to fill. But Tasjan is committed to carrying on Snider’s unbridled spirit and lifting up underdogs everywhere.
Over 11 tracks, Tasjan’s new album kills sacred cows and pokes holes in the dam, while leaning hard into the idea of perseverance. In the talking-blues of “Science Friction,” he tells an abridged origin story of civilization that culminates with humankind editing itself out of its own picture. “Man made machines/putting man out of business,” he sings with a knowing wink. “Lost & Alone,” meanwhile, finds him feeling like a “stranger in this town.” It’s a compact blast of indie-rock with a sing-along chorus that underscores Tasjan’s gift for writing infectious hooks.
In “Twilight Zone Blues,” a shot of gritty T. Rex glam-rock, Tasjan wonders why we’re compelled to press the mysterious button just to find out what happens. “In society today, all this bad shit can become tempting, especially as the situation feels more and more dangerous as time goes on,” he says. “‘Twilight Zone Blues’ builds to that tension of, ‘What happens if I just give in to this or succumb to that?’”
And in the story-song “Ballad of an East Canton Lowlife,” Tasjan returns to his adolescent years in Ohio, where he moved with his family from Orange County, California, at 13. The vitriol he felt in Ohio as an outsider was unavoidable, but he learned to defuse it. “All these folks feel like they have their back up against a wall, cornered by what society is trying to force them to fit into. As a transplant into a town that was being redeveloped, I represented something that they saw as different, and I’d bear the brunt of their anger,” he says. “But then I could turn around and sing them a Johnny Cash or a Charley Pride song and suddenly everybody’s dancing. That was the power of music to me.”
Tasjan took pains to make sure that each song on Get Over It, Underdog was as concise and potent as it could be. Often, he’d run them by Snider for critiques, who shared stories of how the American songwriting treasure John Prine did likewise for him early in his career. The goal in writing was always to find the “emotional rock to stand on” of each song. Once Tasjan had that, he learned from Snider, he had something personal.
“Songs are like mantras — you’ve got to say them every night,” Tasjan recalls Snider challenging him. “So, what’s in there that you’re repeating every night?”
Tasjan found one such mantra in the “The Real,” a song that sums up Get Over It, Underdog. An empowering singalong with a gang vocal refrain and a snaking guitar line, it takes a hard look at all that is authentic in today’s culture, both the good and the bad. “Tell of our true history/violence that we must see,” Tasjan sings. “It’s up to us to heal it/ Sing this, if you feel it!”
It’s as much a song for the artist as it is the listener.
“That’s the point where I start talking to myself in the song and reconnecting with my mission,” Tasjan says. “I want to make songs that help people. I want to be an artist in the service to the community of music fans, but also to anybody that needs to hear these messages. On Get Over It, Underdog, I’m rediscovering something I thought I had lost.”
Tasjan needn’t worry. His mantras are coming through loud and clear