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Tor Miller Band
08/30/2011 - By Teja Anderson
Photo: Linda Rowe (lindarowephotography)
Tor Miller - Loving the Lyrics of Life
As I drive up to the main house of the Miller farm in Colts Neck, Tor Miller ambles out to meet me, barefoot and slightly disheveled, as if he might have just rolled out of bed for our morning interview. Dressed in a t-shirt and plaid shorts and armed with a volleyball that never leaves his hands during our time together, Tor seems like any typical seventeen year-old boy in the middle of summer break; yet he already has a career in music as the charismatic front man and namesake of the popular alternative indie rock group, The Tor Miller Band.
Tor is a triple threat - composer, keyboard player and lead singer. Add to that his lanky but fit 6’2” frame and handsome face with deep brown eyes under a mop of shiny dark hair, complete with a dazzling smile (which he got from his mom), and you have a definite formula for heart throb status. Currently backing Tor up are the equally talented and good looking band members Mike Morrongiello (bass), Ian Bramberger (guitar), Joe Locascio (drums) and Joseph DiSalvo (guitar).
Tor’s talent is coupled with a casual charm that is inexplicably void of ego.As he enters his senior year of high school, he is not a hundred percent sure what career path he will follow. Although his parents Katarina and Robert (Bob) Miller are both accomplished lawyers, they have never pressured Tor to be anything but happy and creative. For now, living his talent as a musician, song-writer and singer, he seems both relaxed and confident as he opens up to Living In Colts Neck.
LICN: “Tor” is an unusual name.Where did it come from?
TM: Well, my mom is from Sweden and my dad wanted me to have a Swedish name. It was between “Tor” and “Maximus,” and if was a girl I was going to be named “Brooklyn,” which isn’t Swedish, it’s just irregular, which is what my parents wanted - a cool name.
LICN: You have two older brothers. Did they get cool names, too?
TM: Nope. Jon and Robby; we have the same father but different moms.
LICN: How did your mother end up here from Sweden?
TM: She came here as an exchange student her senior year of high school and then she came to NYU for the masters program.
LICN: You are about to start your senior year of high school as well?
TM: Yes, I go to Ranney in Tinton Falls. I would have liked to have gone to Colts Neck High School as it is only a second down the road.
LICN: How long have you lived in Colts Neck?
TM: I moved to New Jersey six years ago from New York. I really grew up in Manhattan and Brooklyn. I went to City & Country School there. Moving here was a totally different experience, almost shocking at first.
LICN: Why did your family decide to uproot and move to the country?
TM: My parents were looking for a farm because my mom’s been riding horses for her whole life. She had been commuting to a farm in Freehold called Burlington Farms for a long time and she bought a couple horses and needed a barn. So we found this place because Colts Neck is such a great place to have a horse farm and she could have as many as she wanted. With boarders we now have about 13 or 14 horses on the property.
LICN: Do you ride?
TM: No, I don’t. I used to as a little kid. But my mom does mostly dressage, which is a woman’s sport, so as a little kid there was no one to hang with. So I sort of was over the whole horse thing pretty early. We would come out here a couple days a week, though, so I got used to New Jersey and I thought it was pretty cool here. I admire the horses from afar and enjoy the space and the land, but mostly I am just into my music thing.
LICN: So how did your interest in music start?
TM: I started off taking piano lessons on and off as a little kid. When I was younger I really didn’t like it at all; I wouldn’t show up to lessons. In the city it was easy; I would say I was going to go but I would just go do something else that I really did enjoy. But when we came out to New Jersey my mom signed me up for some piano lessons. I was dreading it and really didn’t want to do it at all. But I had this teacher, Anthony Rufo - he is mostly guitar but he plays piano - and he was a lot of fun. He told a lot of jokes and we just had a really good time and at the same time I was learning about piano and chords and it was cool. I had fun learning songs that I liked; he would listen to them and then write them out for me to learn. Then one day I was showing him a track and I was singing along to it and he told me for the next lesson I should learn a song and sing over it. I did that and it was different, and the next lesson after that was to write a song and sing and play it.
LICN: How old were you then when you composed your first song?
TM: I was 10 or 11. That’s when I started writing music and I’ve been writing songs ever since.
LICN: What was it like when you arrived in school here as the “new kid”?
TM: It wasn’t really a problem because I had been the “new kid” four or five times before in different schools. I went to Rumson Country Day for 7th and 8th grade and that was a little difficult because the kids were totally different from what I had known in the city, just because it wasn’t very diverse. I wasn’t used to everyone being so much alike. City and Country was an art school, it really focused on the arts so I was used to having two hour painting and drawing and woodshop classes and it was a much looser structure for learning, we called our teachers by their first names… Here it was really different. I never had to wear a uniform before and address my teachers by their last names and have such strict courses where everything was set out for you.
LICN: How did you adjust?
TM: It was difficult. My first two years I didn’t really do that well; I had like Cs and Bs. I didn’t really enjoy school or New Jersey that much. But then I came to Ranney and I met more people, and grew into myself a little bit - grew more confident about meeting people. It was totally different and I made a lot of friends and had a lot more fun. The music thing has definitely helped because I have a band and I can always go out and play and be doing stuff.
LICN: You can’t be shy when you are on stage…
TM: No, not at all, which is great because I think that is really where I have the most fun is when I am on the stage. Interacting with an audience is such a great feeling.
LICN: Do you feel a lot of pressure since the band is named after you?
TM: Not really because actually we are going through a process of changing the name. The name Tor Miller Band was always something that was supposed to be temporary. In the beginning I was playing solo shows and then I started playing with the band and we played a couple shows at The Stone Pony and they already knew me there as “Tor Miller” so they just called us The Tor Miller Band.
LICN: What are some of the names you are thinking about changing to?
TM: I think we are going to go with “Suburbia” as the band name, which is appropriate. It’s been a difficult process to figure out the name for the past year and a half...never being happy with some of the names or once we find a name we all like that’s already been taken by some huge band somewhere else. “Suburbia,” surprisingly, hasn’t been taken yet by any big bands.
LICN: So will “Suburbia” be releasing an album any time soon?
TM: We are in the process of releasing an EP. We have finished all the recording and we are just waiting for it to be mixed. We have called an artist to do the cover artwork. Hopefully it will be ready in the next couple weeks because we have a couple shows lined up. It would be great to be able to sell it at them. There are four songs on it and we will probably sell it for five dollars.
LICN: These are all original songs?
TM: Yes, I wrote them all. Both the music and the lyrics. I think that is really what I enjoy most, I really like writing songs. It’s labor, but labor I love.
LICN: Are you open to feedback from your band members?
TM: Definitely, definitely! Because it’s important. I try not to get too attached to something because if another guy in the band has a problem with it, or a couple of them do, like if a song looses momentum or something, then they are probably right and I will go back and revise it. I am kind of stubborn about things that I am passionate about, like my music, and I tend to always think I’m right from the get go. But, I’m always in the process of rewriting and rewriting songs just because they get better and better as you do that.
LICN: Whose music do you like? Who has influenced you over the years?
TM: It’s funny; when I was commuting back to the city for school when we first moved here to New Jersey my mother gave me the double set CD of David Bowie: Greatest Hits and I listened to that on repeat every day up and back for months. That’s when I really started to get into music and I think it was because of David Bowie that I really started thinking that music and writing music was something that I wanted to do. So overall he had the biggest influence on me. When I first started writing songs seven years ago the lyrics would be about girls and the love that I never had but I would write as if I had experienced it. But over the last couple of months as I’ve been writing and writing and the lyrics have become really important to me. I write about things that I am really scared about, things that I am concerned about, what is really important in life. It’s almost like a therapy for me; it’s nice, like a release. I can’t listen to songs that have atrocious lyrics anymore. Before I wasn’t that concerned about the lyrics as long as they were catchy little things but now lyrics are extremely important to me so I listen to Bob Dylan - all his songs. I just love his lyrics!
LICN: Do you only perform original songs?
TM: No, no.We cover lots of other bands, mostly songs that we all like...a great California band called Delta Spirit, we do some Simon and Garfunkel - which is cool because Paul Simon is an amazing writer.
LICN: Do you play requests?
TM: Yes, if we play a bar. But I usually limit it to an artist and not a particular song. That’s why I really don’t love playing bars as much because you are supposed to play covers the whole time; no one wants to hear your originals.
LICN: Do you have a band manager?
TM: No, I book all the shows; with the help of friends and family, of course. It’s difficult because you usually don’t hear back frompeople. But we’ve played a couple shows this summer in the city and we have a bunch more lined up. We played the Knitting Factory, we played Canal, in July we played S.O.B.’s. It’s harder to find venues in New Jersey somehow as opposed to a bar somewhere where people won’t really be listening to you. But there is The Stone Pony and the Wonder Bar and all these great places. New Jersey has always been really supportive of us. It’s always great to tag on to some artist and then we can open for them. In April we got to perform at “Bamboozle Concert” at the Meadowlands and I think it served as a milestone and was a real growing experience for all of us. It showed what hard work could get us. I really loved every minute of it, and I felt I could get used to playing festivals and getting that huge positive response from the audience.
LICN: Do you have any groupies yet?
TM: Actually, the other day I got followed by a couple girls which was an…awkward experience. But it was cool. [Laughs] I was at the pharmacy place in that downtown Colts Neck area and I walked in and these girls started whispering to each other. I assume they go to Colts Neck because we played a show at the high school once.
LICN: Wait a minute, are you sure they weren’t just thinking “Oooh, there’s a cute guy”?
TM: No, because they drove by me as I was pulling out of the parking lot with my ice tea and one of the girls yelled out “Tor Miller” and then I noticed they were following me. It was weird and I didn’t know how to react.
LICN: I’m sure all of you guys will be getting big fan followings soon.Are you guys close?
TM: Yeah, we are all really good friends. I know the three who go or went to Ranney, Mike, Ian and Joseph, better than the drummer, Joe, who goes to Colts Neck. We all just got together in Avalon at the rhythm guitarist’s beach house on like a band retreat, hanging out, and had a lot of fun. We all really get along well and I think that will continue as we all move ahead with our educations and careers and such.
LICN: Have you started looking at colleges yet? Does being in a local band effect your search?
TM: Yeah, I am on the college search; my dad gets after me all the time. I’m looking at NYU as my topschool. I would like to be in the city period just so I can keep playing shows and doing something outside of school. I think I might want to go to Tisch and do the Clive Davis program for performance. I have a friend going there next year and he is pretty psyched. The band is definitely a factor but I am not going to base my whole decision on where to go just so that the band can stay together. Each of the members needs to make their own decisions about their lives and where to go to school. Actually, I didn’t need to say anything because as it turns out we are all staying pretty local; the bass player just got into the five year masters program at Drexel (University in Philadelphia), which is great, and the lead guitarist goes to Rutgers already.
LICN: How often and where do you get together to practice?
TM: It depends on the week but probably 3-4 times a week. Here, in our basement.
LICN: Any complaints from the neighbors?
TM: Not now that we are in the basement but we used to play in the barn over there where we store the hay and stuff. We got a noise complaint and the cops came and everything. But we moved into the basement which isn’t as pretty but does the job.
LICN: It’s too bad you can’t sound proof the barn; it is so beautiful out here…
TM: I know. This summer we want to make videos while doing our songs in acoustic and use different scenic places like the barn and at the beach.We have live performances on YouTube but we would like to do something more focused for our acoustic sets and film it and I think people would love it because it’s pretty and good music. You need to have your stuff all over the internet nowadays. (We are joined briefly by Tor’s father Bob who has just finished his morning laps in the pool and is off to Lithuania to join the Secretary of State for a meeting of theWorld Movement for Democracy which he is involved with through the Hurford Foundation. Tor, it turns out, has joined him on several occasions and has been all over the world, from Egypt to South Africa.)
LICN: What was Egypt like? When were you there?
TM: It was crazy, but a lot of fun. I guess it was about two years ago. I didn’t realize how dirty the Nile river was, didn’t realize how over-populated the streets and everything was over there. I had no impression before I went other than the pyramids. I didn’t know that everywhere you went you would get attacked by vendors and beggars. But it was a great learning experience learning about a totally different culture. Whenever I am traveling with my dad we go to the underprivileged areas and we get a guided tour to learn what is really going on for the people. My favorite trip so far was to South Africa. We went to a school and it was made out of dumpsters, actual dumpsters, and we sat in on a class and they were dancing and singing and really happy kids which was astonishing considering what they didn’t have.
LICN: It sounds like your father is attempting to instill some humanitarian values in you.
TM: When you first meet my dad he tries to be really funny and sarcastic. But he is really an understanding guy and is easy to talk to once you get to know him and he really cares for the people he knows and cares about the people who are struggling in the world.
LICN: I know that you have already played in several benefit concerts; are there any charities that you champion in particular?
TM: It’s always great to help people.We’ve played for RaiseYourVoice for 180, Habitat for Humanity, a bunch of others. Theoretically if I ever become famous I would love to give back and help more. Even now I love doing the charity things and feeling like I made some sort of difference.
LICN: Is your goal to become famous?
TM: I feel like the goal is have as many people like my music as I can get. The goal is to get as many people to enjoy the songs as much as I do. I don’t think I am trying to be some huge, huge musician; that’s not what I need to get high. I am just a kid who likes writing songs and hopefully people like them and if not I will keep writing them anyway.
LICN: Well we wish you the best of luck and look forward to great things for you and “Suburbia”!
Favorite Restaurant:
Kanji in Shrewsbury
Favorite Music:
David Bowie and Delta Spirit
Favorite Movie:
“Seven”
Pet Peeve:
“People who scream out “Free Bird” during one of our performances.”
Three People You’d Like to Have Dinner With: Ray Charles, the lead singer for the “Flaming Lips” and my Mom’s father who died before I got a chance to meet him.
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