John R. Miller’s The Great Unknowing glows in the margins

The Great Unknowing continues that pattern: a nonchalant record built on steadiness, clarity, and a lived‑in humility that comes with years on the road and steeping himself in a tradition baked into every track. Recorded at the legendary Church Studio in Tulsa, OK, the album lives up to the rock history echoing throughout the famed recording studio. There’s a gentleness to The Great Unknowing that makes it almost too easy to overlook. It doesn’t demand attention; it rewards it. You can let it play for an hour and feel like you’ve been sitting on a porch somewhere, watching the day pass without urgency. Like Miller sings on “Day Drinking”, “somethin’ for now, somethin’ for later on…if it’s one, it may as well be two.” “Don’t bet on me / but don’t bet against me / I’m a wandering soul by divine decree,” he sings, and many of these songs trace his life on the road. On “Looking for a Place to Die”, he taps into the working‑man’s spirit of folk tradition, painting a bleak vignette of landscapes of people stuck in the pseudo‑stability of brick‑and‑mortar jobs in a surveillance state where “the market state defines your worth by what you got.” His years touring and returning to these plac...