Perhaps the most intriguing thing about Allan Craig Miller’s worldwide release of Between Saturday and Sunday is that it’s a worldwide release. Miller, a Huntington native, is just about as American as you can get. Heck, more than that, he’s about as Indiana as you can get. But now, thanks to the miracle of the internet, it’s easy for a guy like Miller to introduce his music to the entire world, and the world is taking notice. He’s already had a few songs, both solo efforts and with his former partner Hubie Ashcraft, that have scored on international indie country charts, and with this latest EP, he’s serving up another helping of homemade country for his planetary audience.
Between Saturday and Sunday is, like a pop country album should be, concerned mostly with the trials and triumphs of the rural working man. There’s the wish of the title track, in which Miller lays out his need for another 24 hours to be wedged in between the 40-hour work weeks on either side of the weekend. Presumably he needs that extra day to work on solving the problem presented in the EP’s opening track, “Beer Don’t Drink Itself.” All of the drinking, pickup-truck driving and lovin’ takes place, of course, in the idyllic rural landscape as presented in “Barbed Wire,” “Cool with That” and “Trade a Mile.” And if these songs map out the stuff of Miller’s everyman’s days off, “That’s What Makes a Man” presents his values (he needs “a fight to fight, a battle to win”).
Musically, the songs are all radio-friendly mid-tempo pop country tunes built on the back of a bouncy, reverb-heavy guitar. It’s conservative stuff, sure, but it’s the musical picture of traditional-but-fun-loving America that country fans around the world love to listen to.