continued from page 22
Fri Nov 30 7:30pm
WITH
Sabbath, Dio
Tribute
LIGHTS OUT CHICAGO
Fri Dec 7
Sat Dec 1
8pm
Original Pop Rock
1965 to Present
NEW COLONY SIX
Sat Dec 8
8pm
go home again. But Miller was willing to
give it a good old college try. The per-
former has a few applicable seasonal theo-
ries, as well. “Doesn’t Christmas come
with some level of anti-climax?” he won-
ders, rhetorically.
“There’s a moment on Christmas day
when the Christmas morning is over, all
the presents are unwrapped, you’ve
scoured the house for any that might have
been left behind, and you’ve realized that
that was it, you’re not going to get any-
thing else. So you catalog what you’ve got,
and it’s just...just underwhelming. It’s
inevitably underwhelming. And I remem-
ber as a kid really hating getting clothes —
maybe we all do. But even as an adult, it’s
tricky. Presents are the physical manifesta-
tion of other people’s appreciation of you,
and when they don’t give you the
dopamine that you feel like you deserve,
and it came with a cassette of CB radio
songs, songs all about the Citizens’ Band. I
wonder what year the single “Convoy”
came out? ’75 or ’76? Because it probably
would have been that year. But the combi-
nation of that cassette deck, and then real-
izing I could record on it? That just blew my
mind; it was so awesome.”
Miller has a few surreal holiday memo-
ries, to boot. His first official Elektra solo
set from 2002 was aptly dubbed The
Instigator, and truth be told, he’s always
been one. Just like Woody Woodpecker. It
wasn’t over a river or through any woods,
he clarifies. “But every year we used to go
to my favorite grandmother’s house. And I
remember one year we were leaving her
house, and the car had a cassette deck, and
I had an AC/DC cassette. So I put on the
song “Highway to Hell,” and my dad said,
‘This is inappropriate! How could we lis-
ten to this on Christmas Eve?’ And I said,
‘Uh, I dunno, dad. Because it rocks?’ And
my brother and sister and even my mom
sort of vetoed him, so we cranked up
“Highway to Hell,” driving from my
grandmother’s house back to our house on
8pm
TWO NIGHTS!
Holiday Favorites
and Classic Covers
DENNIS O'BRIEN BAND
HO-HO-HOliday
SHOW
Mon Dec 31
7:30pm
See pheasantrun.com for
NYE Overnight and Dinner
and Show packages
Rockabilly & British Invasion
Rock N' Roll Tribute
from Elvis to The Beatles
photo by Ebru Yildiz
THE NEVERLY BROTHERS
Sat Jan 5
8pm
Blues Rock
REVEREND RAVEN
AND THE CHAIN
Sun Jan 6
3pm
Elvis Tribute
RICK ELVIS SAUCEDO
Coming to Mainstage Theater at Pheasant Run Resort
GRAVITY : THE JOHN MAYER EXPERIENCE
BIG BAND BABY STONE TEMPLE PILOTS SHOW PLUS CHAINED
BRIT BEAT – BEATLES TRIBUTE
Ticket Box Office (224) 944-2591 • www.MainstageTix.com
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Sigman Brothers
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24 illinoisentertainer.com december 2018
then you feel unloved. And that’s just such
a dangerous thing. But I feel pretty lucky. I
think my kids have always enjoyed their
Christmases.”
As a grown-up, Christmas morning
doesn’t work the same as it did in child-
hood, dad sighs. Racing downstairs as
soon as the 6 a.m. alarm goes off to tear
open all the gifts by 6:05? That doesn’t fly
with the missus, who insists on a more
leisurely, sleeping-in approach. After
awakening, next comes a fresh pot of cof-
fee, while the kids squirm in their seats at
the breakfast table. “That 6 a.m. thing?
Erica will not do it,” he says. “She’ll make
the kids wait for two hours. She’ll open a
tube of cinnamon rolls, bake the cinnamon
rolls, eat the cinnamon rolls, and then we’ll
have the official family breakfast. And then
you get to open the presents — it’s ritual-
ized, sure, but it drags it out, so at least you
can milk a couple of extra hours out of the
gift-opening tradition. Because otherwise,
it’d be over in five minutes. So my kids
complain about it, but I think they actually
like it.”
What’s the coolest Red Ryder BB Gun-
level Christmas gift Miller ever received?
Easy, he says. “When I was five or six years
old, I couldn’t believe how cool this gift
was that I got. It was a big rectangular cas-
sette player that had a handle on one end,
Christmas Eve. And it felt like the perfect
kind of inappropriate. And I feel like ever
since then, my family holidays–whether
it’s with my parents or now with my own
kids–have been strongly characterized by a
refusal to conform to the politeness that
seems to be the norm on family holidays.
So the conversation that we’ll have over
dinner will be the most inappropriate, dis-
gusting conversation, ever. Last night, for
Max’s birthday, I was explaining to him
how I failed to cut his umbilical cord when
he first came out, so it was this half-cut,
slippery umbilical cord, covered in blood,
spouting blood and placenta everywhere.
And I’m telling him this as we’re enjoying
our nice birthday dinner. So AC/DC and
“Highway to Hell” set a tone that I’ve been
keeping up ever since. For 40 years.”
Fortunately, you don’t have to be kith
and kin to get a taste of how this cynical
fellow’s twisted mind works. It’s all there
to enjoy in No More Poems!, illustrated by
Dan Santat and due out March 5. And yes,
the book recalls the ghoulish humor of
Charles Addams and the great Edward
Gorey. But his publishers, Little Brown, are
seeing this freshly minted author as a dark-
er version of Shel Silverstein, he believes.
Even so, there was some verse that they
felt was simply too outre for children, he
-continues on page 45