Peter Miller (far left) and his band will perform at the Shitty Barn on Aug. 5.
Alvin Miller and Verlie Branstner began dating in the summer of 1942 after Alvin took a job chopping wood for Verlie’s father in rural Minnesota. The couple began writing letters that fall, when Alvin was drafted into the Army to serve in World War II. Deployed to the South West Pacific, he did not return until 1946.
“There are about 350 letters that actually made it to my grandma,” says Peter Miller, the lead singer and principal songwriter for We Are the Willows, the Minneapolis ensemble performing at the Shitty Barn in Spring Green on Aug. 5. “He most likely wrote many more that never made it to her.”
For the most part, only Alvin’s letters survived. Miller inherited them eight years ago, and they have since served as inspiration for his orchestral folk rock band’s 2014 album Picture (Portrait).
Miller says his grandfather was not able to disclose much about what was happening in his life. Army censors combed through each letter, editing and sometimes rejecting them.
Instead, Alvin reminisced about old times. “He lived in the past,” says Miller. “He said that he preferred to think of the past because the present was so difficult and the future was so uncertain.”
Decades later, Miller lived with his grandparents while attending Bethel University in Saint Paul, Minn., paying rent by helping out around the house.
“I had heard [my grandmother] talk about the letters,” Miller says. “She spoke of them in the way that a person might speak about someone they once knew, with a fondness that only love can foster and with knowledge of time passed.”
Miller says his grandmother would sometimes ask what he wished to inherit from her. His answer was always the same: “The letters.”
When Miller graduated in 2007, Alvin and Verlie granted his wish. Over the next seven years, between his jobs, tours and recordings, Miller read all the letters, seeing his grandfather in a new light. “I saw a man in a moment in time, with his future floating above him.”
Alvin died in 2012, survived by a large family and his wife of 66 years. “As my grandpa’s health deteriorated, I saw writing about his story as a way to know him more,” Miller says. “To honor him and to make sense of the inevitability of death.”
Picture (Portrait) explores themes of family, separation, death and devotion. In the second track, “Dear Ms. Branstner,” the narrator talks about the possibility of his own passing, warning that “a 21-gun salute could bring me back to you, in a casket wrapped in a flag.” But the final track, “Wondering Out of My Head,” is hopeful, as the narrator speaks of buying a home, having children and growing old together. No spoiler alert necessary — they do become Peter Miller’s grandparents, after all.
Miller says his grandmother was one of the first people to hear the record. “I went to her house for lunch, and we listened to it together. She said I captured my grandpa’s voice and she felt like she had gone back in time.”
