The Hours Are Long, But The Pay Is Low by Rob Miller

Published by: University of Illinois Press

Release date: December 2025

Rob Miller, co-founder of Chicago-based indie label Bloodshot, has written a memoir/history that highlights the importance of independence and community both in music and in the wider culture.

In 1993, Miller co-founded Bloodshot Records to release “music that lurked between genres and under the radar”: in particular, the style that became known as “insurgent country”. He was with the label for the next 28 years. This story tells the “how” and “why”.

Many music lovers of a certain generation will tell their musical biography like this: they grew up obsessed with music. Then punk came along, and they became obsessed with a different type of music.

That didn’t happen for Rob Miller. He grew up uninterested in popular music because the only sounds available were by the rock dinosaurs that his schoolmates listened to. In a conformist world, he was an outsider and bullied. Then he discovered punk and found liberation and a lasting love for music. Punk gave him a community, and it gave him an ethos, both of which would be vital elements of the Bloodshot story.

Some years and musical adventures later, Miller had moved from Detroit to Chicago. And he was looking on with dismay as the music business declared his adopted hometown to be the next big thing. He’d observed the feeding frenzy around grunge and the way that “alternative turned into Alternative” and knew it didn’t mean that “we” had won. It meant the opposite.

Bloodshot happened because Miller and his friends believed that the community should not be turned into a commodity. Fortunately, the local music scene they were drawn to was, as yet, unnoticed by the music business. Bands were creating raw, roots-oriented music that blurred the lines between country, rock and punk. He and his friends decided this scene needed documentation. In the DIY spirit of punk, they wrote down some names on a bar napkin and then went off to contact the bands. Bloodshot was born.

That first compilation LP was followed by another. (Disclaimer: Hell-Bent: Insurgent Country Volume 2 is still one of my favourite records.) Then they started developing a roster of acts, simply because they were fans: the Old 97’s, the Waco Brothers, Neko Case… They took South by Southwest by storm, got major media coverage and continued to resist being the Next Big Thing.

Unlike Alan McGee’s How To Run An Indie Label, there are few tales of excess. The two authors are very different personalities, and the stories of their record companies reflect that. But this book might have had the same title, because there are lessons here about how to run an indie label which would work whichever side of the Atlantic you’re on. The Bloodshot story is, until you get to the end, exemplary: success on their own terms and a refusal to conform.

Miller founded Bloodshot with two friends: one left early on, while the other business partner was unexpectedly the cause of the label’s downfall and eventual sale in 2021. Miller doesn’t go into detail about the situation, which must have been painful. He focuses instead on what he has learnt from running the label and the ideals that he still believes in, like locality and authenticity.

The book is insightful, idealistic and intelligent, and is written with love and humour. Whether or not you’re a fan of Bloodshot’s type of music, there’s a lot to like here for anyone who appreciates individuality, independence and non-corporate culture.

And as a bonus, there’s so much love for music that Miller has created a wide-ranging playlist which includes many of the songs mentioned in the book. There’s a very good argument that all music books should have one.

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The Hours Are Long, But The Pay Is Low is available at all good book stores.

Words by Penny Kiley. You can read her Louder Than War reviews at her author profile, and her archive music journalism on Substack.