Roger Miller's debut album Crayons is an honest, heartfelt soul search by a young man living for God. It also shows that independent artists can, with time, produce music that is comparable in scope and quality to some of the most popular music of our time, while maintaining far superior moral integrity.

Crayons is an acoustic effort, primarily featuring guitar and vocals with backing instrumentation. The songs contain a certain sort of intimacy that has been lost in much of the overproduced music our popular culture is drenched in. In "10,000 years," Miller re-thinks the Christian classic "Amazing Grace" with a new chorus, rhythm, and soft synth leads. By following the same strategy throughout the album, Miller manages to keep simple, traditional music fresh enough to enjoy time and again. Through its style, Crayons allows the listener to focus on the message at hand, one that exemplifies the struggles and triumphs we all experience in our spiritual journeys.

Miller says that Crayons follows his spiritual walk fairly closely, and that a lot of his songs focus on his own spiritual struggles. The laid-back nature of the music serves itself well to the message Miller tries to convey—the hope that arises from our dark situations in life. "In the darkness of seeing what our hearts are capable of," Miller says, "we can see that there is hope because God can recreate us into his own image and not our own image."

In "Tired of Breathing," Miller sings, "Put my past failings behind me /Assailing the evil one/Let your death pull me out into something new."

Crayons has been the brainchild of Miller for more than five years, as the recording process—done mostly by him—has taken most of that time to complete. He was his own boss during the effort, writing the songs and overseeing every aspect of the project.

Miller is currently a junior studying biology at Southern Adventist University. He says that, while he hopes his music turns into a career for him, he wants to have something viable to fall back on and use as a platform to make his music from. He understands that in order to be a professional musician, he would have to tour extensively, something he is not quite prepared to do because of school. So far, he has been tentative about local shows, saying that he needs more collaborative musicians for a show to match the quality of his album. However, he has performed on Southern's campus and is interested in having a church show or two in the next year.

While he doesn't want his hard work to go to waste, Miller is more focused on the message than the money. "The money is important, but more importantly than people buying it is that their money goes somewhere important to help people, and they get the music as a benefit."

You can listen to and purchase Roger Miller's music at http://www.rogermillersmusic.com