DATE: 12-01-201

By Paul E. Kandarian

He was known to dance on the bar in the '70s when he owned the Met Cafe in downtown Providence. But he sure isn't dancing on the bar at the Hot Club this early October night. Josh Miller, owner of the locally famous waterside club—along with the equally popular, although very different, Trinity Brewhouse and Local 121—won't even stand on a chair.

Other politicians will, taking the chance to stand taller to address the room, which is crowded with seventy-five supporters of Clean Water Action. The group is sponsoring tonight's meeting to drum up election-season support for local politicians — mostly Democrats, like Miller — who are sympathetic to environmental causes.

A state senator since 2006 and a soft-spoken champion of the environment, Miller, fifty-six, won't need the election help. He could, however, use a dram of artificial height -he stands a scant five-foot-five. But he won't take it.

Sheldon Whitehouse will. The former Rhode Island Attorney General and now junior U.S. Senator is well over six feet tall, but when it's his turn to speak and he's offered a chair, he jumps up. He's tall, energized, polished, handsome. The diminutive, bespectacled Miller, who looks uncannily like Robert Carradine's Lewis Skolnick character in Revenge of the Nerds, isn't. Whitehouse talks about the environment but basically gives a campaign speech to much head nodding, smiling and smatterings of appreciative applause.

One by one, politicians speak. Miller waits his turn. He hates public speaking. Now and then he darts off to take care of club business, and is about to go close a refrigerator door when Clean Water Action Executive Director Sheila Dormody—standing on the chair—gently grabs his shoulder to keep him from getting away.

Miller stays, looking at the open door. There's business to be attended to, and he always attends to business.

But now it's his turn. He speaks firmly about the importance of canvassing neighborhoods, getting out to talk to people as he does, finding out what they want. By this time, the crowd's a bit inured to all the political chatter and perhaps emboldened by the flow of beer, and a slow murmur gathers strength, effectively drowning him out.

Speech over, in about 10 percent of the time it took the others. Miller, cranberry juice and soda water in hand, finally turns to close the walk-in door, then makes the rounds, talking to friends and supporters. He's clearly more comfortable one-on-one than speaking to a group.

"He sees through the B.S.," says one of Miller's old friends, Nat Hesse, when I ask what Miller's strength is. "He's taken initiatives most won't, like trying to decriminalize marijuana. You can count on him. He remembers where we're from and the spirit of community. With Josh, it's not 'I'll get there first,' but 'all of us will get there together.'"

As to any ambition to seek higher office, Hesse shrugs and says, "I don't think he aspires to anything else but making Rhode Island a better place."

Miller's quiet political savvy meant a rapid ascension — by 2008, only two years into his Smith Hill career—to the powerful chairmanship of the Senate's committee on corporations, where he is credited with turning its focus to consumer rights protection and job growth for small businesses. His various awards include Environmental Hero of the Year in 2008 (he spearheaded clean diesel legislation, the strongest in the nation) and Restauranteur of the Year in 2000. He was chair of the Senate panel to decriminalize marijuana and is vice chair of the small business task force.

In short, he's a powerful state senator and businessman who is all about making downtown and his state better for those working, living and playing here. He may not be bobbing on any bars these days, but in the delicate dance of politics and business in Rhode Island, the small, shy kid from the East Side has stepped right up.

Miller and I have lunch one day in the quiet dining area near the bar of Local 121, which he opened in 2007 as part of a landmark preservation project led by AS220, which owns the former Dreyfus Hotel in which it resides. It is a dark, woody, gorgeous place that's kept its original stained glass windows. A downtown speakeasy in Prohibition days, it now features upscale cocktails and food that's fresh, local and mostly organic — and, like all the businesses he's conceived, was a hit from the get-go.

Miller looks glum. He's not keen on interviews or talking about himself. But he's always friendly and becomes almost forthcoming—on his own terms. Ask this methodical guy something, and you often wait so long for the answer you think he forgot the question.

He was born and raised in the Wayland Square section of Providence's East Side. His father owned an electrical business. Miller's Electric, and his mother was one of Trinity Repertory Company's first stage managers, imbuing in him a strong work ethic and love of the arts that pervade his life to this day (look around and you'll notice all the local art on the walls at Local 121).

He warms noticeably when talking about his old neighborhood; that microcosm of American life, the neighborhood where everyone knows and watches out for one another, is a key part of who he is.

"I grew up next to Paterson Park, and our corporate name is, in fact, Paterson Park Partners, and that park is where we created family friendships," Miller says. "It was one of those neighborhoods where you'd go to a neighbor's house after school and come back when the sun went down. Parents always knew the kids were at one of those houses."

The family moved a few times, to New York City and Williamstown, Massachusetts, but always came back to the East Side. Miller shows me a path in the woods near hilly River Road where he first tried a plastic toboggan, slammed into a tree, snapped his collarbone, got a concussion and spent three weeks in the hospital.

That sense of adventure wouldn't seem to fit such a serious, studious sort, but then again, this is a kid who at eighteen went to the Amazon with friends.

"Our parents said, 'Sure you can go, but we're not giving you a dime for something as cockamamie as that.'" So Miller did what Miller's always done: worked hard, saved up, got the job done.

"Josh being Josh said, 'I'll get the money,' " says his mother, Dian Reynolds, who lives on Cape Cod now. "And lo and behold, he got it and off he went."

Miller graduated from Hope High School and went to the University of Rhode Island, where he majored in art history. He worked in restaurants, including David's Pot Belly on Hope Street, where Rue de L'Espoir is now.

"It was legendary in the lore of restaurants in Providence," Miller says. "I started washing dishes, worked late nights as a junior and senior. I was slowly brought up through the ranks to grill man."

And that spelled the end of his career as a chef. Nancy, his wife of twenty-one years, jokes, "He's an awful cook."

"David's was famous for stuffing burgers with different cheeses," Miller says, smiling at the memory. "They'd all be arranged for cooking and they all looked alike and I remember cracking them open to see which was which. That was probably my last day on the grill. I was so bad they promoted me to assistant manager in my senior year."

To this day, in any of his businesses, if something needs doing— washing dishes, hauling ice, mixing drinks — he'll do it. Except cooking.

He worked at other places, here and in New York City, where food and politics would mix. While working at Goldberg's NY Pizzeria, he worked on Ed Koch's campaign for Congress. He also worked for George McGovern, says Miller's older brother, Sam, executive director of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

"Josh was a very determined kid," Sam Miller says. "When Josh did something, he would finish it. He wasn't distracted by other things. He likes to work, he'd close up at David's Pot Belly at 2 in the morning, saying 'I'm gonna finish what I do.'" "He was a very serious kid, and incredibly kind," says his mother.

"He was the kind of person who would take in strays. One time he met this girl who was having terrible family problems and had no place to live. Josh asked if she could live with us, and she did, for about a year. He was always doing things like that, asking what he could do for other people."

Miller had three brothers (one is deceased), and all but Josh went to prep school. He preferred public school. He was always working, always in hospitality.

"He just liked to work, he wanted to work and bought that bar right out of high school, practically, and has been in the business ever since," she says.

That bar was across from downtown haunt Leo's, where Miller and some pals were drinking one day.

"We used to go to Leo's quite often, including with Tom Fairchild, a friend from the neighborhood, and we started looking at this dive across the street—the Met Cafe," he says.

"By the time we bought it, I was twenty-one or so, so was Tom, and I think we were the youngest owners of a liquor license in the state. I was still at URI when we did that."

Thus began what turned out to be a lifelong ownership of business and love of music. He got to know local and national notables, like the Fabulous Thunderbirds and Roomful of Blues (the latter played at Miller's wedding), even managing a band, The Mundanes, for a while. He toured with them and the Ramones and Talking Heads. He also interned at WBRU for a spell "until I realized I wasn't comfortable talking into a microphone."

His son, Nicholas, now a sophomore in urban studies at New York University, did a stint as a DJ at Wheeler, and his father notes proudly, "was really good at it."

At Trinity Brewhouse, which he bought in 1994, a litany of who's who in the music and theater world would come through and become friends; people like Brian Dennehy (who reportedly made it a contract requirement to finish every night in time for a drink at the Brewhouse), Sting, B.B. King, the Foo Fighters, Joan Osborne, rock-band producer Steve Lillywhite.

After the Met, he and his current business partner, Tom Bates, looked at other projects, then opened the Hot Club in 1983. It is also where his relationship with Nancy came to the fore; they knew each other socially before. "One Christmas party, I'd just broken up with someone and Josh, who's a flirt, flirted with me," she says. "He wanted to know when we could see each other, and I told him I had a microbiology exam to study for, so he said 'what about next weekend?'

"That Sunday, he showed up with the largest Christmas tree I'd ever seen," she says. "I love Christmas trees, and he's Jewish, which is funny. And he never left."

Nicholas is the couple's only child. Nancy Miller says, "Josh is a terrific dad. They would always do things together, like ride roller coasters, just the two of them."

It's easy to see Miller's path in the restaurant business, but not so much the politics thing. Even Miller can't see it.

"It's not easy to track those decisions," he says. "There were no politicians in our family, but we always discussed politics —it was a value important to our family. I remember a family friend went to work for JFK; that was an education in what it meant to run for president. And at the time we bought the Met, Tom Fairchild ran for state representative. Maybe that left something on me; I don't know."

It wasn't Miller's idea to run for the state Senate. The idea came from a group of his neighbors in District 28, including Marti Rosenberg, quite literally his Cranston backfence neighbor.

"He listens. He takes what he hears and he acts," she says. "He has the tenacity, the smarts and aggressive politics. As a progressive business owner, he brings a unique voice to politics. He can talk to business, to labor, to progressives and environmentalists and is well respected by all camps."

Miller is connected with the people he serves, says Cranston Mayor Alan Fung, a Republican. "He represents Edgewood with a lot of passion," says Fung. "I've been involved with several projects with him, including one to remove the dam on the Pawtuxet River"—a project that would restore the river to its original state and enhance wildlife. "Josh has been very much on top of that."

"He's my state senator, and he's at all our neighborhood meetings. You turn around, he's there," says Warwick Mayor Scott Avedisian, another Republican. "He's always clear and looks to figure out how to make things better not just for today but down the road. He's willing to sit and discuss things with people he might normally disagree with."

Such as Amy Kempe, press secretary to Republican Governor Don Carcieri. "He was the only Democrat I ever contributed to," she says. "I've always admired him; he's such an unassuming guy, hard working, true to his beliefs. In many ways, he's a throwback, or perhaps someone more of what we'd like to see."

Most politicians seek limelight. Miller seeks the opposite.

"During the floods [in March 2010], all sorts of emergency management people were here and many restaurants donated food to workers and residents," Kempe says. "Josh put out this amazing spread of food, served it, cleaned up and didn't once introduce himself. He just did it and left.

"Politicians love a good emergency," Kempe adds of pols who wait for photographers to snap their altruism. "He didn't want them to know who he was. He helped them because they were helping us."

Miller is in his glory when we drive around his old Wayland Square neighborhood. He points out his old houses, houses of friends and neighbors, places now gone, like the old Hope Market on Angel Street and Adams Drug, where L'Artisan Cafe is. And a toy store where he once drove his grandparents nuts.

"They brought us in there and said 'Pick out one thing you want,' " he says, smiling at the memory. "My brothers got what they wanted right away. It took me two hours to decide. They were going crazy waiting for me to make up my mind."

We pass a carriage house on Benefit Street where he lived alone for the first time, then by a house he bought in his first and only foray into the residential real estate market; he lost his shirt when the market crashed in the 1980s.

I ask him about the effort to decriminalize pot, which he leads and which is tied up in committee now. Has he smoked pot?

"Sure, I did, and worse," he says. "But I gave it all up when I realized there was no way to turn it off. I haven't smoked in probably thirty years. It's the same reason I have maybe six drinks a year now; I like the buzz but not the way you feel the next day."

We meet one last time and I follow him to the Statehouse. He drives a Volvo (yes, he does drive a motor scooter in good weather; he's known for it) with stickers for Democratic candidates on it plus one saying "Out of Iraq." One of the first things Miller did as senator was introduce legislation to end that war. It went nowhere. But, he says, "Going door to door, that was one of the things people wanted me to address on their behalf. And I didn't disagree."

His offices at Trinity and Local 121 are tiny closets crammed with paperwork, computers and people. His Statehouse corner office is immense, with smashing city views. On one wall is an oil painting of former Governor Bruce Sundlun.

And speaking of governors. Would he ever run?

This engenders one of the loudest laughs I'd heard from him and longest pause. "I didn't ask to run for senator, I was recruited," he says, choosing his words. "I didn't run for chair of corporations, I was recruited. I'm not extroverted, not comfortable with public speaking, I'm not comfortable with someone writing a profile about me."

There's a brief silence.

"Clinton is a prime example of someone who became what they became because of ambition," he says.

"Ambition's not what drives me — the opportunity to create change is what drives me." So is there change in bigger office? "Yes, but there's an incredible commitment to time, and with all these components of me that I don't have a lot of confidence in, not being extroverted or ambitious enough..."

He trails off, then continues, "If recruited, I'd find it difficult to say no. But not without a coalition and encouragement from others."

And there you have it. Josh Miller, bar owner, restaurateur and possible future governor of the state of Rhode Island, has his own philosophy of politics. It's pretty simple. It's about talking to people, working with them, being one of them, going door to door to find out what they want.

Just don't expect him to stand on any chairs. Or dance on a bar. "Not," he says with a laugh, "unless I start drinking again."