Laughing legacy — Miller enjoys being rodeo's clown prince

Throughout school kids are always told to quit clowning around.

Apparently, Craig Miller never got the message.

While Miller, a 1993 graduate of West Holmes High School, admits he wasn’t the class cut-up back in his school days, his role now is all about making people laugh and feel good as one of the go-to rodeo clowns throughout the Midwest and Eastern U.S.

While he’s been away for several years, Miller will return to the Holmes County Fair this year, where he will entertain the masses as part of the Monday, Aug. 4 Bulls & Barrels Rodeo Show at 7 p.m. in the grandstands.

Miller is excited to return to his old stomping grounds, where local businessman Tom Bird opened the door to getting him a chance to fight bulls, a challenging and somewhat scary proposition.

Since those early days, Miller has hung up his bullfighting shoes and gone a much safer route — that being the entertaining rodeo clown who cracks jokes, keeps fans in stitches and fills the slow times at the rodeo with antics that have entertained fans for the past three decades.

“It’s an awesome feeling,” Miller said of entertaining crowds.

He said after all these years, he still gets nervous for every performance. “You want to do a great job, and every crowd is different. But to have thousands of people roaring at you and getting them pumped up and laughing is an incredible feeling.”

Filling the little cracks and crevasses between the rodeo action taking place is something that helps each evening’s rodeo flow.

Miller’s job is to be the thing that fills those voids of action, and while he has a loose script, much of what he does is done on the fly, using his wit and experience to read the action, the crowd and the feel of the night and run with it.

“I’d say 80-90% of the act is simply ad-libbing,” Miller said. “You just see where the show goes and where the action takes you and you run with it. You find things and ideas that work in different places and make them your own.”

It all adds up to creating an evening of excitement and action coupled with laughter, and Miller said putting smiles on people’s faces and laughter in their heart is something he will never tire of doing.

“You people, and especially kids, coming up to you and sharing with you makes it all worthwhile,” Miller said. “Those are special moments.”

Not only does the crowd show its appreciation with roars of approval and laughter, so too do the rodeo stars. Miller said hearing their words of encouragement and praise following a performance is something he will always respect.

“I know a lot of what I do, I do for the crowd, but I also do this for the rodeo contestants,” Miller said. “They watch and see how it gets the crowd into it, and if I can get those guys laughing at me, I know I’m getting the job done.”

From cracking off one-liners to telling stories, hiding behind barrels as bulls charge around the arena or falling off a panel — often on purpose, other times by accident, which he said was OK either way as long as he’s drawing laughter — Miller’s goal is to entertain, pure and simple.

He has a skit where he is strapped together with four mannequins dressed up as the village people, all of them tied together on poles, where the mannequins mimic his every move. In that skit he does a cartwheel, and the rodeo contestants who see him show to show will often wager as to whether he can complete that difficult move or not.

Either way Miller knows it’s going to bring on the laughter. Combine that with the dangers of sometimes running with and away from the bulls and it isn’t a job for the faint of heart.

“It’s not a good night unless you get bumped around a little bit,” Miller said. “But it is a very rewarding and satisfying job that I absolutely love and have loved ever since I got into it.”

The gig keeps him young at heart, despite being very demanding physically and mentally.