As Mercury Racing’s director of marketing, sales and service, Steve Miller earned his title honestly, meaning he put in his time and worked his butt off. He came to the Fond du Lac, Wis., high-performance marine engine company in 2015 after almost 22 years with Mercury Marine. In June, he’ll celebrate his 27th anniversary with Mercury, and his father worked at the company for most of his professional life.

The only thing Miller, who is 49 years old (and pictured in the middle of the image above), digs as much—and maybe a little more—as speed on the water is playing music and performing live. Miller has been the lead guitarist for Remington’s Ride, a band that plays “Western Swing and classic dance-hall honky-tonk,” since 2013.

You have a pretty big, important title with Mercury Racing—a long one, anyway.

 (Laughs) I have to figure out a way to shorten that. Every time I have to repeat it, I shake my head.

Do you think the outboard power trend is every going to diminish?

No. Outboards are here to stay. I kind of sensed the outboard thing coming a long time ago based on the products we were working on when I was at Mercury Marine. Migrating away from early two-stroke outboards to sterndrives on runabouts seemed like a good value proposition at the time, but that changed when the next- generation outboards came out. And the pendulum swung really hard with the Mercury Racing 400R and 450R.

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