When I look at the craft of song writing and the creative process that defines so many artists, I wonder at the mystery, that certain spark which turns an internal feeling or an idea into a fully realised song that can be shared with the world.
I have never met or spoken with Lynn Miles. Neither have I seen her perform live in concert, although I know that she has played in Ireland a number of times. My good friend, Andy Peters, who promoted and toured with Lynn, has been urging me to put some thoughts and words together and reflect on her song-writing craft. I question whether she been properly recognised by the greater music media over the years and it is worth mentioning that Lynn Miles is one of Canada’s most accomplished singer/songwriters. She has fourteen albums to her credit, as well as four Canadian Folk Music awards (including 2011 English Songwriter of the Year) and a 2003 Juno award for Roots and Traditional Solo Album of the Year. It has also been highlighted that Miles has written over 1,000 songs in her career to date. No doubt, Andy has a point.
So, it’s 2020 and I’m watching a DVD that was released in 2003, Live at the Chapel, a concert held at a recording studio in Tilburg, Holland and featuring the talents of Lynn Miles on lead vocals and acoustic guitar, joined by Ian LeFeuvre on guitar and bass, Keith Glass on bass, guitar and mandolin, plus Peter Van Althen on drums and percussion.
This trio feature quite significantly across Lynn’s career, with both LeFeuvre and Van Althen appearing on her second studio release, Slightly Haunted, in 1996 and resurfacing again on the Unravel album in 2001- this time with LeFeuvre taking the producers chair, in addition to displaying his multi-instrumentalist talents. This fourth release started a run of albums that saw LeFeuvre continue with production, engineering and mixing skills.
The DVD features songs from three of her early releases with Slightly Haunted (3 songs), Night In A Strange Town (2 songs) and Unravel (7 songs) all highlighted in a compelling performance. The only unreleased song featured is When My Ship Comes In and this is an appropriate title when reflecting upon a career that has consistently delivered real quality, even if the reality of mass acclaim and world domination has never fully knocked on her door. However, there has been plenty of good karma and symmetry across the years and the core musicians that Lynn Miles has used to bring a consistency to her beautifully restrained and evocative melodies have served her well.
Canadian artists are many and female song writers stand toe to toe with their male counterparts. You can mention any number, off the top of your head, from Joni Mitchell and Sarah McLachlan to Jane Siberry and Kathleen Edwards, all of whom have taken very different career paths. How each artist gets accepted and interpreted by those who listen, well, that’s outside their immediate control. There will always be a completely subjective reaction from each listener. What each of us takes from the song is ours to keep and take with us into the future. Once it has been given wings and released, it is in the public domain and no longer the sole property of the creative muse that conjured it up in the first place.
Born in Cowansville, a small town in Quebec, Canada, Miles had her first set of songs captured on a self-titled cassette release in 1987, nine songs, none of which have appeared on subsequent releases. Her debut proper was in 1991 with Chalk This One Up To The Moon and this started her on a path that opened up increasing opportunities as word of her talent spread. Her prowess on different instruments became apparent at an early stage as she had learned to play the violin, guitar, piano and flute during her school years.
This is something that would benefit her greatly as she grew into her career and having studied voice with a private teacher, she also took classical music history and theory at Carleton University in Ottawa. Miles has developed a vocal tone that is both pure and strong, with plenty of nuance and personality. Across her fourteen albums, four of which are in the Black Flowers series, she has written every song, with just a handful of co-writes.
Her vulnerable and honest song-writing style highlights a haunting, tender melancholy across her beautiful melodies. Different topics, such as life, love, relationships and a compulsion to seek deeper meaning, have populated her songbook right from the beginning.
Many see her musings and evocative images as musical therapy, with her warm and plaintive delivery giving her songs the power to touch that emotional chord that links us all together on this crazy, spinning globe. Echoing emotion and empathy, self-doubt and self-reflection, these are some of the strengths that separate Lynn Miles out as a song writer that touches this sense of self in others.
It is this connection that has seen her career endure. Her ability to act as a filter for seeking truth about ourselves, our dark angels and our quiet separation has marked her out as a songstress and wordsmith of real gravitas and insight. How much of oneself a particular writer gives away in a song is a decision that has already been taken in its creation, whether deeply personal or written from observation of others and filtered back into the lens of perspective.
Writing in character is something that can include a personal feeling or a view held, but not expressed overtly. In the act of giving comes the reward, even if the ripples that find their way back are not always what the song writer may care to hear. What is the movie that plays in our imaginations on hearing a song? Different images are created, perhaps the same emotion, but filtered through a separate life experience. No matter what the circumstance, it is the song that always stands as a reference point.
So, what separates out one creative artist from another? Can it be simply a singular vision of the world? That perspective gained in growing up and learning how to deal with their own life experiences? Depending on your view, the songs of Lynn Miles are brave and unafraid to tackle personal issues. However, you may not be the type of listener who is drawn to confessional songs about broken hearts and faithless lovers. Indeed, it is tragic romances and broken hearts that feature mostly in her songs, not that she is a victim, more that she looks for a lesson in everything and a chance to grow and move on.
Of course, not all of her songs can possibly be interpreted as personal, given the sheer weight in number that she has written. I see her in the role of the great observer, the watcher, the one who distils all the pain and pleasure into a few minutes of emotion and reflection. There is a rueful poignancy to her words, even if many of the songs follow similar themes.
Whether her songs give a spiritual message is something again for each to decide but there is no doubt that she captures that sense of longing and loneliness better than most. Perhaps her adolescence was coloured with such feelings and Miles is on record as saying she is a private and shy person when she is not coming alive on stage in front of an audience. Searching for unconditional love can be a lonely journey. Does anyone ever truly trust another and open up to the point where you are completely vulnerable?
If we were to look across the early studio albums as she has grown, there is a theme and progression from one release to the next;
1991 – Chalk This One Up To The Moon. Twelve songs, relationship problems, choices made, feeling adrift, wanting more… Lovely, gentle playing and a sweet vocal, no drums, acoustic feel. Contains the standout song, Hockey Night In Canada, a song of questioning youth and hopeful dreams.
1996 – Slightly Haunted. Eleven songs and greater dynamic and colour in the playing and the arrangements, five years older. Alienation, nostalgia, search for solace. Familiar themes. Contains the standout Last Night, sprinkled with the joy of youth and unsure innocence.
1998 – Night In A Strange Town. Eleven songs and a gentle, laid-back sound. New musicians bring fresh impetus. Greg Leisz, Larry Klein, John Coady, Dean Parkes. Yeah, Yeah is a key song. Lost love and moving on, seeking forgiveness, survival of the fittest. Rust is another standout song, perhaps written for a close family member?
2001 – Unravel. Eleven songs and more space in the arrangements, stripped back and sensing both the liberation and suffocation in relationships. The grey lines in emotions, feelings, hope and trust. Key songs are the broken dreams of When Did The World and the despair of grim reality in Black Flowers– a title that she would take for a future project.
2005 – Love Sweet Love. Eleven songs and a warmer sound with really tight ensemble playing from the same musicians used on Unravel. More upbeat, courage in love, going for it. There is also dislocation and fragile feelings of lost love. Standout song is Casino El Camino and a tale of the nomadic life of a travelling musician. This release saw LeFeuvre return as producer and featured Keith Glass on electric guitar and mandolin. Glass also made a welcome return on the last release, in 2017, when Road appeared, a collection of old and new live recordings that spanned a period of 15 years that had seen Lynn and Glass playing together, as a duo, on tours.
In a way, the release of Love Sweet Love marked a crossroads in the career of Lynn Miles, coming four years after her Unravel album and marking a further four years before she would return again with her new focus on a series of releases, titled Black Flowers. There were to be four separate releases that ran from 2009 up to 2014 and saw her revisit many old songs in order to reinterpret and reframe, with stripped down acoustic guitar or piano. The fresh unadorned approach did not veer too far away from the original songs but the opportunity to release a number of new, unrecorded songs also gave Miles the impetus to take stock of her career.
Volume 1 (2009) Ten tracks with only one new song, When My Ship Comes In, part of the 2003 DVD performance and defining a personal ghost in the lyric “I Have Been Afraid Of The Dark, I Have Been Afraid Of My Heart… In Fact, I’ve Been Afraid Of Everything.” The other tracks are spread across three of her early albums and Unravel features most with five tracks, plus Fall For Beauty on another four.
Volume 2 (2009) Ten songs again, with one new track featured and a more even spread across the previous releases. Plenty to engage and inspire. Including the impressive Rust and Last Night, plus the 8-Hour Drive song, “I learned your tough lesson, Don't get in too close, When you find out nothing is real.”
Volume 3 (2012) Ten tracks and four new songs featured. The remaining six, older tracks are spread across the earlier releases, with Hockey Night In Canada (from 1991 debut) sounding so poignant all these years later.
In the middle of her Black Flowers project, Miles released her Fall For Beauty (2012) album with ten new songs and another LeFeuvre influenced production, again with seasoned player Van Althen adding plenty of texture on drums and percussion. The very personal Three Chords and The Truth, balanced with the positive affirmation of Time To Let The Sun and another highlight was a duet with Jim Bryson on Goodbye, a fractured relationship song that continues familiar themes in her body of work.
Volume 4 (2014) Ten songs with only one representing the past, Long Time Coming, the rest are all new and follow familiar themes of regret (Sorry That I Broke Your Heart), lost dreams (House Of Broken Dreams) and feeling let down (Sorry’s Just Not Good Enough). There are positive songs also and After All says it’s ok to be on your own and feeling free.
Interestingly, her last studio release was in 2013, when Downpour appeared, a project that featured just Lynn and LeFeuvre on multiple instruments across eleven songs – three of which made their way onto the live Road album, some four years later. Songs Like Moth, How To Be Alone, and Can’t Stop My Heart From Breaking indicate the direction of the song moods on this release. The imagery of a Moth to a flame is so visual and the desperate attempts to make a relationship work by subjugating yourself to another and their demands is just so ruefully observed.
Also, in 2014 Lynn Miles found time to produce fellow Canadian artist Lynne Hanson’s album, River of Sand, confirming a friendship which saw Hanson contribute design and layout to some of the Black Flowers albums and more recently, a collaboration as The LYNNeS, who released an album, Heartbreak Song for the Radio, in 2018.
In 2015, Lynn Miles recorded and released Winter, a collection of 13 songs about the Winter season and Christmas. Some recorded live with strings, some studio recordings. It contained the standout High Heels In The Snow, the tale of a hooker and the plight of a life with little future. Apart from this album, the track has never featured on any of Lynn’s other releases.
Is there a recurring theme running through this impressive and broad body of work? The fear of change, of commitment, of somebody who prefers to stand back and watch the play of life unfold. An observer, never the player in the game?
Well, you cannot recognise what you have not experienced, so there is an undeniable truth running through these songs. No matter how many ways we try to frame relationships, how many ways we express the same emotions; Lynn Miles paints her vistas with honest emotion and is the purveyor of grey lines, the queen of dark waters. Whatever helps to keep the creative juices flowing, whether poetry, painting or reading for inspiration, I get the strong impression that Lynn Miles has never suffered much from writer’s block.
These insightful and rich albums span a time period of 26 years. In seeking perspective on the human heart and the ability of our collective spirit to endure, then look no further. There is a wounded melancholy but it is 26 years of experience and honing her craft that makes Lynn Miles the insightful writer that she has become and what endears her to her many admirers. There is a strong sense that we are all in this together and without her resolve to act as gatekeeper for the glue that binds us, despite the pain and uncertainty, we would be much the poorer for her absence.
Find her music at www.lynnemiles.com
Written and researched by Paul McGee
