Lynn Miles, the Ottawa-born Canadian roots rock performer celebrated for her warm and plaintive vocal style along with a frequently somber creative outlook, originally enrolled at Carleton University to pursue formal music studies. She soon left the program to concentrate on composing and playing at local venues across the capital. After circulating a self-titled nine-song demo, she issued her first full-length album, Chalk This One Up to the Moon, independently in 1991. The next year the Canadian Armed Forces featured her moving composition “Remembrance Day” in a nationally broadcast video, which substantially broadened her audience at home.
By 1996 she had joined the respected folk imprint Philo Records and delivered Slightly Haunted, an album that topped numerous year-end critic lists. Her relocation to Los Angeles produced the smoother 1998 release Night in a Strange Town, co-produced by Larry Klein, whose credits include Joni Mitchell and Shawn Colvin.
Reconnecting with Ottawa native and longtime associate Ian LeFeuvre, Miles created the leaner, quieter Unravel, released in 2001 and awarded a Juno for Best Roots & Traditional Album of the Year. Love Sweet Love appeared in 2006, earned another Juno nomination, and introduced her association with True North Records, the label that later issued Fall for Beauty in 2010. During the interim she launched the Black Flowers project, documenting acoustic reinterpretations of prior material; the first two volumes, initially offered independently, were acquired by True North and reissued together as a double-disc package in 2009. That same year also saw the appearance of the concert recording Live at the Chapel.
Continuing the Black Flowers installments, she brought out Downpour, her seventh studio effort, in 2013, the year her track “Three Chords and the Truth” was featured on the BBC series Case Studies. Miles has performed widely across North America and Europe while collecting multiple Canadian Folk Music Awards. In 2015 she issued Winter, her debut seasonal collection, and the following year joined longtime stage guitarist Keith Glass on Road, a live set drawn from both concert and studio performances.
