Label: True North Records

Release date: April 7, 2023

Entering the “TumbleWeedyWorld” of Lynn Miles on her new album is a pleasure.  It features ten songs examining the fragility of life, and the metaphoric tumbleweeds that are encountered as we travel along. The album’s journey is also a soothing trot, with songs and words that evoke the dreamer in each of us, inspiring us to return to a world with a little less fear than perhaps we have demonstrated recently. Musically, it is a bluegrass flavored voyage, led by the most healing instruments of all — mandolin and dobro. This is music that will do very nicely in a time of need, or anytime you feel like connecting to your humanity, or anytime at all.

For the record, Lynn Miles is one of Canada’s most formidable songwriters, having written more than 900 songs and released and released 15 albums. Number 16 — TumbleWeedyWorld — is a good reason for those of us who are new to Lynn Miles’s gifts to dig into the archive and hear what we’ve been missing. It’s never too late to discover great music.

One of the highlights on the album is “Johnny Without June,” co-written by Lynn Miles & Maxine Wallace. In this soft, confessional, Lynn Miles delivers a lyric that matches the inevitability of the chords being played. There is nothing better than a song that makes total, complete sense, and this is one of those songs. Its ambition is clear, and the result is a song that hits a bullseye.