BROOKE MILLER - BIO Prince Edward Island, 140 miles long and 40 miles wide and perched off Canada’s eastern coast at the gateway to the St. Lawrence, is an extraordinary place where ordinary people do not necessarily survive, much less thrive. Discovered by Jacques Cartier in 1534, it has always been as remarkable for the nutritional bounty of its fertile brilliant red earth and the sheer beauty of its landscapes--none of which is more than 10 miles from the sea--as for its isolation. Whether inhabited by its first residents, the Mi’kmaq, ruled by the French, who called it Ile Saint-Jean, or the British--who first referred to it as St. John’s before re-naming it in 1799 to honor Queen Victoria’s father, Edward, Duke of Kent, it has, for most of its existence, been accessible only by water (which means, for those who don’t speak Canadian, rarely, if ever, in winter). Only in the last decade has it been physically linked to the mainland of the nation it joined in 1873 when the engineering miracle that is the nearly nine mile Confederation Bridge (the longest structure over iced waters in the world) was completed in 1997. PEI’s most famous export (other than 55% of all the potatoes consumed in North America) are the books of Lucy Maud Montgomery. Her classic Anne of Green Gables, which has sold millions of copies and been translated into seventeen languages since its first edition in 1908, describes the unique characters, qualities and culture that, despite the vicissitudes of fashion and developments of various electrical, plumbing, automotive and communication devices in the last century, are instantly recognizable to anyone lucky enough to set foot on Prince Edward Island today. This is a place where imagination is as crucial as a warm fire in the winter. This is where Brooke Miller comes from. It is a place where people have always had to make their own entertainment; just as they have made their homes, handicrafts, and celebrations utilizing the Celtic and Acadian traditions handed down, from father to son, mother to daughter, from the lands their ancestors were driven from by spirits of famine, politics or adventure. Just as Saskatchewan is stamped indelibly upon the soul and oeuvre of Joni Mitchell, or how Ontario still whistles through Neil Young’s, no matter how long either of them have been transplanted to California, Prince Edward Island informs every moment of this uniquely accomplished guitarist and remarkably mature young singer/songwriter’s Sparkle Plenty Music debut, You Can See Everything. Brooke Miller’s parents, who never formally married, were eclectic artists and musicians and music simply “soaked,” as Brooke describes it, “into my pores,” in an environment that literally thrummed with all forms of creative self-expression. “I grew up with a lot of kitchen ceilidhs,” she says, using the traditional Irish term that also reflects the music and fiddles that predominated, “kitchen parties--essentially just lots of food, wine and music that would go ‘til six in the morning playing. It was everyone sitting in a big room, all kinds of instruments, lots of kids, lots of singing, always harmonies.” Although her parents separated by the time Brooke was a kindergartener and her parents’ subsequent spouses, along with respective broods of step-siblings came and went, music remained the rare family constant. “We went to as many music parties with Dad as with Mum,” she recalls. Although she was not necessarily inspired to play traditional music, the musicians themselves provided role models that very early on, influenced the choices and direction of her life. “No matter what they did on a side job--some of these people were counselors, teachers, lawyers, medical doctors--these were all people who lived and breathed music. Then some were full-time musicians. Some were artists. So, to me, it was a lifestyle thing and it wasn’t just looked at as a job or a thing that you did to make money, it was something that people did to feel good--and alive.” By third grade, Brooke’s musical education was no longer confined to the kitchen. Her elementary school’s music teacher, Gerard Ruttan, she recalls with both tremendous affection and pride, was a Swede who “ran the best band program in Atlantic Canada--probably one of the best in the rest of the country. He gave me an instrument to play and I never put it down. He got me and lots of kids involved in expressing music; learning how to read and write it, being musicians. He was amazing.” She was soon traveling to competitions around the Maritime provinces and as far as Halifax (a 4 hour drive from PEI) where the band would come away with gold and silver medals, “So,” she remembers, “that was something I was rolling with and enjoying from early grade school.” Not until the ripe old age of 10 or 11 did she contemplate writing her own songs. “I think I was pretty shy for a long time, and I didn’t really start thinking of music outside of school and in terms of my own writing and playing.” For that, we can thank Metallica. Brooke picked up her father’s electric guitar, eager to master the riff to “Enter Sandman,” which she cheerfully hums today to illustrate. “I was like, Dad, can you help me learn this? He did and I called all my friends and played it for them on the phone and from there, it was like, I can do this!” she laughs, with the same melodic lilt that distinguishes her singing on You Can See Everything, an album whose heavy metal roots few listeners might ever suspect. And she has rarely if ever attempted to learn anyone else’s songs since--no matter how much she adores any particular artist--preferring to develop her own sounds and sensibility. Her father bought her first electric guitar and for a subsequent Christmas, a drum machine and little 4 track Tascam recorder, on which she would do all the drum, bass, guitar and “create these records. I wish I still had them!” With two boys, she formed a trio called Bleek that soon owed more to punk (given their also emerging social activism) than metal, and by 12, was touring the Maritimes, opening for bands like Sloan and Modest Mouse, who were also just starting out in Canada in the early 90s. Bleek’s brief career was anything but. “Every weekend we had a gig. Every single weekend. We bought all our own gear, all our own recording equipment and had places to record and practice. The bassist was 16 and got a van for touring. So we were able to support ourselves and our habit,” Brooke laughs. But a musician of Brooke’s gifts and range soon outgrew the three chord confines of punk and began exploring more sophisticated and challenging techniques and genres--from the intricacies of finger-picking to the more colorful palette of jazz. “I remember listening to a lot of Bruce Cockburn. As a young person who was already into playing, I just thought this is the coolest thing in the world to hear. I had heard him all my life because my parents were both huge Bruce fans, but I really just started sitting and listening to his music, then people like Leon Redbone, Rickie Lee Jones and the Police. I really started experimenting with what I could do with the guitar, tuning things differently and wanting to get certain sounds and do something that felt really different from what anyone else I knew was doing.” She also began to take her own voice seriously, rather than, in her words, “scream my head off. We had a real angsty outlet as a punk band, and that was our way to kind of thrash and get all this energy out of our systems. By now I had kind of simmered down a little bit.” And with the more refined simmering that only a few years and intense devotion to both perfecting serious craft and living meaningful life can bring, we now have You Can See Everything. For starters, there is “ Country From the Dome Car,” which winds into a rocking “Ramblin’ Man” jam coda that reflects Brooke’s ebullient discovery of the world beyond PEI from the unique perspective of a distinctly Canadian contraption during a three day music festival called Roots on the Rails that transpired on a train between Toronto and Vancouver. “Every time I listen to it I think about the train trip that the song is based upon. The train kind of got under my skin and that’s what that song is about, the rhythm of the train, the small environment you’re in for a few days, with a whole bunch of people, and all the music you listen to ‘til the wee hours of the night, sitting up in the dome car, watching Northern Lights form and disappear in the sky and watching the mountains go by with oodles of goats and sheep running down the side, towards the train. All the things you don’t see in a car or on a plane.” And like every one of Brooke’s intensely personal yet infinitely universal insights, it is filled with a rare sensitivity and myriad details--both lyrical and musical--you won’t see or hear anywhere else. “Often, what I try to convey,” she confesses, “is not just one singular situation. Yes, I’m more comfortable with personal experiences, but I hope to leave room for someone else’s relation to that experience or interpret it a different way completely. I like when someone asks, what do you mean by this line? And I’ll say-what does it mean to you? Or what do you think it means? And it might seem obvious in the line--but I would hope there was room for different interpretation.” In her approach to songwriting--as in her punk/activist youth--Brooke is an unabashed adherent of “think global, act local” philosophy. “I’ve always been in a small town with kinda really local issues, “ she says, “ ‘With ‘Hold On To It,’ I touch a number of personal relationship things or observations of other people’s relationships, whether it’s the farmers, or street folk, I go back and forth. Those were all things that affected the way I related to that person or what was happening in my community. In that song, I refer to a lot of farming issues, the scenario of a farm family struggling or a person on the street struggling.” In a place like Prince Edward Island, she explains, these are simply “things that pass by your ears.” She continues, “The years I wrote a lot of those songs were very interesting years. I did one version of this record a year ago, and it was finished. And it was so barebones compared to what came out. And this isn’t really over the top-but there was so much more added. This record was on an experiment on a lot of levels.” She attributes that to recording in an unusual setting, with great musicians, chief among whom is her fairly recent husband, Don Ross, an award-winning fingerpicker and Narada recording artist highly respected in acoustic music circles for the last two decades. “You Can See Everything” sounds so intimately directed to him, she might be whispering in his ear. “That was the first `I love you’ kind of song I’d ever written,” she admits. “This song embodied my entire spirits being lifted by this person’s love and everyone should be able to experience a love like that in their life and aren’t we lucky to have something like this. So that’s what that song is about. It was absolutely for my husband. I was basically thanking Don for such good true love. Just that feeling that things seem really clear at times if you know that your heart is safe.” But although Brooke writes songs for other very real people---such as “There You Are,” for her best friend Christina, or from the perspective of imaginary characters she conjures from contemporary news accounts, like “Two Soldiers,” perhaps the most achingly beautiful moment on Brooke Miller’s haunting debut is the string-swathed lullaby “A.M. Song,” as well as the truth-is-stranger-than fiction modern fairytale that surrounds it. “I woke up one morning,” Brooke remembers, “ and I had this dream of a cowboy and he was in a white cowboy suit and a white Stetson hat. He was sitting in a bar and I was watching him. It was obvious that the bar was busy, but he was playing for me and I seemed to be the only one listening. He was playing a lap steel guitar and humming, not singing, this melody. And I woke up with that song in my head. And I got up and I wrote it. It took me ten minutes. And it was about 7 in the morning when I wrote that song. And it was done. I was sharing an apartment with a friend at the time. Her room was next to mine. She had worked really late the night before so she was sleeping in. I was up already writing this song. And it was so early to me, my voice wasn’t yet awake. I was actually singing it in a frog voice. But it was in my dream. And that was the song he was playing for me, he was humming it with the lap steel part. And that’s the part that Don ended up playing on the record. And that’s also the song that Don heard that made him call CBC Radio and ask who is that person performing? That’s the song that introduced him to me and my music first. So for me, for us, that song is a huge part of our lives. It brought us together. It was a lullaby, literally. That’s never happened before. And it didn’t happen ever again--not to say it won’t, but that was a pretty remarkable feeling, like I was being sung something and I had to get up, it was my job to get up and write it.”