Brooke Miller is surprising and fantastic. She's somebody I'd probably like to hang out with and definitely want to hear play live. I, on the other hand, become a person I hate the moment I initiate this exchange. Here's my opener: "Prince Edward Island is a unique place to call home. How does the essence of that place manifest in your work?" Brooke's response: "You wouldn't believe how much I get asked that question." I've embarked on an annoying interrogation, which I hate doing, but I've yet to decide if the question irritates as a result of its ennui or its excellence. Because the path to profundity is often tiresome. "I grew up not wanting to even touch a fiddle," Brooke says. "It's essential for any community to embrace diversity." I wonder how many people, urban Americans in particular, have an impulse to translate Brooke as lead mermaid in a Canadian jug-band. Her real life is an impressive display of refined musicianship. In 2007 she landed a residency gig at The Living Room in Manhattan's Lower East Side, where she built an audience playing with a variety of notably gifted musicians. She put together a band based in New York City who occasionally accompany her on the road, and her manager and publishing company SONY/ATV are located there as well. Currently, she tours Canada to promote her new album

. This week she heads to Germany for a two-week stint, where she's accumulated a good fan base over the past three years. Brooke tours Europe a couple times annually.

I had a relevant experience at my massage studio yesterday. Well, it might be relevant. Some construction workers busted a gas line outside and the neighborhood was shut down due to dangerous air toxicity. I remained uninformed as I wondered what that smell was and got really into my massage. Afterwards, my client posed a casual query. He said, "Have you ever spent time living with Native Americans?" In fact, I have. I lived far-out on a reservation where I taught English and Social Studies immersed in the Navajo language and culture. For a good portion of the massage I gave this man, my mind was in Tohatchi, the town where I lived at the foot of the Chuska Mountains. "You got people helping you in here," my client says. "Three American Indian spirits. The one in the middle is a medicine man." My client looks like somebody who hangs out at Cheers. Professionally, he installs air conditioners. In my line of work, these conversations show up with a frequency most people attribute to chit chat about the weather, but he is accurate in his assumption. I'm just unmoved. Had he asked me, "In the summertime, do you ever listen to Slippery When Wet without irony?" or, "This may sound weird, but do you have a godfather named Bruce?..." If he'd said something like that and then told me there was a medicine man informing the room, I'd be amazed. This is because I grew up in New Jersey, a place my life is now far and away from. I don't sound like a Jersey girl, but it's who I am. So, maybe my thought process about this interaction explores the nature of authenticity, of essence, or we simply got high as a pair of stoned hawks on gasoline, and this has nothing to do with anything.

Prince Edward Island is a place off the eastern coast of Canada at the gateway to the St. Lawrence. The island is 140 miles long and 40 miles wide and has only been connected to the mainland for a decade. Steeped in Celtic and Acadian traditions passed down for generations, traditional Maritime music and fiddle are an unavoidable presence. "I longed for something different and fresh," Brooke says. "But I will say that Prince Edward Island is certainly a unique place." Both of Brooke's parents were musicians. Brooke remembers traveling with her sister to kids where their mother played Celtic and traditional music. Her greatest musical influence was her father. They frequently listened to his record collection together, which she loved. "They knew how to listen to good music well," Brooke says of her parents. "That's something that has stayed with me all my life." In third grade she began playing the trombone. "I thought it was impressive to carry an instrument around that was bigger than me," Brooke says. Later on she played alto sax and then flute. By the age of twelve she was in a punk trio called Bleek, opening for bands like Sloan and Modest Mouse, who were just then beginning their careers as well. "I was the chick guitar player and scream machine," Brooke says of the band she formed with two guy friends. They rehearsed in garages and played often at the UPEI Barn, which is no longer in existence. "A lot of shows went on there," she says. "The Halifax pop/punk scene was thriving, and all those bands came to UPEI to do shows... It pretty much rocked our worlds." Bleek was oftentimes the opening act for bands on that scene... Eric's Trip, Elevator to Hell, Thrush Hermit, Rebecca West, and MadHat.

Her style and ability expanded as her tastes and landscapes broadened. Although she never considered herself a jazz guitarist, she listened to people like Lenny Breau to familiarize herself with finger picking. "It was the playing and the authenticity first off that I was attracted to, not so much the jazz," Brooke says. Still listening to her punk library, she also took in Bruce Cockburn, Leon Redbone, Leo Kottke, The Police, Ricki-Lee Jones, The Pretenders, The Cure, Ry Cooder, John Hiatt, Ani DiFranco, Joni Mitchell and Bill Frisell. She spent time traveling across Canada, which inspired a lot of the music on her first album, Lending An Hourglass. In 2002 she moved to Halifax. "I wanted it to be an important year and get to know new musicians, hear new music, new venues, etc." Brooke says. "So much of the music that is on You Can See Everything was actually written that year in Halifax." The songs were reworked over the years as she performed them, changed arrangements, gave them time to naturally evolve and take on a life of their own.

In December of 2004, Brooke moved to Ontario and got married in 2005. "My life in love and music really began then." It's a comment like this, paired with the music she makes, that gives an audience the impression that Brooke Miller lives a life less earthbound. She's adrift in music, in ancestral channels. "Don and I have a wonderful musical relationship," Brooke says. "It was pretty much that way right off the bat." Together with producer Peter Lubin they create You Can See Everything in an old converted church in Ontario, rented for eleven days from friends. They set the rooms up for different instrumentations. The organ was placed in the living room with thirty foot ceilings, bass in the kitchen, drums in the basement, guitar and vocals in one of the bedrooms. The album was engineered in another bedroom in front of a twenty-five foot stained glass window. The title track, You Can See Everything , Brooke wrote for her husband. "I had tied up most of the loose ends of the songs and was almost ready to start pre-production for recording," Brooke says. "However, when Don and I got together and we discovered we simply needed to be together, I found myself wanting to bring the record full circle somehow... That's when 'You Can See Everything' pretty much wrote itself."

Brooke brings her tour to the U.S. on November 1st when she heads to Nashville for the Americana Music Conference. In December she'll play shows in Los Angeles, San Diego and Philadelphia. I ask her if she has any tales from the road she currently rides through Canada. "I never remember things from the road," she says. "I have a memory like a goldfish at times. Experiences on the road usually turn into an inside joke that becomes hard to describe." This is sort of how I feel after getting into some Brooke Miller. I've been somewhere, a mystical musical place, and not a single fiddle resounds.