Lynn Jackson

For Lynn Jackson, it's all about the songs.

25 years and thirteen albums into her career, the one constant fans have come to expect is top-notch songwriting and that voice.

Experimentation is the lifeblood of every artist, and when ideas suddenly coalesce into something that until that moment seemed beyond reach, it casts an entirely new light on their identity.

Over the course over her nearly 25-year recording career, Lynn Jackson has always served the song, allowing each collection of sounds and moods evolve into each new album.

Lynn's newest album Mirrors stretches out from the folk-roots of her past releases and includes rockers and ballads with electric guitar against haunting strings.  Covers of Sinead and Chris Cornell are tributes.

Lynn explains, “Many of the songs on Mirrors are based on recollections I have from the time when I was young, up to high school and into my early twenties. The songs are kind of ‘flashes’ of memories, or ‘reflections’ of key moments in my life in those formative years. There were lots of difficulties, especially at home.”

She adds, “I think ‘Ghost Walking’ best sums up my approach on this album. It’s about looking back on your life as if you were watching a film with key moments highlighted—those spectacular heights, those crushing blows, and new discoveries, like playing music, that have become such a part of your makeup that you don’t consciously think of them. They are just there.”

Along with “Ghost Walking,” that theme provides the foundation for other standout tracks, “Rooms Full of Mirrors,” “I Was,” “Gas Station to Nowhere” and “Into the Distance.”Mirrors also includes re-imagined covers of Sinead O’Connor’s “Troy” andSoundgarden’s “Rusty Cage.” In short, Lynn held nothing back in the studio, crafting haunting string arrangements on some songs in collaboration with violinist Alison Corbett and cellist Nick Storring, while on others laying down some raw, live-off-the floor rock and roll with her trusted group of players.

Since releasing her 2004 debut, Night Songs. Lynn has been remarkably prolific, releasing 12 albums and along the way working with Michael Timmins of Cowboy Junkies, and even Norman Blake of Teenage Fanclub during the few years when he was a Kitchener resident.

FATEA Magazine’s David Kidman described her work as, “confessional songs of an understated power that don’t exclude the listener from her thought-processes and yet don’t insist that the listener takes every step of the journey.” Writing in Americana UK, Keith Hargreaves said of the Timmins-produced Follow That Fire, “If you like your Americana gothic and compelling this will reward your investment many times over.”

Now with Mirrors, Lynn Jackson may have finally made her masterpiece, a collection of songs that truly capture the arc of her life story in ways that all of us can relate to. “It’s weird,” she says, “sometimes I wonder if I did the right thing by going to school and having my ‘back up plan,’ when I should have just focused on music right out of the gate. But then I think that maybe age and time has made me bolder. Writing this album and putting it out into the world—it sounds like a cliché—but it’s been cathartic."