Onalaska Holmen Courier-Life by Michael Martin

"Lynn CD Explores Nature of Time"
by Michael Martin
mike.martin@lee.net

Although she’s only 24, folk-oriented singer-songwriter Michelle Lynn has been playing professionally for six years and has just released her fourth album. Called “Sundial Tree,” it was recorded in Onalaska and is the product of a winter spent in Austin, Texas.

Lynn said when she starts working on an album, she picks an area of herself that she would like to work on and then uses music to explore it.

“I was taking a walk one day and the phrase ‘sundial tree’ came to me,” Lynn recalled. “Then it occurred to me that every problem I’ve ever had is a problem I’ve had with time.”

During her winter in Texas, Lynn — who is based in Decorah, Iowa but plays all over the tri-state area — wrote the 13 songs of what she calls “a concept album about nature, numbers and time. It’s about beauty and mathematics and different ways of looking at the world.”

After her return to the Midwest last March, Lynn traveled to Onalaska and Matt Olson’s Ghost in My House Studio to begin recording the album (a part of the album was also done at Chez Shack Studio).

According to Lynn, Olson’s basement studio is a kind of a musician’s co-op, a place where musicians who are friends of Olson can get their music mixed and mastered.