Travelling Miles to play

's acclaimed Slightly Haunted.

In fact, the singer/songwriter missed out on the final two days of mixing the album -- which is being co-produced by Ottawa's John Cody and the former Mr. Joni Mitchell, Larry Klein -- to head home for the holiday season.

The record will be released internationally by Rounder Records sometime around the end of March, reports Miles, and will continue in the "more pop, less folk" vein of Slightly Haunted.

"It's not as folky, I would say," she says. "I don't like being pigeonholed as a folk singer, anyway, because I think I write pop songs. I just happen to play acoustic guitar.

"I like to have a broader scope."

Although Miles played a show at the Black Sheep Inn in Wakefield back in October, tomorrow's performance will be the first opportunity most local fans have had to catch her live act since the spring.

A club staple in this city for the better part of two decades, Miles has nevertheless made herself increasingly scarce in these parts over the past few years, relocating for a time to Austin, Tex., and more recently, to L.A. -- where she headed in search of "a bigger thing and a bigger scene."

"The attraction is that there are great artists there," she says. "It's like Mecca, you know, and I think it's important for an artist to go to Mecca once in a while.

"There's still a fair amount of slime attached to the film and music industries, but there are also a lot of great writers and artists whom I love."

Besides placing her in one of the North American music industry's epicentres, Miles adds, the move to L.A has been a goldmine simply from a creative point of view.

"It's such a different way of life from here that it's inspiring -- when I first moved there I wrote a lot of songs," she says.

"It's actually a very livable city ... Most of the time it's warm and sunny. You have to have a car to get around in, but it's a very health-conscious city. It's not as scary as you would think if you've never been there."

No open gang warfare in the streets, then?

"Well, there's some gunplay at night," she laughs. "I hear the helicopters going over like you see on Cops ... But it's not usually in my neighborhood."

Now that work on the new record is all but wrapped up, Miles says she's not sure what the future holds in store for her.

There's a European tour set tentatively for the spring, following the new album's release, and then who knows?

"I don't really have any plans of where I'm going or what I'm going to do," she says.

"I'm hoping when the record comes out I can sort of tour for a couple of months so I don't have to make any decisions."