Singer won't play fame game

CHANTAL Kreviazuk is a singer, songwriter and occasional actress with homes in Toronto and Los Angeles.

The native Winnipegger is a Juno Award winner with numerous hits in Canada, and has written songs for the likes of Carrie Underwood and Gwen Stefani. She's married to Our Lady Peace singer Raine Maida, is a mother of three -- Rowan, 5; Lucca Jon, 4; and Sal, 1 -- has perfectly coloured hair (according to her Garnier commercials) and spends what free time she has working for charity organizations.

Describing her as plain would be an insult, but she's pinned the title on herself on her new album, Plain Jane, a reference to the double life she leads in Canada and the U.S., she says.

"Plain Jane is not, 'Woe is me.' It's celebrating the obscurity I have that people take for granted every single day," she says over the phone from Vancouver, prior to kicking off her Canadian tour, which stops at the Pantages Playhouse Theatre Wednesday. "You appreciate love and moonlight and random acts of kindness. You cultivate the heart... If you're famous you can become selfish and self-obsessed."

Kreviazuk enjoys a life of relative anonymity in L.A., free of the paparazzi who follow so many celebrities. People don't understand how hard it can be live life under a microscope, she says.

"I have friends in L.A. that when we go out we have to deal with the paparazzi and a couple of times I've seen my name in the tabloids: 'Singer-songwriter Chantal Kreviazuk with so-and-so,' and it makes me sick," she says.

Kreviazuk, 36, knows how fortunate she is to have what she does, and as a result is active with several charity organizations, including War Child Canada and Winnipeg's Opportunity Fund among others.

She supports organizations whose principles and goals she believes in, a philosophy she extends to her life.

"I won't work with someone I don't have a connection with," she says.

"I'm not a good faker... For me, I want to bring things out that are true to me, in records, in real life and in concert. For me it has to have meaning, because money doesn't cut it for me and winning doesn't cut it for me."

Some would think her success as a songwriter, with credits on albums by Kelly Clarkson, Avril Lavigne and Faith Hill, would mean she could just stay home, write and not have to leave her children to tour.

She probably could, but Kreviazuk is still possessed by the drive to create her own music, allowing her to connect with the fans she's made since the release of her first album, 1996's Under These Rocks and Stones.

"I'm going to play music my whole life and I want to keep cultivating my relationship with my audience. I don't want to show up in 10 years and say, 'Hey, this is me. Remember me?'"

She will be making some new fans soon in Waskada, a small town with a population of about 200, 70 kilometres west of Boissevain in the southwestern corner of the province.

Kreviazuk was one of 13 songwriters selected to participate in CBC Radio 2's Great Canadian Song Quest, with people from across the country voting to have a song written about their favourite Canadian place.

Kreviazuk initially thought the song was going to be about Winnipeg, so she wrote about her hometown, but changed the words to reflect the winning town, even though she's never been there.

"I've immortalized Waskada, but I have to be true to me. It's about someone from Manitoba.

"I've never been so excited though; my song was finished first," she says.

The songs will debut on CBC Radio 2 on Nov. 23.

rob.williams@freepress.mb.ca

CONCERT PREVIEW

Chantal Kreviazuk

Pantages Playhouse Theatre

8 p.m. Wednesday

Tickets $39.50 & $49.50 at Ticketmaster

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 10, 2009 D3