Mike Ross, Edmonton Son, Jun 3, 1998

Robert Oermann publishes an exhaustive tome about women in country music, Finding Her Voice. He cleverly times his book tour one day ahead of Shania Twain's tour, thus ensuring press from towns hungry for more hype - and the book doesn't even mention Shania Twain!

The dapper Nashville-based writer shrugs, "It went to press literally right before she broke."

During an interview yesterday, he promises the sequel will include a chapter on Shania Twain, one of the biggest stars country music has ever seen. A gorgeous Canadian singer who has no problem flaunting her sexuality also creates music that sounds like Def Leppard with a cowboy hat (thanks l argely to husband producer Mutt Lange) and sells 12 million albums?! Make that two chapters.

In breaking all the rules, Twain has redefined country music, says Oermann. "We've got somebody who just isn't following the genre - she's leading it."

In case you didn't know already, Twain performs tonight in the Coliseum.

Oermann, dubbed the "dean of Nashville's music writers" and one of the most powerful pundits in the country scene, admits he's a traditionalist, but he is a Shania fan.

Since pop music has "lost its centre," he says, a star like Shania Twain came along at the perfect time. Country music has always reflected the era in which it was made, "and right now, young people growing up today are in dance clubs and shopping malls - and that's the kind of act she is. Sh e is very much the young woman in her little fun outfit doing the dance clubs and singing vaguely post-feminist lyrics that don't ask for equality. They kind of expect it, like Any Man of Mine. It's very '90s to me. There's something very accessible about what she does. You can't walk around humming a Celine Dion song all day long, but you hear one of Shania Twain's tunes on the radio and whether you like it or not, it's going to stick in your brain."

Oermann caught the opening show in Sudbury and gave it the big thumbs up. Imagine a loud rock band with a layer of fiddle and accordion on top, he says. Imagine costume changes (at least three in all). Imagine hearing not two songs go by where Shania isn't bringing someone on stage, greeting fans, singing with the children's choir or doing something wonderful and wholesome. She blows some stuff up, too.

And the crowd wasn't just "a bunch of little Shania Spice Girls wannabes bouncing around in little outfits," as he expected, but everyone from teenage boys to grandmothers - a testament to the accessibility of modern country music. Shania pulls it off with the best of them.

"The show is excellent," Oermann reports. "She sang for two hours. She worked her butt off. By any measure, whether you like her music or not, it is a vindication for her. There's something about her that I like, and not just physically. There's some grit there. She has a kind of steely deter mination about her. She's the girl in your high school class that got straight As not because she was the most gifted, but because she studied really, really hard. And I like her for it."

Not only that, but "it's an incredibly important tour. She's the only act out there right now that has not been seen. Lilith Fair, we did that already. Lollapalooza's not going out this year. There's nothing else going out this year that is like the artist of the moment and here she is launch ing a tour with a No. 1 pop record. The live performance business, frankly, has been in the toilet during the past two years. This tour is not just important for country music, it's important for the whole entertainment business. And I think that she brings it off."

Amazingly, there are a hundred or so tickets left for tonight's show, but they're behind the stage (not that it's necessarily a bad thing with Shania Twain).

Call Ticketmaster at 451-8000 to order.