Taking time to chill out
After putting out her latest album, Kreviazuk taking stock of her life

Chantal Kreviazuk was running a little late yesterday, which meant talking to assorted local media before her private NAC Fourth Stage show instead of doing her own sound check.

That she missed it wasn't a big deal, though Kreviazuk says it is often in those moments idly tinkling the ivories that she comes up with the beginnings of a new song.

"And with that base, it would almost be like putting on shoes first and then you automatically feel naked so just stick a skirt and a top on," said Kreviazuk. "It's not like you really even think about it, you just put them on."

But don't get the impression the Winnipeg-born pianist-singer-songwriter, in town as part of a small quiet tour for media, retail reps and radio contest winners to promote her third CD What If It All Means Something, finds songwriting easy.

While she believes songs like the catchy ode to unconditional love, In This Life, reach a new level of finesse and craftmanship, Kreviazuk was harder and harder on herself during a process which saw 40 potential songs whittled down to 10. That, she says, is going to change.

"While I was writing them you would have thought I was giving birth to a 15-lb. baby," she said. "I was so overwhelmed and intense and stressed, and now I realize I need to believe in my growth a little bit more and realize it's okay now, I can chill a little bit."

That might be why she's having so much fun writing Whisper, a song she's working on for the Shrek II soundtrack.

Chilling a little bit might be a good way to describe both her latest CD, and Kreviazuk's general state of mind, these days. The girl whose painful and personal tune, Surrounded, off her double-platinum 1997 debut Under These Rocks and Stones, was based on a friend's suicide, has often said she strives for songs to be deeply emotional.

They still are, as evidenced on Flying Home, which she wrote sitting on a plane en route to her cousin's funeral, and In This Life, a joyful ode to unconditional love.

While Kreviazuk says she'll always have some melancholy to her seemingly cheerful personality (back in 1996 she told the Sun, "I think, if I'm honest with myself, I'm truly very depressive. For the most part, I'm pretty dark"), new songs like, Weight of the World reveal that at 29 she's turned a definite corner.

"It's the way that I am. However I have a drive for positivity, I love to laugh, I want comedy to be the underlining, ruling of my life," she said. "I don't want to succumb to that."

Achieving a level of professional success, as well as finding and keeping love in her three-year-old marriage to Our Lady Peace frontman Raine Maida, has helped lighten the load.

"I've often contemplated where my life would be and who I would be without my husband and I have to say he is absolutely my saving grace and extreme source of comfort and inspiration and peace in my life. Absolutely, he's sort of my rock."

The pair have worked together several times -- Maida co-wrote several songs on her album -- and hope their next project will be an album together. First there will be a larger-scale tour to continue promoting the latest album.

Then even if it's only for a few months, the pair want to do the 16-hour bus rides and 4 a.m. wake-up calls, life on the road together, said Kreviazuk.

By: Ann Marie McQueen