"Toronto is good but I was just here 8 days ago and here I am again. This is insanity!’

To say Jann Arden is busy would be an understatement. On the phone from her Toronto hotel, she laments the fact that a week previous she had wrapped up an extensive book and album signing tour, had a brief return home, then made her way back to Toronto. Then after a private corporate gig it was back to Alberta for signings in Edmonton and Calgary, followed by a stop off at BC Place to sing the national anthem at the Grey Cup, and on to a signing in Vancouver.

This is just a week in the life of Jann, who has become Canada’s multi-media queen. This summer she hosted a popular CBC radio program Being Jann, she judged on the Global TV show Canada Sings, she dangled off the CN Tower with Rick Mercer, she completed her autobiography Falling Backwards, and she released her latest album Uncover Me 2.

"Bruce Allen, Bruce Allen, Bruce Allen. I have been with him as my manager for four years, he looks after Michael Bublé, Anne Murray, Bob Rock, and has looked after Bryan Adams for thirty years," she explained, as the reason for her being so busy. "He is a genius and knows what precarious times we live in. You can’t just sing anymore; downloads have changed the recording industry and very few people are making money. Labels are collapsing, they are firing hundreds of people. Everyone has been trying to do triage with it but it is an unstoppable force.  I am going to be 50 years old, the clock is running down. I don’t want to be teetering around on stage reading a teleprompter, I want to bow out like a lady. So I am doing all these really fun things and having a blast."

Fans lined up for hours in Costcos and Indigos across the country for a few moments of her time. With her faithful dog Midi by her side, she was gracious and warm to everyone who saw her.

"(People coming to the signings) means everything. Every author’s greatest fear is to do a signing and no one shows up. It is very humbling when someone waits two or three hours in a lineup. I don’t have a lot of time to hear their stories because things move along pretty quickly but, the stories are the same. They have this string through them which is really quite wonderful, a commonality."

Arden has always been true to her humble Alberta roots, and it shows in her interactions with her fans. Her tweets and Facebook posts are often hilarious, and also honest; her online journal entries have always been heartfelt, and she takes advantage of the benefits of social media that were not there when she signed her first record deal 20 years ago.

"The tendrils of any kind of social media are very far reaching. Like anything in a public forum it can be a very good and useful thing or negative thing. A lot of people get hurt with cyberbullying and people ganging up on other people and leaving horrible messages. Because it is such a new technology to human beings we are learning the parameters. There have been serious assaults and murders from being taken off of a friends list! Crazy people are crazy fucking people.

"I think it can be very funny, I just say ridiculous things on Twitter. With Facebook there is something very voyeuristic about looking at pictures of someone you knew 30 years ago and they ... don’t look anything like they did in High School. I call it the keyhole prophecies because you don’t know what you are going to see when you look in there, so you have to be careful when you look, and understand when you look at that keyhole there will be another eye staring back at you which is really creepy. I don’t read 99% of the responses, I just don’t. When you see me respond to something it is really random. I try to be really careful."

There is such a wide range of subjects to talk about with her.  We started with her time on Canada Sings, judging alongside Simple Plan’s Pierre Bouvier and rapper Vanilla Ice as groups of employees performed mash-ups to win money for charity. If you sensed a simmering sexual tension between Arden and Ice, you weren’t alone.

"Oh my god! Could you see it too? That is so funny Jason," she said to me.  "He was the one fellow I was worried about when I went in there. Pierre Bouvier is not this commanding physical presence, he is a nice looking young man. Vanilla Ice is this giant person of gristle and muscle, plus I had seen him on reality TV shows crashing things and throwing bodies around so I was a little nervous to meet them, but he is such a nice man."

What appealed to Arden about the show was its difference from other music competition reality shows. It made it difficult to decide the winners.

"It was nice because it was philanthropic, they were fighting for their charities. They don’t want to be stars, they are groups of baggage handlers and doctors and teachers that are scared out of their wits, who are not performers and wanted to help their charities. For us it really tugged at our heart-strings, we wanted them to all be tied but that doesn’t make for good TV. So it had to be a democratic vote, we talked it out – the costumes and choreography and how they were singing and the mash-up choice, all that stuff factored into it. I am really looking forward to taping the next season."

Jann’s 9th studio album, and second cover album was released in November. When iconic producer Bob Rock (Metallica, Bon Jovi, Michael Bublé and many others) was announced as working with Arden, many were curious if we would be hearing Arden covering Metallica’s Master of Puppets.

"Bob has a ton of pop sensibilities, Rock and Hyde and The Payolas in the 1970’s had some massive hits, the work he has done with Michael Bublé was extremely poppy. He is not a one trick pony, he can do it all. Everyone came to the table with songs. The Smiths tune Last Night I Dreamt Somebody Loved Me, I had never heard in my life - I love The Smiths but had never heard that song. He had me try a Stones tune and a Mark Cohen tune and some of it didn’t work but, the stuff that did... I grew up listening to Fleetwood Mac and listening to Doris Day singing Que Sera Sera with my folks. There are five decades of music on there and probably an equal amount of songs from Bruce, Bob and myself. That is why you end up with Peggy Lee and The Beach Boys and The Motels. It was very interesting working with Bob and he pushed me to really sing."

Doing another cover album allowed her to release new music, as she hasn’t written for quite awhile.  This is something she plans to remedy in 2012.

"I haven’t written one note, one song. I have to get through the tour which takes me to the end of March and I am dedicating three quarters of next year to writing and recording my next record. As soon as I get through the tour and Canada Sings taping I am going to sequester myself in my house, drag out my tambourine and notebook and see what I have to say."

In Windsor, Ontario Arden signed for my friend Deborah. After mentioning me, she bemoaned wasting 30 seconds of precious time talking about me. Arden inscribed her book, "Jason – you owe Deb 30 sec!!" Deb asked me to use her owed 30 seconds to thank Arden for the book, stating, "it is good to know our heroes are as fucked up as the rest of us." It is an apt description, as Falling Backwards is an honest look at her growing up in Springbank.

"I liken it a little bit to songwriting in that you are honest in it. In pop music you basically have three and a half minutes to tell your tale. When I was writing it there are lots of things I decided not to write about because I would never want to do anything to hurt my family any more then I already did. I just wanted to paint an accurate, really fair picture of life in the 1970’s on the prairies – crock pots and wagon wheels and huffing gas and shooting shit and not understanding my parents relationship and how I fit in anywhere. To me it felt like really status quo stuff and after getting a chance to talk to people across the country that is indeed the case. My childhood was like that, I did that, that is the kind of meals we had. We are not so different from each other."

The reader may find themselves in the book for any number of reasons, whether it is dealing with an alcoholic parent, having crazy friends, or something as simple as buying soda from an old pop machine. My mom, also an Arden fan, found a lot of herself in the book as well.

"I am glad to hear that because your Mom is probably a few years older than I am, not much though. She and I are closer in age than you and I are. There is so much common ground. What I really wanted to be aware of was to make it funny, you have to laugh through some of this stuff and have to see the humor in it, my Mom taught me that. She laughs in the face of sheer and total disaster and I just love that about her. She is so kind and funny and never feels victimized or that the world owes her anything. They worked hard all their lives and built their house. My parents aren’t famous, they haven’t written a book on physics or saved a baby out of a fire, they have never done any grand gesture; they are just these really hard working, humble soldiers, the ones who are not noted. I guess this is my way of making sure they were noted."

The book ends with Arden signing her first record deal, at the same time that her brother Duray is charged with murder. It leaves the reader wanting more, and her life from that point forward undoubtedly would make another amazing book. It’s not going to happen anytime soon, Arden said.

"I can’t even think about that right now, that scares the hell out of me. Who knows what I will be doing 10 years from now? If someone had told me I would be writing a book and doing a radio show and narrating an ER Vet show for CMT and judging Canada Sings and all this stuff that I am doing now I would have just said are you nuts?! I don’t know what’s ahead. I think I have a good decade left in order to not look like a fool, and continue working and being creative and entertaining the masses so to speak, and enjoy myself and then it will be time to tip my hat and move on. I trust Bruce will be looking at retirement for himself sometime along the line and I really think when he packs it in I will too. We will see how it goes. I am really enjoying myself. Family and friends are everything to me and depending on how my parents’ health goes that will negotiate my path as well - I may just need to be at home. I don’t have anything definite, no, I couldn’t give you any clue. I am hoping I survive to the end of March."

The Uncover Me Canada tour kicks off in Victoria in February and wraps up in Montreal in March. Alberta dates include Calgary on February 23rd, Red Deer on February 24th, Medicine Hat on February 25th and Edmonton on February 26th. Her 2009 Free tour saw a bigger band and a video screen for the first time. Planning is underway for the 2012 tour now.

"I am not sure what to expect. We have yet to sit down with the lighting and stage directors to talk about the set. I don’t go to lengths where I am being lowered on a plastic horse in the middle of the arena or anything like that. I think our shows always look nice and the band looks and sounds great. There will be some surprises, Bruce and I have been talking about trying different things. It makes me laugh even thinking about it. It gets harder and harder each time I do a record to fit things into a two hour context.  People do need to pee at some point, you can’t be having them sit there for three and a half hours. I think we will have a lot of that sorted out in December with lots of phone calls back and forth and we will sketch it out. We have a week of rehearsals before we hit the road so we will sort it out then."

One of the biggest challenges is narrowing down a set list. Balancing popular songs like , Insensitive, and I Would Die For You with some rarities and songs off the new album becomes harder and harder.

"I don’t know how I am going to do it. I have started making lists and sort through a master list of about 50 songs and work down from there. You are asking me all the questions that I lay awake about at night and think about, thank you."

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