D7

By MICHAEL OLIVEIRA
The Canadian Press

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TORONTO - As Leslie Feist prepares to embark on her cross-Canada tour, which will cap off about seven years spent on the road, she's starting to realize she feels like dirt.

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The Canadian Press

LOOKING FORWARD TO A BREAK: Singer Feist performs in Bryant Park for ABC's Good Morning America show July 25 in New York. As Leslie Feist prepares to embark on her cross-Canada tour, which will cap off about seven years spent on the road, she's starting to realize she feels like dirt.

A fertile soil, full of lots of organic compost, but dirt nonetheless.

"I was reading this amazing article on soil and basically it just turns to dust if you don't let it rest - and then all of sudden (I realize) I am this soil metaphor," she said with a laugh during a telephone interview. "I just need to let it rest for a minute."

But before she can take that well-deserved rest, the 32-year-old singer is going across the country, from Penticton, B.C., to St. John's, N.L., to play 14 more shows in the biggest venues of her career - including the homes of the Montreal Canadiens and Toronto Maple Leafs.

The gigs are in support of her third album The Reminder, which won Junos for pop album of the year and album of the year, was nominated for the Grammy award for pop album of the year, and included the smash hit 1234.

Sales of the album and the single went through the roof after it was included in an Apple iPod commercial and it was even adapted for an episode of Sesame Street, in which Feist sang and danced with Elmo and some of the show's other puppets.

Her previous album Let It Die, released in 2004, also had a hit in Mushaboom - which was used in a Lacoste commercial - and won Junos for best alternative album and best new artist.

With the first show of the Canadian tour rapidly approaching on Tuesday at the South Okanagan Events Centre - which is hosting the Penticton Vees junior hockey team in the days before the concert and monster truck rallies in the days following - the Nova Scotia-born singer and her crew face a sizable challenge: how to make giant arenas feel more like intimate theatres.

Even Feist admits she doesn't know how well it will work out. "I have no idea, I've only once ever played spaces this big and I'm curious, I have no idea what to expect from this," she said.

"How (will) such small songs fill such a large space? I guess we're just going to try to transform the space as best as we can and let people forget that hockey happens there and make a theatre out of a hockey arena as best we can."

Once the tour wraps on Nov. 10 in Charlottetown, she plans to "get back into my privacy" and has no immediate plans to start working on new music any time soon.

"I'm a little tuckered out, I'm just going to take some time off... When the time's right, of course, I'll start to write again," she said.

"(My career) has become kind of large and it really began for me very, very small - like me alone in my bedroom with my four track and a pair of headphones - and I just need to go back there for a while to get my bearings again and then know what to do next."

Fans who bring a food or monetary donation to any of the shows on the tour will receive a "special prize from Feist."

All proceeds from merchandise sales throughout the tour will also be donated to CARE Canada, MSF (Doctors Without Borders) and War Child Canada.