Border crossings from Canada into the United States and vice versa should be matters that punky Canuck songwriter Avril Lavigne should be calloused to.
She should know the routine is often troublesome. But last Sunday afternoon, traveling from a show in Toronto to a gig in Detroit, the Michigan border patrol caused an unpeaceful disturbance to her mid-afternoon lunch.
"That sucked. I was eating some soup and cheesies. They came on the bus and yelled at me, ‘Put your shoes on!' They were really annoying," Lavigne said. "You know, I'm not really used to it because it doesn't really feel like we cross the border that much."
Lavigne, the 20-year-old from Napanee, Ontario, a burg 40 miles west of Kingston on the eastern side of the province, is known for her high-energy, her trademark fashion faux pas of matching a necktie with a sleeveless undershirt and her deliriously addictive girl power stance that dishes it out in the first degree. Her debut album, 2002's "Let Go," was a smash, garnering her five Grammy nominations. Singles "Complicated," "Sk8ter Boi" and the undeniably versatile "I'm With You" — which did for Lavigne's appeal what Kelly Clarkson's "Since U Been Gone" did for the former American Idol — made her an instant force and strong competition for the title of the voice of female rock 'n' roll.
Her follow-up, "Under My Skin," is more attitude-laced BySeanMoeller
GO! Writer
Border crossings from Canada into the United States and vice versa should be matters that punky Canuck songwriter Avril Lavigne should be calloused to.
She should know the routine is often troublesome. But last Sunday afternoon, traveling from a show in Toronto to a gig in Detroit, the Michigan border patrol caused an unpeaceful disturbance to her mid-afternoon lunch.
"That sucked. I was eating some soup and cheesies. They came on the bus and yelled at me, ‘Put your shoes on!' They were really annoying," Lavigne said. "You know, I'm not really used to it because it doesn't really feel like we cross the border that much."
Lavigne, the 20-year-old from Napanee, Ontario, a burg 40 miles west of Kingston on the eastern side of the province, is known for her high-energy, her trademark fashion faux pas of matching a necktie with a sleeveless undershirt and her deliriously addictive girl power stance that dishes it out in the first degree. Her debut album, 2002's "Let Go," was a smash, garnering her five Grammy nominations. Singles "Complicated," "Sk8ter Boi" and the undeniably versatile "I'm With You" — which did for Lavigne's appeal what Kelly Clarkson's "Since U Been Gone" did for the former American Idol — made her an instant force and strong competition for the title of the voice of female rock 'n' roll.
Her follow-up, "Under My Skin," is more attitude-laced muscle that's buoyed by the feistiness of a pack of wild kittens. It's already sold over 2.6 million copies according to Nielsen SoundScan and went to No. 1 on the charts behind "Don't Tell Me" and "My Happy Ending."
She's been touring for most of the year, just completing the final leg of a European tour at the end of June. Playing overseas always presents dietary issues for the vegetarian who wants to be able to enjoy sampling the native cuisine.
"You can be out in a restaurant and they'll ask, ‘Are you a vegetarian?' you say you are and they don't understand," she said. "They still bring out chicken. We had catering people with us for the tour so I could eat healthy."
She received a much-needed, two-week vacation that ended last week when that tour ended.
"I had a couple weeks off, to re-group. I always have a bunch of stuff to do when I'm home. I want to see my friends, my family and stuff like that," she said. "I wouldn't have minded a couple more weeks off. But, for most of my life, I've been suited for a fast-paced life."
The tour that brings Lavigne and "Under My Skin" producer/former front man for Marvelous 3, Butch Walker, to The Mark of the Quad-Cities on Saturday will eat up the next three months and take her right up to her 21st birthday (Sept. 27).
When she heard that she might have to spend her third-straight birthday (and the one that officially makes her drinking-legal) on the road and working, Lavigne raised some hell and got her way.
"I told them that I'm done the day before my birthday," she said. "I was on tour during my last birthday and the birthday before that. I told them that I'm not doing that again. I don't want to be in a foreign country on my 21st birthday."
The biggest news of the year for Lavigne and a subject that her publicist adamantly asked to "please, please, please" not ask about is that she became engaged to 25-year-old Sum 41 lead singer Deryck Whibley in Venice in late June. The two — both Canadians living in Santa Monica, Calif. — had been denying rumors that they were engaged since last fall, but finally made it public.
Lavigne said that she never feels her age. The success and accolades that came to her as a teenager pulled her out of her own peer group, though she hasn't felt like she missed any key childhood happenings as a result of the travel or workloads not normally expected of someone so young.
"All my friends are between 32 and 36. I've been around adults my whole life and no one my age until my fans came around and they were always younger," she said. "Everyone's so much older than me so I became one of them. I have some girlfriends who are 24 and I've kept a couple friends from high school, but that's about it.
"I did get to be young. I did get to have an average, small-town, normal life. I feel really fortunate about that."
Whether marital bliss will bring about a softening to Lavigne's tortured stream of relationship woes is still to be determined and just as she ambiguously speculated between her last two records, she has no idea what's going to come out of her mouth the next time she enters the studio.
"It's going to be different. I want to be completely relaxed. I'm not going to think about it. I'm just going to go with the flow," she said. "We'll have to see. I'm not really in a position where I can say what it's going to be like."
Link : http://www.qctimes.net/articles/2005/07/21/entertainment/music/doc42df318ec319c593634473.txt
