McLachlan likes solo spotlight

Between Liliths, she can mellow out on stage

BY BETSY POWELL
POP MUSIC CRITIC

Sarah McLachlan has left her musical gal pals behind - at least for now - as the Vancouver singer-songwriter winds her way into the Hummingbird Centre for three sold-out performances starting tonight.

"I had a wonderful time doing Lilith, I absolutely adored it and I can't wait to do it again next year but it's nice to have my own tour where I can play a broader cross-section of my music,'' she says, calling from a tour stop in Philadelphia.

"Headlining a festival . . . I really had to be up, so it's nice I can do all the mellow songs at my shows.''

McLachlan made history this year mounting the summer's most popular musical road show, the 35-date, first-ever all-female concert tour called Lillith Fair.

On top of that the sweet-voiced singer with the sad lyrics released a new album, Surfacing, which has already sold 3.2 million worldwide, including 500,000 in Canada.

After the final Lilith gig, which featured a revolving lineup of women artists, McLachlan took five days off before beginning rehearsals for the Surfacing tour, which had Toronto fans snapping up all 9,400 tickets within 72 hours.

Actually, there is still one more Lilith show on the 1997 concert calendar: a Dec. 16 Christmas gig in West Palm Beach, Fla. "It's sort of a showcase of what's going to be happening next year as far as a different lineup, announcing a lot of the different charitable elements and corporate sponsors.

Lilith '97 raised close to $1 million for women's groups across North America.

After the Sunshine State gig (lineup to be announced), Lilith goes into hibernation for the winter while McLachlan continues her tour in Europe and Australia. She's back touring smaller cities in North America next spring before reviving an expanded version of Lilith on June 15.

That leaves about a month off next May when McLachlan tentatively plans to hang around her just-purchased, newly renovated 8o-year-old house in Vancouver, learn to garden and perhaps start a family with husband (and drummer) Ashwin Sood, whom she married in Jamaica last winter.

''The biological clock's ticking away . . . and all my girlfriends are pregnant and having kids and they're going, 'Come on, get with it.'''

McLachlan turns 30 in January. "I've actually given it some thought, 'Wow I'm going to be 30.' l've got a lot done. Anytime I sort of go, doh, I'm getting old,' it's like, well, 'Look at what you've achieved.'''

McLachlan. who has had first-hand experience with a stalker, says her rising fame has not hurt her ability to roam freely. The one downside to her increased public profile has been the prying eyes of would-be career chroniclers snooping for dirt.

People magazine thought they'd stumbled across a skeleton when they discovered McLachlan was adopted. They pressed McLachlan for details about her relationship with her natural birth mother but the singer stoood her ground, fearing she might end up hurting both the parents who raised her, Jack and Dolice McLachlan, and the woman who gave her up for adoption.

"I had a screaming fight with People magazine", she says. "I told them I'm not going to get into that, it's none of anybody's business. You can say that I said that."