McLachlan has many roles in life

The Canadian chanteuse will perform in Pittsburgh on Wednesday.
On stage, Sarah McLachlan is a peaceful singer/songwriter whose music warms the hearts of all it touches.
The same can be said about the alternative performer when she's offstage; however, when traveling with her toddler daughter India, things do get a bit testy at times. For example, the 2-year-old -- who McLachlan stresses is an excellent traveler -- had a massive tantrum last month on a flight between Australia and New Zealand.
Seated in the stuffy business class filled with executives who don't want to be bothered by infants, McLachlan confronted one obviously disgruntled passenger with hands on her hips and tears in her eyes.
"It's just life," said McLachlan, taking time away from her vacation to call from Vancouver Island. "When I'm with my daughter, I'm not Sarah McLachlan the singer. I'm Sarah McLachlan the mom and sometimes when I'm on a plane and she's screaming and having a tantrum and everybody is looking at me, somewhere in my mind I think, 'Oh, I'm not just being judged as to how I'm going to react to this because I'm a mom, it's like how is Sarah McLachlan going to react to this?' And I hate that I care about that but I do feel that sometimes, especially in the insecurity of your child having a tantrum in a very public place, which is where they usually do it."
Under stress
Yet, pressure is nothing new to McLachlan, who had the uneasy task of spearheading the overwhelmingly successful Lilith Fair, which featured an all-female lineup including such names as Liz Phair, the Dixie Chicks and Sheryl Crow. Despite the fact the Canadian singer has had numerous hit singles -- "I Will Remember You," "Building a Mystery" and "Sweet Surrender" -- she is still constantly asked about the festival, which ended its three-year run in the summer of 1999. This was followed by a four-year absence for McLachlan, who finally returned to the new CD bin in 2003 with her fifth studio album "Afterglow."
While there is some truth to being burned out by Lilith, which resulted in the long hiatus from recording, the reality is McLachlan was never one to release new material on an annual basis. For McLachlan, the decision to end the Lilith Fair was an easy one.
"I was so preoccupied and taken up with it, which was one of the many reasons for putting it away and saying we've done enough of it now," McLachlan said. "It's great that it's still on a high, let's leave it now. I don't want it diluted. I don't want people to say it used to be fantastic."
Taking a break
While her current tour, which plays Wednesday at Pittsburgh's Mellon Arena, ends in early June, the singer/songwriter is looking forward to a long vacation before she gets back to writing any music. This time out, McLachlan is hoping to eschew the same anxiety she experienced when recording "Afterglow."
"I had this little devil on my shoulder nagging me all of the time, 'You got to get this record finished, you have to get it out there, you have to get it done. It's been five years, come on, come on, come on,'" McLachlan said. "'Everybody is going to forget about you.' That's the worst reason in the world to make music ... coming from that kind of pressure."
At 37 years old, McLachlan says her next project is giving her daughter a sibling. If thinking about attending her upcoming concert, perhaps the fact that it'll be her last for a while is reason alone.
"Sure," McLachlan said. "That and I think we put on a damn good show."