Jann Arden feels passionate about more than a few things in this world - P.E.I. mussels, Lilith Fair and The Carpenters.

"I think the highlight of my career was meeting Richard Carpenter and people always think, 'Oh my God, what a loser,'" Arden says of the meeting a few years ago.

"But it was! I met Richard Carpenter and I'm thinkin' I don't need to do another thing in my life. And I got to sing 'We've Only Just Begun' with him. It's just so cool!"

As a kid, she says, she was "obsessed" with the brother/sister duo of Richard and Karen, and their wildly successful pop confections.

"My parents were worried about me because I would lay there for hours in the basement and emulate her and dance around with the mop and pretend I WAS her," Arden says of Karen Carpenter who died 15 years ago.

"It was like, I wanted brown hair. And when she died, I just thought I couldn't go on."

Luckily for us, Arden did go on and made three top-selling albums, including her most recent, Happy?.

Along the way, she's tasted her own share of celebrity, with her second album Living Under June hitting big in the U.S., with help from such singles as Could I Be Your Girl?, Insensitive and Good Mother.

"Usually my stuff gets played at weddings and funerals," she says dryly on her cell phone from Calgary.

"It's very versatile."

She'll be bringing her wonderfully heartwrenching songs and hilarious live show to Nova Scotia Saturday evening for the first Fish Aid Festival.

Arden will be sharing the stage with fellow Canadian Bruce Cockburn, P.E.I.'s Mae Moore and Fredericton's Modabo.

"It's gonna be a really fun show," she says.

"I'm looking forward to doing it. I think there's going to be a really great turnout."

The Calgary singer/songwriter has been doing the folk festival circuit this summer, having played at the Edmonton Folk Festival this past weekend and her hometown festival in late July with Rickie Lee Jones and Steve Earle.

"You have to work, you have bills to pay like everybody else. It's been really a blast."

As for Fish Aid, Arden says she felt it was important to do the festival.

"Honest to God, it probably seems like a weird thing, but so was Farm Aid, so was Band Aid and Live Aid," she says, admitting to a weakness for sea bass, halibut and Island mussels.

"People need to raise money and musical events are a great way to do it. Everybody wins. It's hard to get money out of people, so you need to give them something for that and that's what an event like this does."

Arden's not so keen, however, on participating in Sarah McLachlan's touring festival of estrogen, Lilith Fair.

"It just doesn't interest me," she explains, though she was approached for last year's tour.

"Every female singer/songwriter cannot be ostracized for not being on that tour. So I'm getting kinda tired of answering this question, because it's not fair to the rest of us.

"It's not all daisies and sunshine. It's a tour about making money. If you're not on there, it doesn't mean that you're not worthy. That's what I resent."

Still, she thinks it's a great career move for artists like her friends Lin Elder and Mae Moore, who are on Arden's own label Big Hip Records.

It guarantees a measure of exposure they wouldn't get otherwise.

"I'm probably gonna go, so there's the hypocrisy of it all," she says.

"I want to go see Lin and I want to go see Mae."

Part of the key to Arden's success has been her achingly soulful voice - a voice you know has seen its share of turmoil.

When asked about it, Arden has a simple explanation.

"It's just years of being drunk," she says half-jokingly. "That'll do it to you, to feel completely defeated and completely have no self-worth and no confidence and all of a sudden people believe what you're saying."