A local Lilith Fair date might still be up in the air, but Ottawa gets a fair substitute tonight with "Tulipth Fair," the inaugural musical event of this year's Canadian Tulip Festival.

Lilith alumnus Tara MacLean tops the singer/songwriter-focused bill in Major's Hill Park this evening, joining teenage up-and-comer Dayna Manning, former Ottawa dweller Mae Moore and folk-country balladeer Oh Susanna.

"I can't believe I'm headlining," says MacLean, calling from hot tub-side in a hotel outside Toronto. "It's just me and my guitar player -- very acoustic, very mellow."

Not that she has anything to worry about -- Mac-Lean has impressed with a far more minimal approach in the past.

In true Hollywood-movie fashion, the 24-year-old singer was "discovered" by Nettwerk Records three years ago simply sharing a tune she'd written with some friends on the sun-washed deck of a British Columbia ferry.

"It was a beautiful day, so we just started singing," recalls the Charlottetown native, matter-of-factly. "Next thing you know, some people are listening, and some of them were from a record company, and they signed me. It worked out great."

The song she sang that April day, Let Her Feel the Rain, soon found its way on to a Nettwerk compilation and paved the way for a record deal with the Vancouver label.

The resulting album, Silence -- a collection of lush, haunting ballads best exemplified by the brooding single Evidence (and destined for endless Sarah McLachlan comparisons) -- was released two summers ago, and MacLean has been flogging it on the road ever since.

"I've been across the States seven times," she says. "Boston, Detroit, San Diego seem to be the most powerful places for me ...

"As a management team, (Nettwerk) is thinking if we want this to be a successful career we have to take it outside Canada. It's not really easy to break an artist in the U.S., so you have to push and really work it there and hopefully it'll just cross over to Canada."

Still, MacLean admits she's looking forward to tonight's Tulip Festival performance because it marks the end of 18 months of more or less continuous touring to support Silence.

As a newlywed (she married guitarist Bill Bell last month), she's not only looking forward to some extended R&R in her adopted hometown of Vancouver, but also to getting a full band together and starting work on album no. 2 before joining Lilith Fair for a week or so in July.