No matter who you are, no matter how much you have succeeded in life and at your chosen profession, there's nothing quite so humbling as coming home.

Unless, of course, it's coming home and working as a beer-tub girl during the Stampede.

"I still need a shower," laughs local singer-songwriter Jody Quine.

"It was so hot out, and they put me outside, and I always got the bad tub because I was the new girl ... it was horrible."

Ah, the things we do for our art ...

But when they pay off, as they have of late for the engaging vocalist, it makes it worthwhile.

Quine, who's been living and working in New York since the beginning of the year, moved back home a month ago due to the illness of a family member.

Now she's heading out on the road for a North American tour with Balligomingo, a Delerium-like electronic project spearheaded by producer Garrett Schwartz, who discovered Quine when she was recording her own album, Star, in a Vancouver studio.

Purify, one of Quine's vocal contributions to the Balligomingo album, Beneath the Surface, was remixed by Icelandic act Gus Gus and wound up on a Billboard chart.

The high-profile Balligomingo tour, with Gus Gus headlining, will take Quine all across North America (Chicago, Toronto, L.A., etc.), and hopefully Europe later this year.

As much as she's looking forward to raising her profile even more, Quine admits she's heading out with somewhat of a heavy heart.

"This time I'm kind of sad to go," she admits, even with the Stampede memories/scars still so fresh.

"I mean I'm excited to be going to do what I'm doing because it's paid work and I'm doing what I love, but I'm really sad to be leaving my family this time.

"They're my support team. It's so important to have a support team. The more successful I get, the more I realize that without that I'm basically nothing ...

"It's something I really work on cherishing the further I go."

As to why she thought she had to get out of town originally, Quine says there were a couple of factors, including a lack of gigs and the fact she didn't feel like a part of the local scene.

"I slowly went crazy," she says.

"Artistically, I wasn't really being challenged here. In New York I can describe five minutes of my day and the whole thing sounds pretty fantastic to my ears."

Plus, living in a more populated centre like New York will hopefully supply that one other factor she'll need when she gets back to her own project in October -- a man.

"I'm looking for a muse," she says.

"I'm so looking for a muse. I meet someone, get involved, write a song, and inevitably it always ends before I finish the song."

When it's posed to her that 'for songwriting material' is a rather spurious reason to enter into a long-term relationship, she protests with a laugh.

"But they're becoming immortal," Quine says. "I'm immortalizing them with my love and my words."