, has always been a more successful artist in French Canada and Europe than English Canada or the United States.

"We were stuck in a political battle in the record company and we were still trying to figure that out when he died," admits Voisine on a cellular car phone driving somewhere in Vermont.

"So I'm gonna have to re-negotiate certain things. It might take another year, a good year in order to put something together. The album, Kissing Rain, was mostly put together for Canada."

The album has sold 165,000 copies here to date.

There was also Voisine's cross-Canada summer tour, the one that brings him to the Molson Amphitheatre tomorrow night.

"It's not easy,"says Voisine, who says he lost "a very good friend" of 15 years when Vincent died.

"I had a limited choice. I figured I've got to go on. If I don't go on, I might just sit at home and never come back. So I decided to move on. It's not easy 'cause I have so much work with management, with the record company, with the publishing company. What I feel like is I have too much to take care of. It's crazy. The hour-and-a-half that I spend on stage is a vacation compared to what I have to do during the day."

Adding to Voisine's frustration has been inaccurate reports about him supposedly inheriting $30 million from Vincent, including cash, apartments, land and a luxury boat.

"Oh, God," says Voisine with a heavy sigh, as his girlfriend, Kim, negotiates their car through some back road.

"That figure is totally wrong, and it came from somebody who has absolutely no clue. It comes from a journalist in Montreal who asked around and basically arrived at an average of what he heard and obviously he didn't ask my bank manager nor Paul's bank manager. I mean those figures are totally wrong. It's stupid."

Voisine says the popular perception now is that he's loaded.

"It's hard to deal with now. I can't go to the corner store without them trying to sell me a loaf of bread at twice the price. I'm exaggerating, but try to go buy a car or buy anything significant after something like that. Even within family, within anything. All of a sudden your old buddies call you, they figure you're as rich as Midas. It's totally wrong, those figures are way out of the ballpark."

Voisine won't say how much he did inherit or talk about the discovery of cocaine, hash and narcotic cigarettes in a safe in Vincent's apartment at the time of his death.

"I'm not here to judge what he was doing, you're not going to get that out of me," says Voisine. "It's just unfortunate that he went through that."

Vincent pleaded guilty in April to charges of cocaine and hashish posession after drugs were seized from his home a year ago.

Voisine will say that he and Vincent had a good relationhip until the end.

"It's impossible to replace somebody like that," says the singer.