You don’t need to listen to Jennifer Warnes sing for very long to realize she has an unusually rich voice capable of expressing deep emotion and subtle nuances.

After only a short telephone conversation, it’s also clear there’s a sharp intelligence and probing curiosity behind the alluring voice.

“Singing is a choice. I made it early,” Warnes — one of the 2009 Vancouver Island MusicFest headliners — said in an interview with the Comox Valley Record.

“It’s quite a misunderstood job,” she added, alluding to how singers work hard to make their performances seem effortless. “Like an athlete, it’s a full-time job.”

She said she tells family members, “I’m just like you except I have a very strange job.”

Saying she plans to write a book about her life as a singer, Warnes added, “I do love singing, and have a lot to say to help people become singers. It’s a deep-seated wish of all people.”

Nonetheless, Warnes — who once spurned an opera scholarship — said singing takes a toll by taxing the singer’s system.

Her name does not have the same recognition factor of Beyoncé or Céline Dion, but many people heard Warnes on the huge movie soundtrack duet hits, Up Where We Belong with Joe Cocker from An Officer and a Gentleman and (I’ve Had) The Time of My Life with Bill Medley from Dirty Dancing.

Early radio hits included (It’s the) Right Time of the Night and I Know a Heartache When I See One.

Fans still revere the 1987 release Famous Blue Raincoat, on which the former Leonard Cohen background singer offers nine interpreted versions of Cohen songs.

A highlight of the album, known unofficially as Jenny Sings Lenny, is Joan of Arc, on which Cohen takes the role of the Voice Beneath the Smoke.

Since the critically acclaimed The Hunter in 1992 and The Well in 2001, fans have been kept waiting. Warnes’ latest release is a remastered version of The Hunter.

“I’m a bit of a packrat, and I found the masters in my closet,” Warnes said, adding that she’s just been handed the first copy of the remastered Hunter, which she said “sounds so much better.”

They remastered The Hunter from analog...but because the old analog formats cannot be played more than once or they degrade, they were transferred to digital, then manufactured in 24K Gold CD, which brightens the sound.

The remaster sounds warm and true, she said, yet still dense like the original.

Although she’s best known as a singer, Warnes has written a number of songs, including co-writing Song of Bernadette with Cohen for Raincoat.

Surprisingly, she reveals her songwriting motivation initially had less to do with creative desire than financial necessity.

The Performance Rights Act, which would pay performers the royalties that are currently reserved only for songwriters, has passed the legislature and is waiting to pass the Senate, she said.

Warnes alluded to a new reality of file-sharing and downloading that cuts songwriters and performers out of profits from their work.

“The music business has dissolved as we know it.”

Turning the tables on the interviewer, the Seattle native asked questions about Vancouver Island, which she has never seen.

Warnes asked about the MusicFest layout and what the audience might expect from her. She said she plans to perform some Cohen, and touch on her hits with a four-piece band — although it would be reasonable to expect some tunes from The Hunter.

After being told the Comox Valley is breathtakingly beautiful, Warnes sounded like she’s really looking forward to visiting, especially since it is so different from Los Angeles, her current home.

“I live in the centre of the vacuum cleaner bag of life.”

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Vancouver Island MusicFest happens July 10 to 12 at the Comox Valley Exhibition Grounds. For more information, visit www.islandmusicfest.com.

editor@comoxvalleyrecord.com