Julie Doiron is not rock and roll. Someone else said that. But Doiron repeated it in her concert in Victoria last week. She was upset by this criticism. Both the statement and the reaction tell a lot about her.

Doiron is not rock and roll. Not in the fast-paced, hard-drinking, leather pants-wearing cliché sense. In her sweater and jeans, unstyled hair skimming her shoulders, she looks like your friend’s sister or a photo of your aunt when she was younger. But Doiron is rock and roll in the fact that she has been touring and recording successfully for almost 10 years, first as part of Eric’s Trip and then on her own. However, regardless of the success, regardless of the albums, the tours, the t-shirts, the fans, there is something about Doiron that seems fragile and in need of protection. She comes across as if she needs constant reassurance.

“I have a very fragile state of mind,” says Doiron.

“I cry very easily.”

But she must know she’s good to have gotten this far, to be able to keep putting work out there to be criticized.

“I feel worse because I’ve put so much into it,” says Doiron. But this doesn’t mean she wants to get out. She is touring now, will be touring in Europe in December and again in the new year, then she’ll come back and tour here again until she has her third child, due in June.

“I’ve tried to consciously stop but it never really lasts,” says Doiron. “[Touring] is a real love-hate relationship. I love performing and I need money and it’s been proven that when I don’t tour we run out of money.”

However, as her family has grown up, some aspects of touring have lost their appeal.

“I used to love everything about touring,” says Doiron. “Now it’s 23 hours away from home and one hour of performing.”

But for now at least, that hour is still worth it.

“Performing is a rush that’s hard to give up, and to be honest, it’s hard to give up that attention,” says Doiron. “You have to learn to have a balance. I do have to have a job and this is it.”

That job wasn’t always an obvious choice for Doiron. “I kind of fell into music,” she says.

“I did it all along, but I never thought of it as a career choice. I think if Eric’s Trip wasn’t so successful I wouldn’t have had the courage to do it. It’s a terrifying idea to think I’m going to give up my security, especially with kids.”

But with success comes new problems. Doiron’s? She’s been happy lately, too happy.

“The songs come out in spurts. This year has been especially bad. I’ve been too happy. When I’m happy nothing comes out. When I’m depressed I don’t write either. I have to have a phase where I’m depressed and coming out of it. You need both, I guess.”

That her songs come out of depression won’t surprise a lot of people. As one friend of mine said, “She’s not exactly a ray of sunshine.” But the songs on her most recent album, Desormais, are reflective rather than self-pitying. Listening to the album, which is mostly in French, is like waking up from a fading dream about an old lover; there is calm sadness, but also a sense of light ahead.

“I don’t like to think of them as sad,” says Doiron. “Some people probably say it’s depressing. I’ve heard that in some sort of undesirable venues, play something happy.’ I think of them as therapeutic for me and other people.”

With a new album coming in the spring, and a new baby in the summer, Doiron’s excitement gets the better of her at times.

She forgets to be fragile and shows the strength that lies beneath.

“The overall goal is to be able to live and support my family on what I do. To always make records I like. I’m still waiting to make the record that knocks me off my feet.”