Take her most recent local performance, a matinee concert in front of a small but spirited band of day campers at the Rocky Run YMCA in Media. You can bet that Bono never had to serenade a kid cocooned in a Bananas in Pajamas beach towel.

It's all part of her record label's strategy of putting Joanna in front of crowds whenever and wherever they can be found. Meaning that while she waits for her record to drop on Aug. 15 (when she'll make an appearance at the FYE store in King of Prussia), Joanna's engagements range from the sublime to the rinky-dink.

This summer she's opened in arenas for Sheryl Crow ("That was an older crowd that really appreciated good talent," says Joanna) and she's played so many summer camps that she packs bug spray ("The 5-year-olds stand there with their hands over their ears," she says).

On the weekends, she's part of Teen People's Rock 'N Shop mall tour along with Ashley Parker Angel, Fefe Dobson, and American Idol dropout Mario Vazquez. "It's not a guaranteed crowd at the mall," Joanna says. "People are just shopping. They stop to see what's going on and then they walk away. "

Looks like she may be keeping that crazy-quilt schedule for awhile. "We're going to do it with Joanna the hard way, taking her from radio station to radio station," says Ron Fair, the chairman of Geffen Records and producer of This Crazy Life. "She's singing at malls and supermarkets. We're going to touch the grass roots. And when we do that, no one will ever take it away from her. "

That kind of grand thievery has already been tried on Joanna. By experts.

The 21-year-old singer, born Joanna Pacitti in Philadelphia's Mayfair section, became the poster girl for heartbreak a decade ago when she was orphaned by Annie. At 11, after winning a massive talent contest sponsored by Macy's, she was installed on national television as the title character in a Broadway-bound revival of the musical.

After 106 shows, she developed bronchitis. The producers dismissed her, replacing her with her 8-year-old understudy just two weeks before the production opened on the Great White Way.

So let the pop music business do its worst. Joanna has endured harder knocks.

The evening before her gig at the Y, Joanna is back where it all began: in her parents' squat, brick rowhouse. Her matching touring luggage is stacked by the stairwell.

The band is staying at a hotel near the airport while Joanna enjoys some home cooking. The 21-year-old gets her striking chiaroscuro coloring - Mediterranean hair and Celtic skin - from her Italian father, Joe, and her Irish mother, Stella.

"There's nine of us on a 35-foot RV and I'm the only girl," she says of her road troupe. Then she laughs. "There's stuff that guys talk about that you just don't want to hear. I have to walk out of the room sometimes. "

She began singing as a tyke in her father's barbershop, which is on the ground floor of the house. "The customers would give me tips and I'd go to the corner store for candy," she recalls. Today the shop looks like a shrine to the budding pop star (with the exception of a faded Patsy Cline poster).

Joanna made the usual stops for a Philly prodigy: Al Alberts' Showcase at 6 to sing Connie Francis' "Where the Boys Are" and Veterans Stadium at 12 to sing the National Anthem before an Eagles game.

From the beginning, she was remarkably motivated. "I was a horse with blinders," she says, "dragging my mother into New York five days a week [for auditions]. It was a lot on her, not to mention the financial strain. "

Joanna maintains a dizzying positivity, even about the Annie debacle. "It's the best thing that ever happened to me," she declares. "It made me realize I didn't want to do musical theater and helped me see that I wanted to write my own music, instead of acting. "

She recorded a demo at 14 and signed a recording contract at 16 after auditioning for Fair, who had helped build Christina Aguilera's career.

"She had a tremendous sense of self-possession and just a phenomenal voice and, of course, she's beautiful," says Fair. "Then I heard the whole Annie story. For a kid to have that much talent and then have everything taken out from under her - that gave her tremendous backbone and spirit."

With characteristic moxie, Joanna moved to Los Angeles on her own at 16. "I didn't have my license for the first three years I was there," she says. "My manager at the time had a full-time job, so I had to wait until she was done at work to go anywhere. "

There followed a seemingly endless wait while Joanna and her label tried to figure out the appropriate style for her big voice.

"I was embarrassed because I had told everybody about my record," she says. "So everytime I'd go out to see people, they'd be like, 'What's going on with your record? ' I'd say, 'I don't know. I don't even know what's going on with my life. ' "

Then, a year and a half ago, Fair brought her the song that would become her first single, "Let It Slide. " "Ron played me the song and I started crying," Joanna says.

The rest of This Crazy Life quickly fell in place. At her label, they're referring to the album's approach as "nouvelle Ronstadt" and "neo-Benatar. " Whatever you call it, the moment you hear Joanna belt out the chorus to "Let It Slide" you know you're in the presence of a major pop talent, a singer with pipes to rival Mariah Carey's (though without the five-octave range).

Curiously, the song that has been getting the most prerelease attention, drawing vast numbers of hits at Joanna's MySpace page, is her scorching cover of Dashboard Confessional's "Screaming Infidelities. "

It was a song that another label head, Jimmy Iovine, recommended to Fair as a natural for Joanna, who cowrote seven of the album's 12 songs. "Jimmy and Ron decided it would be cool if a chick sang the song because the lyrics are really sexy if a girl sings it," she says.

Now, she's counting down the days until her album's release, a moment she's been anticipating for more than seven years.

Joanna thinks the CD carries a valuable message for teens. "I think it's great, especially for girls, to know you can do and be anything you want," she says. "If you're really passionate about it, nothing can stop you. "