The singer said she doesn’t miss the stage but still feels the creative impulse.
By Nick Krewen
Special to the Star
In 1988, k.d. lang arrived at what she called “an emotional destination:” she recorded an album called Shadowland with the legendary Owen Bradley, who decades earlier had produced country icon Patsy Cline.
At the time, the perennially lowercased lang was still something of an unknown quantity in the U.S. But in Canada she was already two albums, two Canadian Country Music Awards and two Junos deep into a country music career, and her obsession with the West Virginian singer best known for “Walkin’ After Midnight,” “Crazy” and “I Fall to Pieces” — and who died in 1963 — was well-documented.
“Everybody knows about my spouting off about being the reincarnation of Patsy Cline — which I actually do believe,” the woman born Kathryn Dawn Lang in Edmonton 62 years ago said last week from her home in Portland, Oregon, a month before her induction into the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame.
“Maybe ‘emanation’ is a better term. Because she influenced me so much and she ignited the vision I had to even enter into the music business. So in that respect I am deeply, deeply indebted.”
Shadowland ended up becoming lang’s breakthrough album in the States, selling more than a half-million copies.
She came into country after an initial spell as a performance artist. In 1984, lang released A Truly Western Experience with her band the Reclines, an indie album that introduced her as a whirlwind of a performer with an extraordinary voice. She established herself as an intriguing and unpredictable character at the 1985 Juno Awards, where she dosey-doed up to the podium in a wedding dress to accept her Most Promising Female Vocalist Award and vowed “to sing only for the right reasons.”
Her initial zaniness eventually gave way to a new earnestness.
“As I got more into the music business, had more success and got older and matured as a person and as a vocalist, I realized that I didn’t want to rely on props or gimmicks or humour so much,” she said. “I wanted to focus on my vocals, my ability of interpreting songs.”
By 1987, Toronto musician Ben Mink, once a member of progressive rock trio FM and the person who would become her most significant collaborator, joined the Reclines, and the sessions with producer Dave Edmunds that became the album Angel with a Lariat, were not the most pleasant, according to lang.
But she still found a silver lining.
“No, that wasn’t a great experience,” she said. “Although, you know how things in life are. But the Dave Edmunds thing actually ended up being undeniably invaluable because it bonded Ben (Mink) and me and made us realize that we were capable of producing our own records.”
After memorable shows at Maple Leaf Gardens and Montreal’s Olympic Stadium on 1988’s Human Rights Now! tour, featuring Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Peter Gabriel, Sting, Tracy Chapman and Youssou N’Dour, lang headed back into the studio with Mink, and the pair co-wrote and produced the majority of their last country album, Absolute Torch and Twang.
“Now that I look back, it felt like a really important moment for (us), for our songwriting,” said lang of the album that earned her a Grammy for Best Female Country Vocal Performance.
“We were trying to create something that could carry my vocals forward, without relying on the retro or derivative aspect of country music, looking (toward) … where country music would have gone … where (Patsy) would have gone from there.”
By the time the ‘90s rolled around, lang decided her country music career had run its course.
“I felt like the relationship had come to an end, yes,” she said. “I felt like I could not fully express who I was as a being, artistically, politically, sexually — all of it. I just felt that wasn’t the space for me.”
Enter Ingénue, the 1992 album that featured her biggest hit, “Constant Craving,” which peaked on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart at No. 2 and earned her a third Grammy, for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance (as well as nominations for Song, Record and Album of the Year), as well as three of her eight Juno Awards.
The new decade opened some doors for lang and shut others. Declaring herself a vegetarian, she angered the Alberta beef industry with her 1990 “Meat Stinks” campaign for PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), which instigated a radio boycott of her music. Two years later, she came out as a lesbian and soon became a gay icon, followed by a cheeky 1993 cover of Vanity Fair, where she was seen being shaved by supermodel Cindy Crawford.
Though she generated plenty of publicity, lang says these actions impacted her career both positively and negatively, but, she added, “as the passage of time shifts your perspective,” she’s come to see them as positives.
“Immediately, there was backlash. I have never had a successful radio career, other than ‘Constant Craving.’ My record sales are limited. My radio play is (at a) bare minimum. Now that I look back my career, I’m a combination of singer and personality, or cultural contributor — it’s not simply one thing or the other. It was this tango between the two things. It certainly took its toll on my musical career.”
However, it’s been a vocation full of experimentation and artistic indulgences: more than a dozen albums with such diverse styles as 1997’s conceptual Drag; a Grammy-winning 2002 duets record with Tony Bennett; 2004’s all-Canadian-songwriter-tribute Hymns of the 49th Parallel, 2006’s case/lang/veirs, a collaboration with Neko Case and Laura Veirs; and the 2021 dance remix album “Makeover.”
Then there are her extraordinary interpretations of “Crying,” her Grammy-winning duet with Roy Orbison, and Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” which consistently move concertgoers into a state of awe whenever she performed them.
“Obviously, I like slow, beautiful melodies that I can milk the s—t out of,” she said with a laugh. “And the stories in both songs are so accessible to everyone and to every situation — desire and longing.
“Ultimately the fact that I had proximity to and relationships with Roy and Leonard really shifted things into high gear. I sang ‘Hallelujah’ and then met Leonard and … then there was a relationship there. I felt like I was given his blessing. That adds a dimension that transcends craft.”
These days, the member of the Order of Canada, the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and Canada’s Walk of Fame is taking life easy.
“I’ve spent a lot of time visiting the friends that I only ever got to see backstage for years and years — and that feels extremely nourishing and long overdue,” lang said. “I walk a lot and I listen to a lot of music. I do my Buddhist practice every day, once a day. That’s about it.”
She sings a lot too. And although she’s semi-retired, lang, whose favourite artists at the moment are Charlotte Day Wilson and Arlo Parks, doesn’t feel she’s ready to leave the entertainment world behind — though a tour is likely out of the question.
“I don’t miss the stage,” she said. “I can’t say that I’m convinced that I’m 100 per cent finished, because I still feel the creative impulse. But I also feel very disoriented in terms of today’s music business.”
As for her Sept. 13 induction into the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame?
“I’m really, really, really excited about it. I’m really honoured and looking forward to being in Edmonton,” she said.
“I went to the National Music Centre in Calgary and got my old outfit, so, it’s very nostalgic for me. It’s fun!
“The emotional and sentimental journey that I’ve navigated over the last 35 to 40 years has been extensive — and I’ve come to a point where I’m very, very proud and amused and kind of actually impressed by who I was back then. I seemed to have unbridled faith and confidence — and a pure, inspired vision, which I think I took for granted when I was younger.
“Now (that) I’m older, I realize how precious that is.”