k.d. lang (LONG)

[neilg@sfu.ca (Neil K. Guy)]

 Yet another non-Kate posting... here's a ripped-off article on
k.d. lang if anyone's interested. Not the most scintillating writing
style, but there you go...

Between Dusk and Dawn.

k.d. lang's New Horizon.


The laugh comes as pleasant surprise. Ringing softly down the
long-distance wire, it puts the lie to Kathryn Dawn Lang's reputation
as a petulant, downright ornery interview subject. Her friendly tones
bring to mind a Cole Porter couplet of some renown: "No more blue
songs, only whoop-de-doo songs." That, metaphorically speaking, is
exactly what's she singing these days For k.d. lang, free at last from
the straightjacket (sic) of country music, the beguine has begun.

 Truth to tell, it wasn't the beguine - a dance you might see Astaire
and Rogers execute in _Flying Down to Rio_ - but a Steve Martin-esque
King Tut two-step that lang's manager, Larry Wanagas, was attempting
early in the New Year. The tape deck in his office at Vancouver's
Bumstead Production (sic) was jumping to the exuberant strains of
"Miss Chatelaine," a rare instance of whoop-de-doo on lang's fifth
album, the emotionally fervent _Ingenue_. It was the song's whimsical
romance and urbane pop elan that had inspired the comical routine from
her usually reserved business manager of 10 years.

 "This tune's my favourite," stated Wanagas, as he seated himself at a
desk blanketed in phone messages and tour itineraries. With eyebrows
raised, he glanced over at Bumstead production manager Grant McAree,
who was getting his first earful of lang's long-promised plunge into
the mainstream of popular music. "Interesting, huh?"

 Understatement is very much Wanagas' forte. The album opens with
"Save Me," a torchy, mid-tempo plea furnished with kitchen-sink
instrumentation (vibraphone, acoustic bass, beat box, tamboura) that
gels elegantly and with style. The song's bridge to lang's past is a
flash of steel guitar. That, and a percussive sound that resembles a
ghostly clip-clop - appropriate since lang has crashed through the
cardboard sunset of her country career and galloped into the new day
of whatever comes next.

Ingenue confirms that between dusk and dawn can be the blackest of
nights. lang and musical collaborator Ben Mink have written 10 songs
detailing love's drug-like highs and cold-turkey despond. It's based
on a real relationship, lang asserts, one that has dragged her heart
around and painfully resolved itself over the last two years. A
"catharsis" and "my emotional puberty" is how she describes the
recording. "It's vulnerable and very honest, yet moody and a little
cryptic," she explains. "It was planned with no regard for genre, no
regard for radio , no regard for anything other than what's inside."

 The music flies in the face of cool. Its precedent may be "So In
Love," the Cole Porter standard she recorded for AIDS awareness
project _Red, Hot & Blue_, but this is not a collection of hard-edged
blues-based torch songs. Rather it is indebted to smouldering '60s
balladeers Peggy Lee and Julie London, and such _outre_ sources as
Burt Bacharach and European art song. Wanagas describes the album
best: "It's typically k.d. She does for easy-listening what she did
for country - gives it a kick in the pants."

 In keeping with the genre, lang's North American tour, beginning in
June, will most likely be with a 10-piece, string-driven ensemble.

 At times, 30-year-old lang speaks with the zeal of the born-again.
She describes her country career as "another life. From the time I
finished with _Torch & Twang_ i was ready for a change and I got it -
life sort of delivered it to me on a bunch of levels."

 While she won't delve into specifics, she claims _Ingenue_ is
autobiographical. The title's dictionary entry offers a double
meaning. On one level it alludes to "a naive young woman," and yes,
lang admits she's that. "I'm naive to expect so much from a
relationship, I suppose, but I'm an extremist in everything I do and
lately I've experienced how love can be extreme. *Life* is extreme -
it's either birth or it's death. I'm fascinated by the balance of the
extremes."

 "Ingenue" can also mean an actress who plays the part of a naive
young woman. No one can doubt lang's dramatic reach. It was evident in
her evolution from Patsy Cline incarnate to cow-punk priestess to the
marginally traditional woman of country music heard on _Shadowland_.
Percy Adlon, director of her film debut in last year's charmingly
oddball _Salmonberries_, was bowled over by lang's natural gift. "I
loved Kathy's role so much," Adlon has said. "It is a performance.
This silent, depressed [person she plays] is a designed character. The
real Kathy is uplifting and wordy."

 lang 'fesses up to some role-playing on the album. "On 'Season of
Hollow Soul,' I'm inhabiting someone who's absolutely lost and beaten.
'Miss Chatelaine' is the American in Paris who falls in love and
dances around and throws her purse in the air. But that person was me.
There's no pretense in terms of feelings or emotion."

 These niceties will mean nothing in Nashville, where the response
will either be one of profound relief that she's moseyed off (Wanagas'
theory) or accusations that _Ingenue_ proves she is, at heart, a
phoney and a fake. lang was never fully embraced by Music City's
recalcitrant establishment, despite winning a country-music Grammy in
1990 (an award determined by the music industry at large; she won zip
from Nashville's Country Music Association).

 Certainly her new direction is not a shocking about-face for several
of lang's former cohorts. "Frankly, I never thought the country thing
would last as long as it did," admits Stewart McDougall, original
pianist with lang's band the reclines and now a member of Calgary's
Great Western Orchestra.

 Gaye Delorme, the Vancouver-based songwriter and recording arts,
co-produced her 1984 debut, _a truly western experience._ "She's like
a painter - once you have the technique you can paint whatever picture
you want," she explains. "To limit someone with that much talent to
country is a crime."

 Then there's Gordie Matthews, the last of the original reclines; he
ended a seven-year, nearly 500-show alliance with lang when the
reclines disbanded at the conclusion of the exhaustive _Absolute Torch
and Twang_ tour in May, 1990. Says Matthews: "She's still searching
for her niche. Country never fit us or her, the outfits and the
attitude were always a little too far out there."

 What ultimately convinced lang to set torch to twang was the "meat
stinks" controversy of two summers ago. To recap: lang expressed her
vegan opinions in a TV campaign sponsored by the US animal-rights
group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). The cattle
industry pawed the ground and snorted loudly, contending it was an act
of treason from a native of Consort, Alta. Phone lines at beef-belt
radio stations lit up like bonfires. The threat of an advertising
boycott forced many minor-market broadcasters to yank k.d. from the
air. Some even capitalized on the furor with crude "heard a k.d. song
and win a steak" giveaways. The bad blood lingers, says Bob Mills,
program director at Red Deer, Alta., country station CKGY-AM. "We
haven't deliberately played a k.d. record since, but when one somehow
slips on the air we get calls up the wazoo - 'What the hell are you
doing playing that woman?' We respect her right to an opinion, but we
had to make a business decision."

 Things turned ugly. Audrey Lang, k.d.'s mother, received phone
threats. A sign in Consort proclaiming it "home of k.d. lang" was
tattooed with derogatory graffiti. The Globe & Mail's Jay Scott
advised lang to forsake country music and "tell the folks who scrawled
'Eat Beef Dyke' to eat ... whatever they want."

 lang likens the episode  to a "door opening - a door being kicked
open - that gave me the opportunity to go ahead and change. It was
obvious to me that I didn't belong [in country music]. I was tired of
fighting the political echelon..."

 She pauses and reconsiders. "More important than all the business
bullshit, was that I, as an artist, was ready to move on. i wanted to
go out to my audience, the people who respect me as an artist and a
singer, and say, 'I love jazz, I love cabaret, I love Joni Mitchell
and whoever, and here's my version of it."

 At this point, duty calls. Or rather, it yips. Stinker, the eldest of
four dogs lang keeps on her new home on 10 rural acres outside
Vancouver, is pining for attention. The lang menagerie also includes a
couple of horses and one hog, a classic Easy Rider-style, chrome and
turquoise Harley Davidson. Cropped hair and smooth profile hidden by
helmet and visor, lang can cruise life's long, not-so-lonesome highway
without a persistent fear of being recognized.

 She guards her private life closely, arguing that it's enough to bare
all on disc and screen (one critic described lang in her nude scene in
_Salmonberries_ as "voluptuous yet toned, a Rubens model after six
months in a weight-training program.").

 "I am extremely private and I think I'm going to become more so."
There's no mistaking the frustration in her voice. "People are phoning
my mother in the middle of the night, talking to my grade-school
teachers - it's embarrassing. I am the person, it's *my* career."

 "Really," she sighs, echoing the memorable acceptance speech she made
at the 1990 Juno Awards, "all I ever wanted to do was sing."

 (by Jeff Bateman. In the April/May 1992 edition of Network magazine, a
promo rag given out at Sam the Record Man stores. The article includes
a couple of photos. One is of lang (looking very boyish in short hair
and glasses) with PETA supporters Kate Pierson, Lene Lovich, Chrissie
Hynde and Fred Schneider. The other shows lang with her arm around
(cough) Liza Minelli.)


 Why'd I post this thing? I dunno. Give my fingers a workout, maybe?

 - N.K.