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Grammy Award-winner well knows.
And, sadly, stylistic diversity can be a
detriment in this age of one-note acts
and image-is-everything video vixens.
"The beauty of being k.d. lang is that
I never took [success] for granted. I've
only had one song 1,Iayed on the radio
in 17 years," said the erstwhile lang.
In fact, lang disclosed in a recent phone
interview from her Los Angeles home,
she contemplated a major career shift
after her 1997 concert tour concluded.
"I was seriously burnt out and disil-
lusioned," she said. "I knew I'd con-
tinue to sing, but I didn't know if
continue doing pop records, or [stay]
on a major label. I knew I'd do music
— [quitting] was never considered.
"But I'd worked for 15 years
straight, without taking any time to
live a life in between. I got a little bit
cynical, and tired, and unappreciative
of what I do for a living."
Did her discouragement stem from
the tepid commercial response to
Drag, her splendid 1997,album about
love's addictive powers?
"No. I knew Drag wouldn't be a
commercial success," lang, 39, said. "I
made that album fo: me, just to exer-
cise my interpretive skills. From Ingenue
(her Grammy-winning 1992 album) to
Drag was like going from the top of the
mountain all the way down, and I'm
not sour grapes about it.
"It was just the whole trip I went
on, and trying to find my place in
what I do and in the scheme -of farm
and art and commerce."
Weary and wary, lang backed away
from music. She went for long walks
on the beach with her dog and enjoyed
being a homebody with her significant
other, musician Leisha Halley of the
Murmurs. Gradually, lang found the
balance she'd been missing.
"I realized I was giving 100 percent to
my career, and that it wasn't necessarily
giving 100 percent back to me," she
said. "So taking a little of my energy and
putting it into my domestic life has cer-
tainly given me new perspective on life.
"I realized life is,my art — everything
I do --- and music is my craft, my job.
That's not to demean it, but music is a
part of who I am, not who I am."
Lang, born Kathryn Dawn Lang,
the youngest of four children, was
raised in Consort, Alberta, by Audrey
Lang, her schoolteacher mother,. and a
pharmacist father, Fred Lang, who Ica
the family by the time k.d. was 12.
"My mother worked really hard at
educating us culturally, " she told US
Weekly. "She taught school all day and
then she'd load us all in the car and
drive 220 miles on gravel roads to see
The Sound of Music when it came out.
"And every week for almost 20
years, she drove us 50 miles each way
for piano lessons, even in the dead of
the Canadian winter."
Asked about gay marriage, lang told
the magazine; "The concept of mar-
riage is as elusive [to me] as the con-
cept of a bris. Marriage is a main-
stream concept, and being gay is alter-
native. It's good for tax recognition
and health benefits, but you're step-
ping into some sort of old religious
traditions, so we need to call it some-
thing else and create our own tradition
that says, 'Ours is different from
yours, but it's just as valid.'"
The validity of Invincible Summer,
for lang, is that it is "reinvigorating my
life and my music."
Her buoyant latest album blends
Brazilian bossa nova and samba with
electronica and the breezy sound of
such 1960s pop icons as the Mamas
and the Papas and Burt Bacharach.
"I gather ingredients and throw
them into the pot, as a chef does,"
lang said. "It's a lifelong process to fig-
ure it out. I consider myself a vocalist;
I'm not a band, I'm not in a certain
genre of music.
"So I always try to be challenging
with my music, and I approached my
records like they had to be an acquired
taste. But I wanted this one to be very
accessible, and more like water than a
gourmet meal."
And if her special brand of water
fails to quench the thirst of a public
that too often prefers empty calories to
nourishment?
"I can always go sing in the Holiday
Inn," she said.. "I guess I kind of did
for a while; I sang in Wong's Kitchen,
in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, when
I was in college. I certainly paid my
dues. When I started my band, the
Reclines, I was doing weddings and
pork roasts. I even remember doing a
Cattle Commission dinner!"
Did lang, a vegetarian since she was
19, find performing at a Cattle
Commission event hard to swallow?
"Yeah, but it was the same feeling I
had when I played the Grand Ole
Opry in Nashville on Yom Kippur,"
she replied with a laugh.
"What did I do? I quietly fasted on
my own. I just loved the juxtaposi-
tion." ❑
Tony Bennett and k.d. lang per-
form 7:30 p.m. Sunday, July 29,
at Freedom Hill Amphitheatre in
Sterling Heights. $25-$65. (248)
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