k.d. lang waves to the crowd after receiving a Juno for her Canadian Music Hall of Fame induction during the 2013 Juno Awards in Regina on April 21, 2013.Derek Mortensen/The Canadian Press
Since her self-described semi-retirement, there are few things that compel country icon k.d. lang to come out of her comfort zone. Being inducted into the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame during Country Music Week (Sept. 11 to 14) in Edmonton is one of them.
Despite the fact that the multi-Grammy and Juno Award winner was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 2013, lang said she was surprised by the news of receiving this year’s honour.
“It’s been a while,” the 62-year-old artist told The Globe and Mail in a phone interview. “I walked away from that period in my life in 1990, so it’s been 34 years. It’s amazing to look back and accept the impact I had in those short six or seven years. It seemed so effortless at the time because I had so much energy and creative vision. I recognize now in my mature age that it’s a gift and it shouldn’t be taken for granted.”
Over the phone from Los Angeles, her voice sounded more hoarse than husky. “I have to apologize. I’m very sick right now,” she explained. “My voice is a little weird and my energy is a bit subdued.”
Lang is hoping her voice and energy will be back by Country Music Week, since she’ll also be performing at the Canadian Country Music Association Awards on Sept. 14. There, the singer will reunite with her band, The Reclines, to perform fan-favourite Big Boned Gal. “I’m so thrilled,” she said. “It just adds depth to the celebration.”
Music may not be front and centre in her life like it used to be, but lang adores her low-key life in Los Angeles. There’s always music on as she goes about errands around the house, except during her spiritual rituals (lang is a practising Buddhist) – right now, she’s especially into Charlotte Day Wilson and L.A.-based singer-songwriter Jessica Pratt.
Her earliest musical influences were just as eclectic. “I grew up in a family that studied classical music,” she said. “My ear was trained from hours and hours of listening to people practice Chopin and Haydn and Beethoven. So that’s where I started.” Later on, lang turned to an array of artists like Anne Murray, Linda Ronstadt, and Joni Mitchell. Soon enough, she got into jazz types like Peggy Lee and Carmen McRae. “It’s always been all over the map.” In her 20s, lang set her sights on country music and was besotted by Patsy Cline.
She cut her teeth in L.A, by physically roaming the halls of Warner Brothers Records. “I would just float around that building and absorb how things worked,” she said, adding that the music industry seems so much more remote now. “I don’t totally understand how kids even get noticed other than on TikTok or something. It just seems so removed. But I don’t know. I’m not there, so I can’t compare.”
When lang looks back on her career, the confidence she so easily carried in her early days is a mystery to her. “I don’t know how I mustered it,” she said. “I just put it in gear and I didn’t stop. I didn’t even think about it – I just did it. I think confidence is one of the most intensely beautiful things about youth.”
She has spent years trying to dissect why her stage persona was so different from her innately introverted self. “I’m not 100 per cent sure I’ve come to any sort of conclusion,” she said. “I have some insight: I feel safe on stage. Although I think, as I get older, I feel less safe. But I felt like it was a type of moat: there’s a safety net to being on stage. I can be completely open and vulnerable.”
Maybe it’s the Buddhist in her, but lang fervently believes that she’s only channelling the energy that comes from her music, she’s not providing it. “I’m a portal in a way, and I think that’s what makes me feel safe.”
That’s how the lyrics to the hit Constant Craving were created, anyway. “The way Ben [Mink] and I would approach songwriting was we would write the music first and then I would basically go into some sort of trance and wait like I was some sort of lightning rod,” she said while laughing. “I would wait to be hit with the lyrics. I would just listen until I heard the lyrics come out of the music. That’s what came out.”
But the older and wiser lang says that, in retrospect, she would rework most of the songs in her catalogue. “I would probably simplify production on most of them,” she said. “Through experience, I think I have a better understanding of how to make a song have a more fertile environment. I would be more forward.”
In 2019, lang mentioned in an interview that she wasn’t feeling any particular urge to make music any more. Five years later, she feels pretty much the same, although she says there are days when she wakes up incredibly inspired. “I’ll call up my poor manager and say I have four albums in my head today,” she said with amusement.
But inevitably the next day, the desire disappears. “I’m experiencing extreme vacillation with it right now – which I think is interesting because it may be part of the process,” she says self-analytically. “It shows there’s some creative spark left.”