k.d. lang watershed gaydar

k.d. lang: Watershed
24 January 2008
Gaydarnation.com

k.d lang's new album is released on 28 January and we, for one, can’t wait! Watershed is the first album of newly written material from the lesbian singer since 2000's Invincible Summer and her first studio album since 2004's acclaimed Canadian songbook, Hymns Of The 49th Parallel (there was also Reintarnation in 2006, but that was 'just' a compilation of some of her early tracks). What's more, it's also the first self-produced collection of her celebrated 25-year career.

We caught up with the four-time Grammy winner to find out more about singing, coming out, girlfriends, gay rights, Patsy Cline and Canada!

You must be exited about your new album, Watershed?
I’m very excited about it. I’m proud of it because it is my first self-produced record and I wrote the songs. It’s a big piece of me that I’m sending off into the world.

How long has it been since your last album?
My last album - Hymns of the 49th Parallel - was released in 2004, so it was not too long ago, but my last original album was 2000.

What was the reason for leaving a few years gap between the last album and this one?
No reason; I just didn’t get around to doing it. I’d been writing the songs on Watershed for about six years or so, interspersed with Wonderful World with Tony Bennett and Hymns of the 49th Parallel, so I’ve just been working parallel on all the records.

How do you go about writing songs?
I like to collaborate with my friends and then just sit down, mull things over and throw things back and forth until it starts to take shape.

Do lyrics and melodies just pop into your head?
Melodies do; lyrics come second for me. I write the melody first.

Watershed is a self-produced album, so presumably you made all the decisions regarding the album yourself?
I took things from conception – from the very early creative process – and kept embellishing the recordings to the point where I felt the songs and the arrangements were finished. It’s a pretty wide range of performances from the vocals to highly arranged string arrangements, so I think it’s a nice overview of the musical process.

Do you have any favourite tracks from the album?
I really like ‘I Dream of Spring’; I think it’s a beautiful song. ‘Jealous Dog’ is also one of my favourite songs because it’s so quirky. It’s just a performance that I did one morning when I was sitting around, so it’s pretty raw. But I like all the tracks for different reasons.

“It was kind of a kitsch thing for a young, gay, punk girl to do real classic country songs and to put a bit of a twist onto them.”

Do you think your music has improved over the years? Do you think you’ve improved as an artist?
I don’t know – I’ve changed, so I don’t know if ‘improved’ would be an objective word. I think that maybe I’ve evolved as a singer a little bit – my singing has matured, but I don’t know about my song writing.

You have a beautiful and quite haunting voice. When did you first discover that you had such a voice?
I started singing when I was about five years old. I was studying classical piano at the time and wasn’t doing very well at it, so my piano teacher suggested that I try singing. I’ve been singing ever since; it’s always been my focus in life.

But did you realise just how amazing a voice it is?
There was never a moment or an epiphany. I really just approach music from a music sense and not just from the singing sense. My focus has certainly shifted to the vocal aspect of it, but at the beginning it was really just about making music and performing.

One of your biggest influences was Patsy Cline, wasn’t it?
Yes, it was certainly one of the things that got me started in country music and started to solidify my professional career. I was never into country music as a kid – I was into classical music because my siblings were studying it and, on a personal level, I was listening to artists such as Linda Ronstadt, Rickie Lee Jones and Joni Mitchell. I studied music in college and I kind of opened wide up to everything.

So how did the country thing come along, then?
The country thing really sort of happened with a kitsch performance art approach – country, as we all know, comes from a more conservative background and a conservative mindset, so it was kind of a kitsch thing for a young, gay, punk girl to do real classic country songs and to put a bit of a twist onto them. I approached it with a performance art feel, but then I fell in love with the music and the essence of country music, and obviously with Patsy Cline. I think it enriched me as a musician to go into country music, and Patsy Cline was my huge influence. I emulated her in some fashion. She really was the person who instilled my interest.

What was it about Patsy Cline that attracted you?
Number one was the voice – she’s an amazing singer. Secondly, I think her physical stature, her presence, her sense of humour – well, from what I connected with in her music and understood to be her sense of humour – made her seem a little bit different to other country singers. I don’t know why, but she just seemed to have some sort of presence that the others didn’t.

“I started having girlfriends at a pretty young age, I suppose. I started having a serious girlfriend when I was about thirteen, and in a population of 650 people, that’s pretty astonishing!”

Are you proud to be a Canadian?
I’m very proud to be a Canadian.

They’re so far ahead in gay politics. How did that happen and what did you think about that time in Canada when gay marriage came about?
It’s obviously really exciting to be a citizen of a country that is one of the most progressive countries in the world for gay rights. It wasn’t always like that – Canada has really become more liberal in the last ten years on every front, including their absence from the Iraq war. Canada is a huge country geologically, but our population is pretty small, so to have a country that is progressive and liberal in its thinking is pretty exciting.

You choose to live in America as well, don’t you?
I do, yes. It’s a little easier, business-wise, and my relationships have grown down there, so it’s a little hard to just leave. But I’m still a Canadian citizen and all my family are still in Canada.

What do you feel towards America when you’re sitting in the thick of it?
America is a very complex country. It’s very progressive and influential on a lot of great levels, and yet it’s anchored in this sort of aggressive peace-keeper attitude that I think is really distasteful and very antiquated at this point. So it’s a complex country - half the country is republican and half are democrat. But it’s an exciting country, too, because it has influenced the world in a lot of great ways.

What do you think of the politics there at the moment, particularly the gay politics and the gay rights movement? Are you active in that?
I’m not so active in politics and I’ve never considered myself a political person. It’s just that my lifestyle has been politicized. I come from a more spiritual point of view, but I’ve always taken a great sense of pride and responsibility in helping to open the mindset and shed some light onto the gay and lesbian culture. It’s really a matter of a humanistic perspective, rather than a political one.

You came out in Canada when you were young, is that right?
I’m from Alberta, which is in the middle of the prairies. I started having girlfriends at a pretty young age, I suppose. I started having a serious girlfriend when I was about thirteen, and in a population of 650 people, that’s pretty astonishing! My sister and I came out to each other as I turned sixteen. It was obvious that my brother was gay, too, so I’m from a family where three out of four siblings are gay. My family culture is pretty liberal and pretty obviously gay, so it was very natural for me. I came out to my mother when I was seventeen. Although it was a fairly easy process for me, the conversation with the parent is never easy. But now my mother is certainly very accepting and very proud.

What was it like being in that small town environment?
Contrary to popular belief, I think it’s actually easy to be in a small town – or, at least, I found it easy – because everyone’s idiosyncrasies are normal. You know a lot about them, so it’s not like you can gravitate towards similar cliques or like-minded people. Rather, you’re thrown into this environment where you have to get along because it’s a very small town – it’s like a big family. You really have no choice but to know the ins and outs of someone’s differences, but they just become personality traits. I think that actually makes you a more open person.

“My sister and I came out to each other as I turned sixteen. It was obvious that my brother was gay, too, so I’m from a family where three out of four siblings are gay.”

Do you still see the people that you grew up with?
No, I think my first girlfriend moved to the city. My next girlfriend actually married a guy and lives in the town and I don’t see her very often.

Do you think it’s easier to come out as a gay woman as opposed to coming out as a gay man?
I don’t know – that’s a big debate amongst the queers, isn’t it? I think it’s all relative; I think it’s all dependent on your confidence level, your family situation and your living environment. I think there’re lots and lots – almost infinite - individual stories.

Have you ever had any problems in the music industry because you’re a gay woman?
No real concrete problems; the only tangible example I can give you is after Ingénue was a hit. The second single released ‘Mind of Love’, in which the refrain is, ‘Where is your head, Kathryn’ and I’m singing about myself. However, after the Vanity Fair cover and coming out in the Advocate, there was a lot of attention on my sexuality at the time, and radio stations chose not to play ‘Mind of Love’ because I was singing about a girl, even though it was an autobiographical song.

Did it anger you?
No, I’m not really an angry person. It just showed ignorance. You could look at the fact that I don’t get much airplay – because I really don’t – as being attributed to my orientation and maybe the fact that I have become a political persona intimidates advertisers.

Your breakthrough hit was ‘Constant Craving’. What was it like to suddenly become as famous as you did in that moment?
I’d been working very hard for seven or eight years before ‘Constant Craving’ became a hit, so it wasn’t like it came up overnight. But the success-o-meter definitely went off the charts at that time and it was really exciting – it’s a rush. It’s like being stoned – you get really high and then, as we all know, there’s unfortunately a down and its three or four times longer and harder than it is to get high. So it was tough to come down from it. It set the bar high in a lot of people’s minds – not just in my mind, but in the mind of the record company – everyone expected the next record to be that successful and everything else seemed to be a failure if it didn’t reach that level. It’s a life lesson that you have to go through.

Have you had everything you’ve ever wanted or do you want more? Is there anything that you still haven’t had or experienced?
Well, the next fifty years of my life I haven’t experienced yet – I’m excited about that! Yeah, there’re people and places and tastes and sounds – just life itself. Music is a big part of my life, but it’s just a part of my life. I could lose my voice in a car accident today and while it would be devastating, I don’t think it would be the end of my life in any respect. I’m just interested in what unfolds.

Are you interested in becoming as big as you were during the time of ‘Constant Craving’, or, as time has moved on, are you happy with what you’ve got now?
I love where I’m at right now. I don’t have to work as hard and I feel like I’m afforded a much easier pace and much looser expectations. Being on a label like Nonesuch Records at the age of 46 and even just being in the music business for 25 years is an astonishing success. Just to be able to be on a record label that still lets me make the kind of music that I want to make is amazing to me.

“I’ve always taken a great sense of pride and responsibility in helping to open the mindset and shed some light onto the gay and lesbian culture.”

Will there be any more music made with Tony Bennett?
It’s always great to sing and to work with Tony. He has an idea for another record, but he’s so busy!

Is there anything in particular that you’ve learnt from him?
The music speaks for itself, but there’s a certain elegance to him and a certain grace that is really beautiful in that old school entertainment world, where the audience is king. It’s not so self-driven or self-absorbed, and there’s something beautiful about that. I love how Tony is on and off stage - the way he is around people and how gracious he is. He’s a Renaissance guy – he paints and he reads biographies about songwriters and he loves talking politics, so we have a lot of things in common. Just to be around that and to be around somebody who has lived that much life – it’s a very enriching experience.

Is there anyone else who you would like to collaborate with?
There’re probably a thousand! I would have never predicted I would work with Tony Bennett and I would have never predicted that I would work with Roy Orbison, and yet they were two experiences that were so enriching. I think the element of surprise - of not being in control and just letting the universe bring these people into my life - is the most exciting for me.

Look out for our review of Watershed next week and more info on kd lang and tour at
MSN LANGISMS http://groups.msn.com/langisms .