IN CONCERT
What: Ingénue Redux Tour with k.d. lang and Laura Mitic
Where: Royal Theatre
When: Saturday and Sunday, 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: Sold out
Ingénue should not have been such a stylistic surprise, considering the classical roots of Kathryn Dawn Lang. But to the faithful supporters of k.d. lang, especially those in the U.S., the 1992 release was anything but expected.
The recording quickly divided the audience of the country queen from Consort, Alberta, who, two years earlier, had won a Grammy Award in the country music category. Her new direction caught on with an entirely new audience, however, and added a new facet to her career — along with a new peer group.
In the years since, she has recorded and toured with Elton John, Carole King, Rosemary Clooney and Tony Bennett, who called lang the best singer of her generation.
Lang, 55, who lives in Calgary and Portland, Oregon, has not abandoned country altogether, but the contemporary crooning of Ingénue — capped by the slick No. 1 hit Constant Craving — has been a dominant presence on several of her subsequent recordings.
The shift in musical direction was integral to lang’s development as an artist, which is why she’s revisiting the era and the recording for a 25th anniversary tour, Ingénue Redux.
“It is, essentially, a pretty simple record,” lang said of Ingénue, during an interview with U.S. National Public Radio. “But what’s not simple about it is the intimacy, as I’m finding out now trying to perform it again.”
Her tour got underway last month in Australia, to ecstatic reviews. The 17-date Canadian leg of the Ingénue Redux Tour begins this weekend in Victoria with two sold-out performances at the Royal Theatre. The concerts Saturday and Sunday will feature the first complete performances of Ingénue in Canada.
In addition to songs from the album, lang will perform material from her 2004 tribute album, Hymns of the 49th Parallel, including her acclaimed rendition of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. “Since Leonard’s passing, I think it is, to me, a cultural landmark. It’s a moral anthem,” lang said in an interview with the CBC.
“It is a huge, huge cultural icon of a thing. It is beyond a song. I don’t even know how to describe it, but I feel very, very fortunate enough that I have had the opportunity to sing it for Leonard, to talk to Leonard about it. That, to me, was probably, musically, the pinnacle of my life.”
There is a direct link between lang’s singing style on Hallelujah and that of Ingénue, but she can appreciate how the latter was “a big switch” for her country music fans at the time. Ingénue followed 1989’s Absolute Torch and Twang, a hootenanny of a record whose swinging originals and interpretations of country classics gave her a foothold with country-music audiences.
It should have opened new avenues for Lang, who had spent a decade fashioning herself into a country classicist, with help from Nashville production legend Owen Bradley. But the process left her feeling unfulfilled.
“I purposely wanted to sing unornamented [with Ingénue],” lang told NPR. “I consciously went against the grain with this record.”
An anniversary edition of Ingénue was released on July 14, which required lang (who admits she does not listen to her old records) to revisit the material. Hearing the songs a quarter-century after they were recorded, she was surprised at how seamlessly she settled into her new role, despite her reservations.
“People were expecting me to be a country star and that wasn’t really who I was,” lang told the CBC. “My switch to Ingénue, I think both [producer] Ben [Mink] and I were both scared to death of the response to it. We did face a lot of criticism, but it prevailed and became a hit, thank goodness.”
Constant Craving netted lang a Grammy for best female pop vocal performance in 1993, and an MTV Video Award for best female video.
For lang, it was all vindication.
“Letting go of country, I had gotten to a place where it didn’t matter,” she told NPR. “What matters is that my music is honest. And if I don’t have success, [at least] I’m still doing something that’s honest.”
