Lang back to ‘Ingénue’ in Saturday concert
K.D. Lang (stylized as k.d. lang) is never quite sure who she’s singing for. “My fans kind of elude me in that I’ve eluded my fans over the years,” says the Canadian. “You know, I’ve switched genres. I win and lose fans every time I put out a record. But I think the consistency is me and my love and lust for music.”
Lang’s biggest switch came in 1992 when she jumped from country to pop with her sophomore album “Ingénue.” Last year, she began celebrating the 25th anniversary of that record with a tour that will be coming to Orlando’s Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts on Saturday (8 p.m., 445 S. Magnolia Ave., $39.50-$59.50, drphillipscenter.org).
The concert includes a performance of the album in its entirety, a process which Lang says was revelatory this many years on. “I have all the experiences of writing and recording the album but then I have two or three years — and maybe even 25 years — of playing the record,” she said. “And I have to celebrate the audience’s relationship to the record.”
Lang, 56, said she deliberated whether she would modernize the songs for this outing. “I decided to just let the music speak for itself,” she said. “We do quite a lot of the songs true to the record’s form, but in the middle of the set, we open it up and take some liberties with the arrangements. That’s a really a nice balance for us and hopefully it’s nice for the audience.”
Since her debut album “Shadowland” in 1988, Lang has earned a reputation for having a powerful, mezzosoprano voice that can deliver a wide breadth of pop emotion. She says it was a vocal coach who identified her as a soprano when she was 19 in a moment that changed her outlook. “I walked in and I had my baseball jacket on,” she remembered. “He had me sing a couple scales and then he said, ‘You’re a mezzosoprano.’ I said, ‘No, I’m an alto.’ He said, ‘Look, I don’t care if you’re a lesbian, you’re a mezzosoprano.’
“This was the very first time I had met him. That moment was like cracking a shell open for me.”
Born Kathryn Dawn, Lang also came out publicly as gay in 1992. She maintains a signature “butch” look with short hair and minimal makeup. “I’m not butch spiritually or mentally, but I’m certainly butch in appearance,” she said. “I think that’s the gods’ sense of humor that I have this voice with this outward appearance. It’s kind of incongruent but it sets the tone for my own incongruencies.”
She said the look served as a “brand identifier” in her early career, but that even after all these years, “it’s still not accepted. I think feminine butch is very threatening to people, as opposed to the androgyny that male rock stars have. I think people can assimilate that more because it is less threatening. So it’s something that I ponder and I debate with my friends, but I it’s also the cards that I’ve been dealt, so I sit back and watch it with intrigue.”
As for how she combines her technical training and emotional depth on stage, she says that’s something she’s spent 56 years trying to figure out. “Hopefully, after time and experience, the technical stuff becomes instinctual,” she said. “When there’s all sorts of noise on the outside, you just need to get into the center and be a deck on the water against the waves.”