Culled from the crowd
K.D. Lang on her upcoming visit to St. John’s, her favourite local restaurant and the talent of Janet Cull
Local singer/songwriter Janet Cull has been chosen by k.d. lang to be the country superstar’s opening act at Mile One Centre on Sept. 13.
You might say she has a “constant craving.”
One of the first things K.D. Lang mentions when she talks about how excited she is to come to St. John’s is her favourite restaurant, India Gate. Speaking during a phone interview when the restaurant was still under renovations, Lang wasn’t happy to hear it was closed.
“Shut up! That’s it, I’m cancelling,” she says playfully.
Lang will be happy to know India Gate is open again, and she’ll be able to get her fix of Indian food when she’s in town for a show at Mile One Centre on Sept. 13. It’s one of 16 Canadian dates on her “Ingénue Redux” tour, in celebration of the 25th anniversary of “Ingénue,” her second album and the one that propelled her to international stardom. The album included the worldwide hit “Constant Craving,” and “Miss Chatelaine.”
“Twenty-five years. I know,” Lang says in disbelief over the passage of time.
She had been eyeing the 25year mark of the album, she says, thinking of perhaps touring it again, since it seems to be the trendy thing to do now. The record is also a big one for Lang, representative of some rich emotion.
“From the most successful moment in my career to the controversy, coming out and the Vanity Fair cover and all that, all those things came with a lot of processes, navigating through emotional minefields.”
At the time it was released, “Ingénue” wasn’t much like anything Lang had ever recorded before, and far from the popular Madonna/nirvana music that was big back then. It had a sort of cabaret feel.
“I came out with this big album of, I don’t know, European burlesque music, some sort of melancholy something,” Lang says.
“Ingénue” ended up going double platinum in Canada and the U.S. and platinum in the U.K., and earning Lang six 1993 Grammy nominations, with a Grammy win for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for “Constant Craving.” It also earned her three Juno Awards the same year.
The album remains iconic to many of Lang’s fans, for all kinds of reasons, not all of them music-related.
“I guess I was kind of an ambassador or visibility for people who were maybe struggling with being gay to realize there was someone else out there. This was before the internet,” Lang says. “Being gay, and especially growing up somewhere like small-town Alberta, you do feel isolated and alone.”
Lang will perform the entire “Ingénue” album onstage during her show, as well as some songs from her 2004 album, “Hymns From the 49th Parallel,” which features tracks by some of her favourite Canadian artists. Among them: a shiverinducing rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” said to have been his favourite among the plethora of cover versions of the song.
Lang has been named an official Canada 150 ambassador, and to that end, she and her team have personally chosen an opening act in each city on her tour. In St. John’s, that performer is singer/songwriter Janet Cull.
Cull is a multiple Musicnl Award winner and East Coast Music Award nominee who often performs locally in musical theatre productions (often with Spirit of Newfoundland and recently in TADA! Events’ production of “Jesus Christ Superstar” as Mary Magdalene). Cull will tour her most recent album, “Real Tough Love” — which just earned her five nominations for the upcoming 2017 Musicnl awards — this fall.
“Promoters in each city sent me some names and Youtube links and I went through them all. There were so many and it was very, very difficult to choose, but I just think Janet really fits the energy.” K.D. Lang, singer
“She’s incredible,” Lang says of Cull. “Promoters in each city sent me some names and Youtube links and I went through them all. There were so many and it was very, very difficult to choose, but I just think Janet really fits the energy.”
Tickets for K.D. Lang’s concert at Mile One Centre, with special guest Janet Cull, are available at the Mile One Centre box office and online at www.mileonecentre.com.