New album marks big change for kd
WATERSHED is the name of kd lang's latest album - and her tour, which arrives at Birmingham Symphony Hall tonight, sees the 47-year-old Canadian singer at a watershed in her career.
Not only has she self-produced the album but she's also decided to ditch her longtime band for the tour.
"That's another reason for the album title,'' she admits of the decision to replace David Piltch, Greg Leisz and Teddy Borowiecki. ''It marks a huge, huge change in my life. Teddy, David and Greg will not be with me. I'll have a brand new band. It's a natural turning point - they're older, and are really in demand in the studio for lots of other artists now.
''It's really sad for me to see them go, but at the same time it is one of those changes, a watershed moment, when the direction shifts. I'm excited to work with some new guys and build new relationships. It's a big change for me, but I'm ready to embrace it."
In her 25 years of recordmaking, Kat hryn Dawn Lang has worked with a wide range of producers - country (Owen Bradley), pop (David Kahne), even rockabilly (Dave Edmunds) - and she has coproduced such discs as the 1992 Ingenue.
The natural next step, it seems, was for the artist to produce a complete album on her own for the first time.
''I began to demo the songs in such a way that all the perfor mances could be used on t he record if I wanted them to,'' she says. ''I would just step back from a song, re-visit it later, and if I liked it, I would keep the track. It was a matter of chronicling, of documenting the songwriting process.
''A lot of what you hear on Watershed is first approaches, the creative moment of songwriting rather than just the performance of a song.
''I was always looking for a producer, but in the back of my mind I was thinking, I can produce this. I guess I kind of grew into the fact that I could do it, that I had the confidence to do it.
''I went into the process a little more intensely in the last year and a half, more intensely into editing and overdubbing, staying focused and diligent - and then I was done. And I had produced the record."
It has already been a momentous year for kd, in more ways than one.
In April she joined pro-Tibet protesters in Canberra as the Beijing 2008 Olympic torch relay made its way through the Australian capital. In June it was announced that she would receive a star on Canada's Walk of Fame.
She concludes that the songs on Watershed "are a reassessment of my relationship to the world and to myself, and how my actions and thoughts and my offerings affect my life and the lives of others.
''That's where the idea of a watershed comes in, I guess, with a shift in perspective."
* Ticket Info
KD LANG Tonight: Symphony Hall, Birmingham Tickets: 0121 780 3333.
