advertisement
FYI

Early Days When Cowboys Found KD Lang A Bit Too Strange

Kathryn Dawn Lang, OC wasn't always the perfect singer and the toast of Music City. In fact, in her backyard in early days she was a force to reckon with, and some of the forces she had to reckon with weren't warm to her punked-up hillbilly persona. Ross Perlmutter explains.

Early Days When Cowboys Found KD Lang A Bit Too Strange

By External Source

Ross Perlmutter Facebook


“I have a very special board tape of kd getting fired, by the crowd, onstage at the Ranchman’s in Calgary.

The short story is that Neil McGonnigal and I booked her into the Ranchman’s for her Calgary debut. The place was packed with cowboys and local music people, and the first set went swimmingly. Halfway through the second set, some drunk cowboys thought: ‘Hey, waitaminute. This woman is a gawdamn punk rocker, and she’s making fun of our music!’ And they approached the stage. On the tape, you can clearly hear them say ‘you have to leave!’, and kd responds by saying ‘OK, we’ll just finish this set...’

advertisement

‘No, NOW!’

“Kd apologized with an ‘OK, buckaroos and buckarettes’ and that was it. We pulled her from the Ranchman’s and booked her right next door at another club called Longhorns, and that was the start of her rise to fame. That tape remains one of my most prized possessions.”

advertisement
Céline Dion performing at the 1996 Olympics
Olympics

Céline Dion performing at the 1996 Olympics

Culture

Céline Dion and Beyond: 5 Classic Olympics Performances By Canadian Musicians

Ahead of Céline Dion's highly-anticipated comeback performance at the Paris Olympics, revisit these previous showstoppers by iconic Canadians like k.d. lang, Robbie Robertson, and Dion herself.

Superstar Céline Dion is set for a comeback performance at the Paris Olympics, but she isn't the first Canadian musician to step into the Olympic spotlight.

Since Olympics ceremonies began shifting towards showcasing the national culture of the host city — and booking celebrity entertainers to do so — Canadians have brought some major musical chops to the Olympic proceedings.

keep readingShow less
advertisement