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
Noah Reid
Dane Clark

Noah Reid

FYI

Music News Digest: Whitehorse, Noah Reid and More Talent-Packed Holiday Shows in Ontario

Also this week: Andy Glydon is named the new executive director of MusicPEI, applications open for the newly-coined Folk Canada Conference & more.

Festivals News

Vancouver Folk Music Festival has announced the appointment of Corbin Murdoch as its new executive director. He is a local arts-scene veteran who recently served as the executive director of the Dawson City Music Festival and earlier worked with Theatre Replacement and the Cultch in Vancouver.

The VFMF is now heading into its 49th year. The Georgia Straight notes that "one of Vancouver’s longest-running cultural events, the festival survived a rough patch as the world was emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic." In Jan. 2023, the fest announced the cancellation of that summer's fest, but a public outcry saw that decision reversed and the event has continued annually since then.

keep readingShow less
advertisement