Penny Lang
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Penny Lang

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The best kept secret in music

Press


"Penny Lang a Canadian folk and roots legend"

Penny Lang a Canadian folk and roots legend
CLOSE-UP / Out Montreal singer comes to Black Sheep Inn
Capital Xtra staff / Capital Xtra / Thursday, April 13, 2006


Penny Lang isn't ever gonna be 100 percent cool, but she is one of the few singers today who evoke thundering accolades that go far beyond the customary comments made about artists.

As fellow Montreal singer/ songwriter Jesse Winchester once remarked, "I first heard Penny sing at the Montreal Folk Workshop. I heard passion, I heard vulnerability, and I heard complete candour about pretty much everything."

Lang's eighth album Stone & Sand & Sea & Sky on Borealis Records caps a remarkable four- decade career. In that time this delightful 63-year-old singer/guitarist has evolved from being a coffeehouse draw in her Montreal hometown to being one of Canada's leading roots-based artists and a major name at folk festivals.

And an out lesbian.

"Penny really is remarkable," says Roma Baran, co-producer of Stone & Sand & Sea & Sky. "Absolutely distinctive. Listen to that voice for two seconds and you think, 'That's Penny Lang.'"

Through her career, the fiercely unconventional Lang has played for fishermen in Newfoundland and farmers in Alberta. And to audiences in coffeehouses and festivals throughout North America. She has also toured Australia, Italy, Denmark, France and Great Britain.

Assessing her career, Lang says, "I'm not a big star. But I love what I do. Often, I am referred to as a folk or blues person. Or as a Pete Seeger-type singer. People may have a particular idea of what I do but it is not necessarily what they will hear when I perform. I do material from all types of music."




PENNY LANG.
The Black Sheep Inn,
Wakefield. Apr 30. 4pm.



- Capital Xtra staff / Capital Xtra /


"By STEPHEN PEDERSON / At the Folk Fest"

Monday, August 8, 2005
Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada


By STEPHEN PEDERSON / At the Folk Fest

In 19 years of covering the Lunenburg Folk Harbour Festival, I have never heard such a powerful uproar from a festival audience, and this was no rock concert.
Penny Lang, soft and sweet and relevant, provided a soulful Andante.
I can't remember any Folk Harbour concert presenting a more consistently brilliant lineup at a single event.

It was a grand beginning to an unforgettable evening. Penny Lang had little to do to win the huge audience over. Frail-looking, but firm as ever in her clear, steady voice, she sang of common tragedies and familiar hurts: men who use alcohol to drown their pain while robbing their families of a good man through growing mean and sad.
Lang sang of how tough the world is for kids to grow up in, she sang of old age and "all those honky-tonks and whisky rivers" flowing back to you - not personal experience, to be sure, but the reflections of a woman grown wise through compassion. On a stool in front of her a roll of duct tape held down the papers she now needs to sing the lyrics no longer available to her memory following her recent stroke.
Lang also sang Careless Love - with all of us, of course, and ended with Ed McCurdy's Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream, in remembrance of the 60th anniversary of Hiroshima.

- The Chronicle Herald Entertainment


"A Penny for our woods"

FOLK’S FIRST LADY: Lang not long for Montreal — she’s moving here
by John P. McLaughlin

Stepping out your front door on a Montreal morning this time of year means seeing your breath and rusted maple leaves the size of Frisbees wafting to your feet. Everybody knows that soon, inexorably, it’ll be time for overcoats, boots, mitts and months and months of hauling ass over battlements of dirty snow just to get to the corner dépanneur.

Penny Lang, meanwhile, is feeling just peachy about the coming winter season. After 63 years of salt rings on her footwear and numb nose, she has left grand old Montreal and joined the rest of us hippies windmill-dancing naked on arboreal shores.
Lang — a.k.a. Canada’s First Lady of Folk — is to the Montreal acoustic music scene what Valdy is to ours, only bluesier. And no beard. She really got her career going when she shucked her secretarial job at the downtown YMCA, appropriate work for a young woman in 1963, and started playing at a local club six nights a week, 9 p.m. to 3 a.m., $5 a night. That’s dues-paying. She was around for the great ’60s folkmusic boom and played all the festivals, all the clubs and all the little musty theatres. She did a lot of children’s entertaining, watched contemporaries — now-familiar names like Bruce Cockburn and Murray MacLauchlan — come up and get the big record deals, and still she just kept plugging away. For a while there she went away to a cabin in the woods to raise a son and generally detoxify from the city, the biz and maybe a party substance or two. But, mostly it’s been her and that guitar, in for the long, journeyman haul. A couple of years back she came here to do a couple of shows backed by Rick Baker, the former Doug & The Slugs guitarist and Montrealer. She had a good look around and was smitten.

“I fell in love first of all with Saltspring Island,” says Lang, “but that’s too rich for me. A touring gypsy folk singer can’t afford to go there. And the Queen Charlottes were beautiful but that’s a bit far. I fell in love with Robert’s Creek the most, I think. I spent a week there sitting on a friend’s terrace all day long with my guitar, just doodling away and enjoying myself. The trees were so tall
and the eagles were flying, it was so quiet and peaceful.”

Playing the Pender Harbour Jazz Fest further up the Sunshine Coast, Lang looked up an old boss and friend from her Montreal secretarial days and the two hung for a while, went to lunch and generally renewed their acquaintance. He has a mobile home in Madeira Park and just like that, bought her a used RV with a pad in the same little park. “Hell, why not?” she thought and she and her partner are now in the process of moving.

About the size of a city bus, the trailer needed paint, some new flooring but has all the necessary amenities and Lang is like an excited girl at the prospect of settling in by the ocean, the big cedars above her. And. No. Snow.

I mentioned when she’s out getting groceries at the IGA Foodliner in Madeira Park to keep an eye out for the occasionally spotted Joni Mitchell who lives just down the road.

“I hope she and I do run into one another,” says Lang. “We actually met as very young women, both of us unknown, at the Mariposa Folk Festival in the ’60s, long before she recorded her first record. We became friends over a weekend and later she invited me to her first concert in Montreal after her first recording.

“I haven’t seen her since — my son’s seen her and said hello from me and she said back to say hi — so I’m hoping her memory is better than mine. I would love to have the opportunity to say hello and hope that we could share a pot of tea and conversation like two old friends.”

jpmac@gmx.net
In concert
Penny Lang
Where: The Railway Club, Dunsmuir at Seymour
When: Tonight at 7
Tickets: $10 at the door

Guitarist Dave Clarke and singer Penny Lang strum by the shoreline.
John P. McLaughlin
ON MUSIC
- The Province


"Penny Lang Stone + Sand + Sea + Sky"

Penny Lang Stone + Sand + Sea + Sky Borealis/Koch

April 28, 2006

The "Queen of Montreal Folk" is how she's sometimes billed in recognition of the quality of her work since her 1963 start at the Café Andre there and this may be the finest album in her illustrious career. A fan for almost that entire time and an accompanist for a spell, filmmaker and performance art producer Roma Baran has created a stunning aural landscape for some truly fine songs. Her work with Laurie Anderson might have predicted otherwise but she has used a folk instrument palette to great effect. Percussionist Vivian Stoll is co-producer with Baran, a pairing that was Grammy-nominated for their work with Rosalie Sorrels. "Careless Love" is simply magnificent. This blues-drenched lesson of the price of careless love (paid many years later) makes most other versions redundant. An original by Penny, "Diamonds on the Water", with just two acoustic guitars and bass, is another highlight as is the traditional gospel song "Let Me Fly", with son Jason Lang on electric guitar. Many of Montreal's finest are present, including Kate McGarrigle and Michael Jerome Browne, but Penny Lang's warm, full-bodied voice is what stays with you, showing no signs of her recent stroke. She'll be presenting the album, with her producers as guests, at the NOW Lounge on May 11.

John Valenteyn
- Maple Blues Magazine


"Stone & Sand & Sea & Sky"

April 30, 2006

Roots

Stone & Sand & Sea & Sky ****

Penny Lang (Borealis)
Penny Lang is the Montreal-born folksinger who, feeling depressed four decades ago, turned down a request from an aspiring musician named Leonard Cohen to teach him guitar. B-duh. Cohen went on to become, well, Cohen, while Lang has since laboured fruitfully but less famously in the folk/roots vineyards.
Her half-dozen recordings have tended to be enjoyable but hurried affairs. This new album of mostly blues, folk and country covers slated for release Tuesday, makes up for lost ground.
Recorded leisurely, it finds Lang singing in a deeper, richer register than before, luxuriating in songs such as the traditional Careless Love and Dylan's One Too Many Mornings. Son Jason, Kate McGarrigle and other Montrealers past and present help out.
Penny Lang plays the Black Sheep Inn in Wakefield, Quebec today, and the National Arts Centre Fourth Stage on Saturday.

Patrick Langston

- OTTAWA CITIZEN


Discography

Stone and Sea and Sand and Sky Borealis Records/ TO BE RELSEASED IN MAY 2006. Poduced by Roma Baran with the participation of Kate Mcgarrigle, Vivian Stoll and Michael Jerome Brown

Gather Honey Borealis Records/Festival Nov. 2001 retrospective album 1963-1978 ;liner notes by folk historian Gary Cristall; JUNO nomination; many originals by Penny’s contemporaries of the day

Somebody Else She-Wolf/Festival Distribution, Oct. 99 Produced by David Baxter, with Jason Lang, Michelle Josef, Bazil Donovan, David Baxter, Lori Yates, Linda Feijo mostly Penny Lang originals, some co-writes, and a Bob Snider song

Penny & Friends Live She Wolf/Festival Distribution, Nov. 98. Producers: Heidi Fleming, Simon Pressey and Penny Lang. With: Jason Lang, Michael Browne, Bill Gossage, Bob Stagg, Ken & Chris Whiteley, Jody Golick, Martin Boodman, Linda Morrison, Kim Richardson; mainly traditional songs

Carry On Children She-Wolf Records/Festival Distribution, May 96. Producer: Ken Whiteley. With special guests: Moxy Früvous, Colin Linden, Quartette, Ken & Chris Whiteley, Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer, Garnet Rogers, & others. Half of the songs self-penned…half original Canadian

Ain’t Life Sweet aut. 1993, She-Wolf Records/Festival Distribution. Prod. by
With Jason & Scot Lang, Ray Bonneville, Rick Haworth, Danielle Martineau, Michel Donato, Linda Morrison, & many more. All Penny Lang originals save 1.

Penny Lang Live at the Yellow Door 1992/97 She-Wolf Records/Festival Distribution.
Solo, live at the Yellow Door’s 25th anniversary. Prod. Simon Pressey, Heidi Fleming ‘60’s era classics, new and old

Yes 1991/97 She-Wolf Records/Festival Distribution.
With Jason Lang, Scot Lang, Ken Pearson, Linda Morrison, Pat Donaldson, Michel Donato, Miche Pouliot, Jody Golick, Prod. Scot Lang/Jody Golick; Penny’s first originals and songs by close friends

Photos

Feeling a bit camera shy

Bio

PENNY LANG
Penny Lang takes top honors at the Canadian Folk Music Awards

Canada's "grande dame of folk-blues," Penny Lang, capped off a triumphant
career come-back in Edmonton last December earning top honors at last year's
Canadian Folk Music Awards. Twenty two Canadian newspapers carried the
story.

Lang took the prize for "Best Solo Artist," while her new CD,
Stone+Sand+Sea+Sky won "Best Album - Contemporary."

"Penny really is remarkable. Absolutely distinctive. Listen to that voice for two seconds and you think, 'That's Penny Lang.'" Roma Baran, co-producer of "Stone & Sand & Sea & Sky."

Penny Lang isn't ever gonna be 100% cool, but she is one of the few singers today that evokes thundering accolades that go far beyond the customary comments made about artists.

As fellow Montreal singer/songwriter Jesse Winchester once remarked, "I first heard Penny sing at the Montreal Folk Workshop..I heard passion, I heard vulnerability, and I heard complete candor about pretty much everything."

Lang's eighth album "Stone & Sand & Sea & Sky" on Borealis Records caps a remarkable four decade career during which this delightful 63-year-old singer/guitarist has evolved from being a coffeehouse draw in her Montreal hometown to being one of Canada's leading roots-based artists.

Through her career, the fiercely unconventional Lang has played for the fishermen in Newfoundland; the farmers in Alberta; and played to audiences in coffeehouses and festivals throughout North America. She has also toured Australia, Italy, Denmark, France and the United Kingdom.

Lang is also the subject of a 1999 documentary "Stand Up: On High Ground with Penny Lang" by Jocelyne Clarke. In 2003, she received the first Prix Folqui awarded by FOLQUEBEC.

Assessing her career, Lang says, "I'm not a big star. But I love what I do. Often, I am referred to as a folk or blues person. Or as a Pete Seeger type singer. People may have a particular idea of what I do but it is not necessarily what they will hear when I perform. I do material from all types of music."

This 13-track album--Lang's second recording for Toronto-based Borealis--follows the 2001 retrospective "Gather Honey" that pooled live recordings, demos and radio shows from 1963 to 1978. This is Lang's first studio release in seven years.

Lang's first six albums were recorded for the Montreal-based She-Wolf label, a boutique label Lang operates with her tenacious manager Heidi Fleming. This catalog includes: "Yes" (1991), "Live at the Yellow Door" (1992), "Ain't Life Sweet" (1993), "Carry On Children" (1996), "Penny Lang & Friends Live," (1998) and Somebody Else (1999). In 2000, Lang signed a license agreement with Borealis Records.

Lang's staunchest admirers might blanch at news that her new album was recorded over a two year period. That it was co-produced by two meticulous New York-based perfectionists-producer Roma Baran and engineer Vivian Stoll who favored a more polished and warmer sound than Lang's previous recordings.

They would until they listened to the album which includes backing by her son Jason Lang, as well as by Kate McGarrigle, Ken Pearson, Michael Jerome Browne, Dave Clarke, Gaston Bernard, Rachelle Garniez and others.

There are no tracks here less than beautifully-crafted. Each track seems put together with hands knowing just when and where to leave things out. There's both craft, and insight in the songs picked and the production and repertoire are tailored to the contours of Lang's distinctive full voice, now fused with an intimacy rarely heard in her recorded work.

Brimming with unbridled enthusiasm, Lang acknowledges the album is significant step for her.
"Every aspect of this record was done differently than what I've done before," she says. "This is the first time I've had time to prepare and give serious thought to what was going on. All of the other times recording had to be done within ten days or so with little rehearsal time because of budgets."

"Stone & Sand & Sea & Sky" contains an exquisite Lang original ("Diamonds on the Water") as well as her interpretations of songs by Canadians Rose Vaughan ("Stone & Sand & Sea & Sky"), Linda Morrison ("Room To Move"), and Ken Pearson ("It's Not Easy") as well as songs penned by Bob Dylan ("One Too Many"), Rosalie Sorrels (My Last Go Round"), Bruce "Utah" Phillips ("If I Could Be The Rain"), The Greenbriar Boys ("High Muddy Waters"), and Les Barker ("Sudden Waves").

There are also superb renderings of the traditional "Careless Love" and the gospel standard "Let Me Fly."

Until Baran, notes Lang, she hadn't had a producer who had an overall vision for her recordings or who could give her firm direction in the studio.

"Roma had a vision for this CD," says Lang. "She had worked with me as a musician in the Sixties, and knew what I wanted to try to become." After leaving Montreal Baran had moved to New York where she produced most of Laurie Anderson's