Penny Lang, who died in 2016, would be 81 years old. His only son revisits his bohemian life and folk songs with disconcerting naturalness. “Honestly, admits son, I was hesitant to make a folk album, probably because throughout my youth, I was exposed to this environment, and who really wants to be like their parents? »
At age 21, in 1963, Penny Lang strummed her guitar at Café St-André seven days a week, five sets per evening, for $5. There were also other good folk addresses in Montreal, such as The New Penelope, The Yellow Door, The Blue Lantern, then in Ottawa, at Café Le Hibou. In Toronto, it was The Riverboat. All popular venues for popular folk music at the time.
It was an era in which the folk muse once hung up the phone on young Montreal poet Leonard Cohen, after the latter politely asked if she would agree to give him guitar lessons. Penny Lang, who spun bad cotton (in addition to her bipolarity), did not consider herself a teacher. End of the conversation. Schlack!
PHOTO PROVIDED BY JASON LANG
Penny Lang and her son, Jason
Do things differently
Usually a fan of white-hot guitars, Jason Lang has accompanied in the studio or in concert the McGarrigle sisters, Corey Hart, Roch Voisine (five albums), Isabelle Boulay, Jean-François Breau, Luce Dufault, Richard Séguin, without forgetting France D’Amour for whom he co-produced several records with her. He therefore had enough resources to produce alone this intimate album where he plays all the instruments and enough guts to get the necessary substance out of it.
When I started to sing the songs [de ma mère]it flowed naturally and immediately after singing the first one, I said to myself: that’s it, I found my way.
Jason Lang
Just like his mother, we feel the musician itching with a desire to feel the essentials of life. He plunges into the currents of folk and blues of the 1960s to bring them to a unique universe. With this complementarity of guitars as a vital framework.
“When you listen to my mother’s songs, you feel her, this irony, this tongue-in-cheek side that helps you better assimilate sometimes harsh lyrics like those of fire water which talks about my grandfather’s alcoholism. I come from Kansas City where I played at the Folk Alliance festival and this is what I explained to the public: sad songs can be sung cheerfully. »
Wanted poster
Born in 1970, Jason Lang never knew his father, but everything points to Greenwich Village folk and blues icon Dave Van Ronk.
The same Dave Van Ronk who died in 2002 who inspired the character in the Coen Brothers’ 2013 film Inside Llewyn Davis ! Bob Dylan admired him and he even became friends with him to the point of visiting him regularly in the early 1960s. Joan Baez called him “Leadbelly white”. Gruff Ronk never really got out of Greenwich Village. Hence its legend.
“That’s what my mother always told me. She’s had one consensual relationship with one man in her life and that’s him. I once tried to meet him through his manager and he didn’t want to know. He said my mother was crazy and blah, blah, blah…”
It’s still amazing that one of the blues patriarchs of the folk scene of the 1950s and 1960s is the father of Jason Lang.
“I look more like my mother, but if you saw pictures of my son, it’s his grandfather! For me, it is clear that he is my father.
“If she were still alive and I made her new record, what would her preferences be, her way of doing things? Lang also wonders. This resonates with me because Penny was not very comfortable in a studio environment. While I, on the other hand, LIVE in my studio, I eat it! I think if she was with us, I would do it the same way. »
The guy has just invented a kind of assertive, fruitful folk. Can one imagine Lang overwhelmed with peace and serenity with Handled With Care ? Or did he simply break an inner dam that tormented him? “It allowed me to rediscover my mother’s musical influences. She listened a little to Taj Mahal at that time, Richie Havens, and I’ve always been a little bohemian, it’s in the family…”
Launching on February 24 at the URSA bar, in Montreal. Performing March 25 at the Super Folk in Morin-Heights.
folklore
Handled With Care
Jason Lang
Outside Music/Fam Group/Believe