http://www.macleans.ca/culture/the-i...w-diana-krall/
Diana Krall isn’t the type of artist to have a musical mid-life crisis. The two-time Grammy-winning jazz singer and pianist is content doing what she feels she does best—swinging with the legends. Her latest disc, Wallflower, focuses on just that, as she records tracks plucked from the ’60s (the Eagles, the Mamas and the Papas), ’70s (10cc), ’80s (Crowded House) and today (an unrecorded Paul McCartney cut), with producer David Foster.
Q: What criteria did you have for choosing Wallflower’s tracklist? The songs look like they could be bookmarks of your 20s, 30s and 40s.
A: I don’t [often] get to sing songs that people of my generation grew up with. I can’t sing anything without a personal association.
Q: How did your eight-year-old sons affect Wallflower?
A: I’m making different choices now that my children are older. If it’s my choice to have a drink and a meal after a press day, I go home and and read to my children and put them to sleep. iChat is not like cuddling.
Q: Are you planning to take them on tour?
A: It’s important for me to bring my kids on tour. We need to be near each other. My role model in life as an artist and a mother is Sarah McLachlan. She does things with grace. During the challenges, I always think, “How would she do this?”
Q: Rufus Wainwright’s memories of being on the road with his mom, Kate McGarrigle, prompted him to make his own music.
A: You are talking about someone I hold in the highest regard. The reason I don’t have a Rufus cover on this album is I don’t have the range to sing anything he’s written.
Q: Wallflower opens with a cover of California Dreamin’. Michelle Phillips once said the song was about overcoming bad circumstances by “listening to the call of opportunity.” Do you feel that using your Canada Arts Council grant to move to Los Angeles when you were 19 echoes her interpretation?
A: That’s an eloquent way of putting it. I really wanted to be a jazz musician. I wasn’t singing at that time. I was at Berklee College of Music and came back home to B.C. I figured I’d go back to school. I finally got a scholarship to another school in Boston and then I got the call to study with [jazz musicians] Jimmy Rowles, Ray Brown and John Clayton—people I’d listen to on vinyl as a kid. So I remember talking to the [registrar’s office] about the fact I had this opportunity to go to L.A. to learn from [musicians] who used to play with Billie Holiday. She said, “I’m sure this will be much better for you.” Who would say that?
Q: If one of your twins becomes a musician, do you think you’d approve?
A: Now, as a mother, if my kid was doing what I was doing at that age I would freak out! I drove down with my father and I rented a room in a house in the suburbs of L.A. It didn’t even have a door. Before I got the grant, I had to fill out all these forms. Ray Brown wrote my letter of reference on a cocktail napkin. Jimmy Rowles doodled a little animated character of himself on my application form! I sent it all in. Thank God there was somebody who understood it didn’t matter if my references weren’t typed out formally.
Q: Once there, was the education just as frantic as the application process?
A: I was driving around like a crazy character out of [the film] Bridesmaids. I was playing at the same kind of country club Kristin Wiig pulled up to in her car. When I saw that movie, I actually said, “That was me” out loud. I was doing anything I could to play gigs so I could learn from my heroes and see them play live.
Q: Jimmy Rowles made a lasting impression.
A: I still have the manuscript paper where he wrote out all his voicings and chords for me [on] songs like Poor Butterfly. I’d sit on his couch and mostly ask him about Billie Holiday. Recently I was driving home and heard Jimmy on the radio and it hit me. I have the same feeling about him I did when I was a 16-year-old kid. Somehow we were extraordinarily connected. No matter what I’m playing, even if it’s Wallflower, I still sound like him.
Q: You cover 10cc’s I’m Not In Love, also covered by Tori Amos when she was the age you are now. She said, “I’m not going to wear 50 the way the media says I should wear 50.” Can you relate?
A: It reminds me of that skit on Saturday Night Live by Molly Shannon. “I kick and I stretch! I’m 50!” That’s me. I don’t feel like it. I don’t worry about age appropriateness. My kids think my only job is to make them laugh.
Q: You’ve always felt at odds with being a jazz singer but not a jazz pianist. Why?
A: As a jazz pianist, I was born to swing but I’m not a jazz singer. When I worked with Ray Brown, he tried to get me to scat. I told him straight out: “I. Do. Not. Do. That.” I’m not good at it. I just like to sing the melody.
Q: Have you received flak for not being at the keyboard on this disc?
A: I have. But David Foster is badass and he plays better than I can. This is his wheelhouse. He made my voice sound darker because he put everything in difficult keys: D, E and A. I’m cursing him now.
Q: Your father was a serious collector of sheet music and he’s left you such a legacy. Have you been able to sort through his archive yet?
A: I felt like I did some of that with Glad Rag Doll when I took all the songs I heard from the 78s and [the family’s] gramophone collection and put it into a show. My father died a month ago, so you can imagine that it’s very soon to be speaking about him. It’s very raw. I feel grateful I was able to honour his love for sheet music while he was here and able to enjoy it. He was at the first Glad Rag Doll show and I had his gramophone on stage with pictures of our family. His [death] has left me and my sister shattered. This new album is not my father’s collection, but I’m not doing a 180-degree turn when it comes to performance. I won’t leave him behind.
Q: How was it sharing a stage with Neil Young?
A: I felt like a student watching him talk about Phil Ochs and Gordon Lightfoot from side-stage. I was sitting there taking mental notes. Neil pushed me. He wanted me to figure out the audiences and take a risk. I’d try a Buffy Saint-Marie song! I was putting my ass on the line in front of Neil Young fans in Calgary. I had to play this broken piano that he had and every night I did the Tom Waits song Take It With Me and that piano made me play differently.
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