Diana krall - iycrmm

[charlene]

DIANA KRALL has sung IYCRMM onstage (last year out west with Neil Young's protest tour) and plans to record it on her next LP.. http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2...ody-allen-film
Hi, Diana. Have you recovered from your bout of pneumonia? (1)

I haven’t fully recovered. It really knocked me sideways. I’m doing so much better now, but I’m in a really cold place – in my apartment in New York, trying to get the radiator to work. I’m hovering over it with my fingerless gloves on.

Talking of New York, you’re a Woody Allen fan. Have you seen him play the clarinet at the Carlyle?

The Carlyle is one of the few hotels left in New York where you walk in and feel like you could see Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. I did go to see him there once – I was planning on going again but I haven’t made it.

Has he asked you to appear in one of his films?

That would be my dream come true. Actually, I have been in one of his films. Yes! It was 12 years ago. I don’t remember what it’s called (2). Isn’t that stupid? All I know is I had a chance to play piano, and I had a chance to chat with him. It was the highlight of my life. I’ve been in a Michael Mann film, too [Public Enemies]. Every film I’ve been in I play a girl singer. I love Woody Allen. While I was sick I watched Manhattan Murder Mystery three times, and Crimes and Misdemeanors four times. It’s a masterpiece, like listening to a Miles Davis record.

Are you anything like Annie Hall?

That would be like comparing myself to Joni Mitchell. There’s nobody like that. She is one of the women who I hold in highest regard.

Is your life more Bananas or Husbands and Wives? (3)

I would say it’s more Morecambe & Wise lately. I’m Shirley Bassey singing Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, putting her foot through the paper step (4). I’m a full-time mum with two boys [twins Dexter and Frank, 8], getting up at 6.30, taking them to school, making music, doing this and that. I get to talk to you about Woody Allen, which is pretty nice, but I still worry about what to cook for dinner.

What are you cooking for dinner?

Probably take-out. I have a long press day. No, I’ll probably cook salmon.

On your new album, you cover songs by the Eagles, Dylan, McCartney and Elton. You also do 10cc’s I’m Not In Love. Were you drawn to the tune, the words, or the groundbreaking production?

I just happened to have the single when I was growing up and liked it. I’m sorry if I sound touchy. Sometimes you do things and not think about them too much. There was no great statement other than I like these songs and I wanted to make a pop record, not a jazz record.

You also cover Alone Again, Naturally by Gilbert O’Sullivan. Lovely song. It’s about death, isn’t it?

It’s about someone who left you at the altar and you’re planning to hurl yourself off a cliff over it. Growing up in Canada, I listened to a lot of different music. Most of the songs on the new album are from my record collection.

Is the album a statement, saying these pop stars are on a par with the Great American Songbook types you covered on your 1993 debut, Stepping Out?

That’s totally not the point of this record at all. I wouldn’t even entertain a discussion about that because it’s impossible. You can’t compare them. It’s going to be interesting for Dylan – not that I’m comparing myself to him – to answer questions about his record because he’s doing Frank Sinatra songs (5). To answer your question: Elton John is as important to me as George Gershwin. So are the Beatles, so is Leonard Cohen, so is Joni Mitchell, so is Neil Young.

Do you discuss this stuff with Elvis Costello? (6)

Not really. We don’t sit around going, “Is Burt Bacharach as important as such-and-such?” We – me and my peers – do talk about our children’s generation and how much information they’re exposed to compared to when we just had radio and vinyl.

Didn’t you tour last year with Neil Young?

Yes, it was a protest tour, and it was incredible.

What were you protesting about?

The way the [oil] pipeline is being handled for the First Nations people. He’s one of my biggest influences. I got invited to go on tour with him. So I said, “Who else is on the bill?”, thinking there would be seven other people or something and I’d do 15 minutes. And they said, “No, it’ll just be you.” I was like, Oh my God. I started playing Gordon Lightfoot songs and Joni Mitchell. It opened me up to start thinking differently about stuff.

You toured with Tony Bennett in 2000. What did you think of his album with Lady Gaga?

It was great to show her fans she could do different things, and do it really well and passionately. Good for her.

If you stripped away the costumes and paraphernalia, would she be you?

Of course not. What do you mean, “Would she be me?” She’s got her own deal. I’m a very different artist to Lady Gaga. She actually reminded me a lot of Liza Minnelli. She’s much more dramatic than me. I’m not dramatic. That’s why I sit at a piano and I don’t stand out front of a big band.

You’ve been described as “detached and aloof”. Fair?

Well, if I don’t like you.

Ah.

I don’t think that’s true at all. I’m terribly shy, and when I started out there wasn’t a Michael Bublé, there wasn’t another person like me who was doing what I was doing. I didn’t expect to have this level of success or fame. I wasn’t that young – I was 30 – but all of a sudden I was going on tour with Tony Bennett – holy shit! I’m locked in my bedroom listening to Bill Evans and Tony Bennett records and now I’m on tour with him.

What’s the best EC album?

I can remember [when I was young] driving in the car listening to My Aim Is True, and never thinking I’d marry him. For me every record is amazing, but the true masterpiece is Painted from Memory (7). Ask Barbra Streisand. I produced her record [2009’s Love Is the Answer] and she wanted to do My Thief. It’s incredible – emotional but complicated – and very difficult for any other singer to sing.

Would you be offended if your sons Dexter and Frank chose to put on Oliver’s Army instead of your song Abandoned Masquerade?

I think they should be listening to Pump It Up rather than tragic, brokenhearted love songs. They don’t need to be singing [Chet Baker’s] I Get Along Without You Well at this point. Actually, right now they’re into Chaplin. We sit down as a family and watch Chaplin movies.

Would you censor what they listen to? Would you turn off NWA?

I don’t know what that is.

They’re a gangsta rap group from the late-1980s.

Ask me that when that time comes. Right now they’re listening to The Immigrant Song and Jack White and I’m very fine with that.

You’ve met Barack Obama and the first man on the moon (8). What’s left to achieve?

I just want to be a really good mum. I feel pretty lucky to be where I am.

Nine gold, three platinum, seven multi-platinum albums, 15m sales … Who’s the breadwinner at home?

I didn’t even know that till you told me. I’m just mum. It’s an amazing family. We’re both out there playing music and doing what we love.

Have you been approached to do an At Home With the Krall-Costellos?

No, thanks. I’d love to do something like [Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon’s] The Trip, though. That you could twist my arm to do. The Trip to Italy was fantastic. Nothing to do with reality shows – I’m too private. But we have a great time. A very happy life. I’m very, very lucky. It’s a lot of fun in my house.

Have you ever held a dinner party where your music plays in the background?

No. We have dinner parties at other people’s houses where I play the piano, and we all sing. That’s one of my favourite things. At the last one I had Billy Connolly singing Wallflower [the title track of her new LP] with me. That was for my birthday. He’s also someone I hold in high regard.

Do you feel self-conscious meeting your heroes?

I met Bob Dylan and I didn’t know what to say, so all I said was, “I really liked the way you played piano.” He said, “Well, you should know. Because you’re a piano player.” I felt so humiliated!

That’s funny. Did you know that Alison Moyet once blurted out something she didn’t mean to say to your Elvis and she ended up – true story – not leaving the house for years, she was so mortified (9).

[Silence] That’s a little different. That’s slightly different. [Ruffled] I’ve got to pick up my children from school, so I must go.

Footnotes
1) She had to postpone the release of her new cover versions album, Wallflower, when she contracted the illness last October.

2) She appeared in a scene of 2003’s Anything Else, playing piano in a bar.

3) Bananas is one of Woody’s “early, funny” ones; Husbands and Wives a heavy, dark later one.

4) In 1971, during a performance on their show, Bassey did indeed put her foot through a flimsy staircase.

5) Shadows in the Night, released on 2 February.

6) She married Elvis Costello in 2003.

7) His 1998 team-up with Burt Bacharach.

8) Krall, who was a “total space nut” as a kid, met Neil Armstrong in 2009.

9) Moyet told the Guardian in 2013 that, after the incident, she “never accepted a music business invite again” and “became agoraphobic”.

[charlene]

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.

continued in next post

[charlene]

Q: It sounds like you tailor sets to your venue.

A: When I was with Neil Young, we were in Regina with a lot of flannel shirts in the audience. I wasn’t going to sing Peel Me a Grape then. C’mon! So since Neil started talking about Gordon Lightfoot, I sang If You Could Read My Mind. I went on to record it and it will be on an EP soon.

Q: The CBC wrote about your version of Peel Me a Grape and claimed your version has dominatrix undertones. When you are singing live, are you having a 50 Shades of Grey moment?

A: Maybe when you’re 28. Now I sing that song because fans want it and I’m such a ham, I’ll stop between [lyrics] and say, “I really don’t believe that line—I’m a mom with two children.”

Q: You did a duet with Rosemary Clooney on an amazing version of The Boy From Ipanema.

A: She was like a second mother to me. She taught me to be myself. I don’t mean that in a [trite] way. She told me to not be afraid.

Q: At 70, Clooney was out on the road for 300 days. Is that an act you want to follow?

A: I would want to be Tony Bennett. I’d do what he did with Lady Gaga instead. Thank God they did that record. It gives me hope.

Q: The most humbling lesson you learned?

A: I came from a place that was not entitled. I remember Ray Brown was going to play with Oscar Peterson at the Blue Note and the tickets were $60. I was hoping he’d give me a free ticket. He said, “You can buy a ticket so you can learn what it’s like to work really hard to pay for a ticket . . . just like the rest of the audience.” So I did.

Q: You’ve stated that on your Live In Paris disc, you weren’t happy with your interpretation of Joni Mitchell’s A Case of You. Why?

A: I feel like I needed more time with it. Every night on tour when I do it, I try to find my way into it. It will be on a Canadian EP, which will be out soon. Live In Paris represents a favourite time in my life. My parents were there and it was at the peak of record-selling and you weren’t worried about streaming and Spotify. My mum had had a bone-marrow transplant and she was well and we were all able to have a big party.

Q: Are some songs best sung at a certain age?

A: Most certainly. Hearing Dylan sing [Frank Sinatra’s] Why Try to Change Me Now was hard. I’ve recorded demos of it and I couldn’t get to a certain passage in the song: [sings] “Don’t you remember I was always your clown / I’m sentimental so I walk in the rain.” I’m fine until halfway through and then it doesn’t represent anything that I am. It suits a 73-year-old like Dylan. He knows it and he’s lived it.

Q: Many artists don’t have that sensitivity when it comes to covers.

A: If I’m hard on myself, it’s because I saw Sinatra sing Angel Eyes and I heard Oscar Peterson—who I could never touch now.

Q: You can’t touch a Peterson song yet you produced a No. 1 selling album for Barbra Streisand?

A: She recently posted a picture of the two of us and said I was a good gin rummy player. My sister had to show me because I’m not a social media person. Anyway, when there was a lull in recording, she’d say, “Why is everybody not doing anything?” And I’d [explain] that microphones needed to be tweaked and so on. So I thank my nana for teaching me how to play cards because I was able to distract her from all the waiting.

Q: In an [old] interview with Jazz Times you were quoted as saying you are embarrassed by applause. Has that changed?

A: Of course. There’ve been a lot of changes over 20 years in this career. I want people to come to my shows. Björk just did a really good interview with Pitchfork. She talks about how you want to have humility and be grateful and thankful—I think I’ve expressed that I am—but I am also a realist. I know what my strengths are. I may not be the greatest piano player in the world but I can swing real hard.