I saw k.d. lang perform live for the third time last night. I’d seen her at Wolf Trap with good seats, and at the 9:30 Club which is an intimate venue, but our seats at the Meyerhoff were pretty awful, especially given that they were $39 each and the best seats were only $75 each. Next time I’ll pay the additional money so I can see her! If it weren’t for her unique and stunning voice, I might not have known it was k.d. - the face of the person on the stage looked like a tiny white dot with black hair on top, so it could have been anybody. Her voice is unmistakable, though - nobody else sounds like k.d.

She did a mixture of previous songs (Miss Chatelaine, Love Is Simple, and of course Constant Craving among others) and some from her new album, Hymns from the 49th Parallel, which will be coming out in late July and is an ode to her home country of Canada. Her outfit was kind of questionable - it looked Asian-inspired, sort of like a loose kimono-jacket, with a skirt! When she went to sit in a chair to do Patsy Cline’s Three Cigarettes in an Ashtray, somebody called out that she should be careful how she sat down, and she replied that “this skirt thing is new to [her]” which drew friendly laughter from the audience. She was barefoot, as usual, but didn’t sing “Barefoot” to my dismay. I think she’s gotten a haircut recently - she seems to be keeping her hair shorter than usual.

The funniest part of the evening was when she was announcing her medley and said “There’s a song I want to play for youse now…” and paused for effect. In that break, somebody yelled out Hon! and she heard them but didn’t understand. A few lines were exchanged with the audience that I couldn’t make out, but I could tell people down on the main level were trying to explain to her what “hon” means. She finally said “Oh, so you use it where we use eh?” which most of the audience - the locals, anyway, including me - found hilarious. She repeated herself, saying “There’s a song I want to play for youse now, hon…” and then commented that she’d really shock people in the audience the following night!

It was an enjoyable show, of course, because I adore k.d. lang (she’s my favorite artist by far), but next time I will have to cough up the additional dollars for better seats - it was so frustrating not being able to see her!