It’s been a few years since Invincible Summer, k.d. lang’s last studio album was released, but you could still hear her, most recently on the Grammy Award-winning Tony Bennett collaboration disc A Wonderful World, and on her recently released album, Hymns of The 49th Parallel. She’s also a featured vocalist on the soundtrack to Disney’s new animated feature Home On The Range. lang has maintained a substantial concert tour, performing primarily with symphony orchestras – an occasion that brings her to San Diego’s Starlight Bowl on Sunday, Aug. 1, for a grand finale to our city’s Pride weekend. The Gay & Lesbian Times caught up with lang recently and spoke about concert dates, music and her relationship with her devoted audience.

Gay & Lesbian Times: You received your first Grammy Award for your duet with the late, legendary Roy Orbison for the song ‘Crying’ and you have won your latest Grammy Award for A Wonderful World, the duets album that you recorded with the living legend Tony Bennett.

k.d. lang: [Laughs]

kdl: I hope so! No, it’s wonderful. I’ve had very good luck singing with extraordinary people. The Roy thing has and will continue to have an amazing life of its own. To be able to take a song like that and sing it every night and have kind of inherited it from Roy is amazing. And then to be led into the American songbook by someone who lives and breathes it still is probably the most precious education one could ever have. I consider myself a very lucky girl.

kdl: Without getting into dissing what’s happening now, I think it’s like an old friend. It’s reliable, it’s solid, it’s familiar and it’s comforting. It’s kind of like how restaurants are [laughs] relying on macaroni and cheese and mashed potatoes – I think it’s just comforting.

kdl: The beauty of my experience as a duet partner has been always unpredictable. That’s what I love about it. I would have never predicted Roy Orbison. I would have never predicted Tony Bennett. And yet all these beautiful [laughs] opportunities come to me and I would have never ever have been able to foresee it.

kdl: To me, songs are in some ways like a being. It is; it’s on its own, but what you dress it with is on the peripheral. Whether you put a steel guitar with it or whether you put a saxophone with it. Whether it’s jazz or country, a good song is a good song. To me, I’ve never left country and I’ve never really married jazz or pop singing or anything. I just kind of see it as one big ball of wax. So [in answer to the question], yes and no.

kdl: [Laughs] That was really fun!

kdl: It’s a really amazing tradition to follow. I’m thinking along the lines of Peggy Lee, who was one of my all-time mentors. And even Louis Prima, from The Jungle Book. Amazing songs from my childhood that were sung by jazz singers in the Disney film world. So, I really feel like I’m following in good footsteps in doing it, and having fun. Especially since it’s sort of an animal-friendly movie. That makes me happy.

kdl: It’s something that I’m really excited about. It’s relatively new, although I have, in the past, performed with symphonies, but not in a tour of this magnitude. I have a new record coming out in the summer, which has a lot of string arrangements on it. It was a great opportunity for me to start singing at this level, in this direction, because I think that as I get older, it’s something that I want to be able to rely on. It’s a dream come true for a vocalist to sing with so much harmonic support like that.

kdl: It’s cover songs, and it is the Canadian songbook.

kdl: For me, the show doesn’t exist without an audience. What makes a show is the synergy between the performers and the audience. Otherwise you are just singing a song or an audience is just sitting there [laughs]. What really makes it is the synergy because the audience is as much a part of the show as I am or the band is. It’s about involving every single soul in that building – even the crew and the stagehands – in what is created amongst us. I take that approach and after 20 years in the business, have a vast appreciation for even having a place to sing. It’s really important for me to sing 100 percent every night. Also, the taxing nature of being on the road has to be worth it for me, when I get on stage. It has to be the thing that drives you, or else it’s not worth it at all.

kdl: I think it’s fantastic. I really hope that it gets to the point where we’re not even having this conversation. Rufus is a fantastic talent. I know The Klezmatics too, and they’re fantastic. It’s just a matter of time until we don’t talk about a black performer or a white performer or a gay performer, and it just is about the quality of the music and the essence of the performance.

kdl: [Laughs]

kdl: It’s extremely flattering, although I don’t take it that seriously, because I think the only really true indication of someone’s worth is probably posthumous and in the long-term objectivity of what they’ve done as a human being. Although I certainly am flattered by it.

kdl: Probably not. I’m going to be pretty busy this year [laughs] with the symphony dates.

kdl: I may do. I’m a Canadian and I can’t vote, but I’m very, very active in terms of how global an impact the United States has. Of course, I’m a Democrat, and I may be supporting John Kerry down the line somewhere.