Penny Lang (July 15, 1942 – July
31, 2016) was a Canadian folk music icon who earned a loyal following,
influencing many artists. She
performed at major folk festivals and clubs across North America. Lang was born
in 1942 to a musical family in east end Montreal. She learned about singing and
storytelling around the family’s kitchen table and started performing publicly
at age 10 with her family in a revue called “The Irish and Canadian Musical
Revue” that played legion halls, theaters, hospitals and prisons. In her late
teens, Lang got caught up in the folk revival. In 1963, at age 21, Lang became
a professional folksinger and worked initially at the Café André, a venue near
the McGill University campus, for three years. She quickly became a star on the
Montreal folk scene, filling the club every night with a loyal returning
audience drawn by her effective guitar-playing, throaty voice, and most of all
by her astonishing ability to connect with the people she was singing to. Lang
moved on to become a touring artist, playing major folk festivals like Mariposa
and Philadelphia and legendary clubs like Gerde’s Folk City in New York City,
Caffè Lena in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., the Riverboat in Toronto and Le Hibou in
Ottawa. Her powerful interpretations and originals in folk, blues, country, and
gospel gained her a large and devoted following. Her songs are emotionally
powerful observations of the human condition, sometimes poignant, sometimes
hilarious, mostly memorable. A major highlight of her career was her 1970
sold-out concert at Théâtre Port Royal at Place des Arts in Montreal. After an
extended time away from professional life living in Morin Heights, a small
village in the Laurentian Mountains where she raised her son Jason, she
returned to full-time performing and was welcomed back to an adoring public.
She returned to the studio in 1989 and recorded nine well-received albums for
the She-Wolf, Festival and Borealis labels and toured Australia, Italy,
Denmark, France and the United Kingdom. Penny died on July 31, 2016 at her home
in Madeira Park on British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast, where she had been living
since 2005. Penny shared a lifetime's familiarity with folk, blues, gospel and
country songs with audiences and friends wherever she went and will be fondly
remembered for her work on the concert stage. Her intimate performances were
filled with laughter, tears and a bonding with the audience to create a
community through song.