NEW YORK--When singer Katell Keineg was an impressionable young girl in
Wales, she went to see the Led Zeppelin concert film "The Song Remains the
Same." Staring at singer Robert Plant in all his mystical splendor, she
knew she had found her calling.
"I thought he was God on two legs," Keineg recalls wistfully, sipping tea
in the midtown Manhattan offices of Elektra Records. "I thought, 'I want
to be like him.' So I got my hair cut and permed, and I started to sing!"
The lanky, 32-year-old Keineg laughs, as she does often, revealing a smile
as wide and toothy as Julia Roberts'.
It wasn't the only time an infatuation became a musical inspiration for
her.
"I essentially started playing guitar because I had a crush on George
Harrison," Keineg adds. "For years I was embarrassed to say that. But part
of what draws you to music, I think, is eroticism."
The songs on Keineg's second album, "Jet"--which since its June release
has received rave reviews and spawned a single, "One Hell of a Life," that
is fast becoming a staple of adult-alternative radio--boast
an earthy sensuality that, like the music of her adolescent heroes,
suggests diverse influences. A native of Brittany, France, who spent much
of her childhood in Wales and has been based in Dublin, Ireland, for the
past seven years, Keineg litters her lyrical tunes with Celtic, European,
Arabic, African and Latin textures and imagery, and her lilting soprano
voice combines the siren-like clarity of an Irish folk songstress with
the sultry minimalism of a jazz chanteuse.
"People ask me if I make a conscious effort to use musical ideas from
different countries and cultures," Keineg says. "I don't really think I
do. I hate records that take that sort of approach--like, 'Let's get an
African drummer and a Bulgarian singer.' I don't want to be identified
with that. But I suppose that when you travel, the places that you go to
become a part of who you are."
The singer-songwriter is the daughter of French poet Paol Keineg, to whom
she attributes her love of language. Her Welsh mother, a retired
schoolteacher, is a local representative for Plaid Cymru, a political
party seeking Wales' independence from Britain. As children, Keineg and
her older brother divided their time between the homelands of both
parents; later, she went to college in London and lived in New York,
where she appeared at downtown clubs and cafes and where she still stays
frequently when not in Dublin.
While building a reputation as a graceful, emotive live performer in the
early '90s, Keineg released a seven-inch single called "Hestia" on SOL, an
independent label co-owned by musicians Bob Mould and Nicholas Hill.
Elektra took note, and signed Keineg in 1993. The following year, she made
her album debut with "O Seasons O Castles," which made her a favorite
among critics and industry insiders and led to a gig singing backup on
Natalie Merchant's 1995 album, "Tigerlily."
For "Jet," Keineg enlisted "Tigerlily" engineer John Holbrook and
ex-Captain Beefheart associate and current PJ Harvey band member Eric Drew
Feldman as co-producers. The three set up shop in a big house near
Bearsville Studios in Woodstock, N.Y., and spent a relatively leisurely
two months recording in the living room.
"When I was making my first album, I don't think I had enough time to
reflect," says Keineg. "This time, we didn't have to work inhumane hours.
We put in eight-hour days instead of 14-hour days, which left more time to
consider things, and to change them if necessary. We could also just hang
out on the porch and play music, or talk, or paint, or get drunk. The
album had more life around it."
Keineg is currently hanging out and playing music with Merchant and a host
of other popular female artists on this summer's Lilith Fair tour. For
Keineg, the success of the event and the increasing prominence of women on
the pop charts are part of a larger social trend. The politician's
daughter points to the significant role that female voters played in
recent national elections in the U.S. and England, and the fact
that there is an unprecedented number of women in the British Parliament.
She acknowledges, however, that the testosterone-challenged still face
certain pressures and hurdles, particularly in her field.
"It's a difficult thing, as a woman artist, to be sexual in your own way,"
Keineg says. "If you can fit into a certain stereotype, it definitely
makes marketing easier. I mean, I wear push-up bras on occasion. I try not
to in photos, but I do onstage. Increasingly, in fact, there is pressure
to be cheesecake. I wonder sometimes whether someone like Janis Joplin
would be able to make it if she came along right now."
But in the view of Nancy Jeffries, the senior vice president of A&R at
Elektra Records who brought Keineg to the label, the singer's own
prospects have little to do with her babe quotient.
"I saw Katell perform solo with her guitar a number of times before we
signed her," says Jeffries, "and the audience response was overwhelming.
She supplied a kind of reality that people were hungry for. She is one of
those acts with whom you have to take a little more time and be a little
bit more dedicated in your approach, but she provides the inspiration for
that whenever people see her play live. A friend of mine did recently, and
afterwards she told me, 'I think I've just experienced the complete range
of human emotions in an hour and a half.' So I think Katell's natural
appeal to people is irresistible, and it's just a matter of
time."
Fortunately, Keineg seems patient, and intent on remaining true to her
quirky, eclectic instincts.
"I don't really think about what's gonna happen with my album
commercially," she says. "In some ways, I'd like to be more experimental.
There are always different strands of things I'm interested in. It's all
about listening--that's how you move forward musically. And that, really,
is my job."