Mankato Free Press
If we're lucky, there's a place we can go where our minds are put at ease, where details such as laundry, parking tickets and phone bills are kept at bay for a few hours. Could be in the garage, the yoga class, the bar, the book club.
For Lisa Kane, that place is on stage with a microphone and a guitar.
"When I'm on stage, nothing else seems to be going on," Kane said at her St. Paul home where she teaches guitar and launches the occasional tour. And for most of her folk career of coffee houses and nightclubs, Kane hasn't sweat things out beforehand too much, never going on stage with a set list or determining ahead of time what to sing or say.
About to turn 33 and release her third CD, Kane said she is finding herself getting a bit more organized about that kind of thing, a little less nonchalant about the role she has put herself in.
A recent show in Chicago, for instance, where she opened for a named act at a popular nightclub, she found herself thinking ahead.
"How I prepared for that, I tuned my guitar before I got on stage," she said.
While she is taking a tighter control - albeit in a minimal sense - of her performing, she has learned in the course of her songwriting to let go of other concerns - public acceptance, for starters.
"My first album I did for the public," she said. In that work, she focussed primarily on the lyrics, wanting to come across as clearly, succinctly as possible and be taken seriously as a songwriter.
The second album "Sooner... Than Later" however, grew out of accident.
"I just went into a friend's studio," she said. She recorded songs that had felt more heartfelt but not as zeroed in on topics as the first. She found it liberating and more musically interesting.
That disc has a self-assuredness about it, a friendly exchange between confidence and quality. And they demonstrate her point perfectly - her songs on this disc aren't urgent what-so-ever. They are not, to use a Kane-ism, "angst-y." They are well-crafted scenes drawn by a guitar and voice that know what they are doing.
Now a guitar teacher herself, she started at age 16 and got educated a few years later through playing around in jam bands. That led her to a three-year stint with a funk band that picked up on jazz grooves akin more to Grateful Dead and Steely Dan.
Even after changing directions and going down the solo acoustic path, Kane said she's still riding on the self-taught lessons she learned through that experience.
"I look at it now, and wish for that learning curve again," she said. "I feel like I've been riding for the past 10 years off that two years of just serious honing," Kane said.
Her focus today is even more on sounds. The lyrics are guided by the sounds of words - and emphasis on how the syllables sound together rather than messages.
And the backbone of the work, she said will be the guitar.
"Guitar's first for me," Kane said, "Singing has always been the second sister."
Kane Performs at 8:30 p.m. Saturday at Coffee Hag
Guitarist and singer Lisa Kane's musical direction is finding her getting a grip in some areas, like organization, while loosening up in others, such as aiming to please.