London-based US soul and blues star Acantha Lang has been working in the music industry for many years, but is only now finally ready to release her debut album.
“It’s kind of like a fine wine – it’s been cooking for a minute,” laughs the singer of the record, ‘Beautiful Dreams’, which is out now. Channelling past luminaries Sharon Jones and Gladys Knight, Lang’s vocals are timeless, evoking the musical spirit of a time gone by with a contemporary flair that permeates her self-penned lyrics.
Featuring such recent singles as Carry The Weight, Ride This Train and the deeply-personal Come Back Home – written about Lang’s desire to see her father again, who left her life when she was just 11 years old – its release is one of many ‘moments’ in her life’s journey that’s brought her to this point.
Despite hailing from New Orleans, music was never an obvious path for the performer. “Most soul singers grew up in a musical family or in the church, but I was the opposite,” she confesses. “I grew up in a musical city, so I was always exposed to that in my surroundings and it’s part of my cultural heritage, but nobody in my family is into music. So it all started to take shape when I actually left New Orleans…”
In the Big Apple, Lang’s now ex-boyfriend owned the famed Harlem Grill, where she started singing and ended up performing a three-year residency with her blues show. “That’s when I really started developing my tone and my sound, which I’ve been building on ever since,” she reflects, admitting falling in love with the genre gave her the confidence to explore a path in music with greater intent.
“There was always a voice inside of me and I was always interested in music. I was singing when I was in high school and I tried to get into talent shows, but I was afraid to sing in front of people, which was always the problem. But when I heard these blues voices, like Little Walter and Koko Taylor, The Queen of the Blues, I was just like, ‘Wow’, and something lit up in me.”
At the time, R&B dominated the commercial charts and while a string of “pretty big producers” – including Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears collaborator Timmy Allen – attempted to steer her in the direction of radio mainstays Alicia Keys and Destiny’s Child, she maintains “it just didn’t fit”. “I have all the old demos of me doing R&B but nothing stuck. When I started doing the blues shows, though, people took notice,” she smiles. “It’s an interesting genre; it’s not really popular in the Black community in America where it started. It’s become more of a niche, like jazz, but without the blues R&B wouldn’t exist, rock and roll wouldn’t exist… So it’s crazy how we’ve put jazz and blues on the back burner.”
Having found her niche, Lang connected with a booking agent who found her blues gigs in Africa and the Caribbean, and when the Harlem Grill closed down and her relationship ended, she received an invitation to audition for a spot as house singer at famed New York nightclub, The Box. A regular hangout for the A-list elite, she eventually became the first female master of ceremonies at the venue, performing for stars including John Malkovich, Beyoncé, Madonna and Axl Rose.
“Jude Law was on the board and Reggie Watts was in the show before he blew up,” she adds. “On the side, I was still meeting with producers and The Box was a serious network of people. I met Robert Randolph there; he’s one of the great guitarists who performs with Eric Clapton and people like that. He’s a legend. He ended up using one of my songs [Gonna Be All Right] on his Grammy-nominated album [2017’s ‘Got Soul’].”
When The Box opened up a new venue in London, Lang moved across the pond and continued to perform for two years, before breaking out to pursue music full time, taking up a permanent position on the live circuit and focussing on her own material. While playing live she met her current boyfriend, Emlyn Francis, who joined her band as a guitarist, with the musical meeting of minds proving fruitful for the next chapter in her career.
“I was thinking, ‘Man, I have these songs I really need to work on’, and he was like, ‘Let me hear them…’,” she recalls. “He hadn’t written for years either, so we got together, started writing music and that’s what you hear today. He helped me produce the album; his musician friends came in and we made the record together.”
In addition to their work in the studio, the pair also became a hit on social media with a series of soul covers that launched during lockdown, racked up over 12 million views and led to her rendition of Nina Simone’s I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free being featured in a McDonald’s TV spot across Europe.
“Everybody was livestreaming and I said, ‘We should probably do a livestream as well’,” she laughs. “We got such good feedback that I said, ‘You know what, I think we’re onto something’, so we started doing this weekly thing called Standing On The Shoulders Of… Soul Legends, which we kept going. And that’s how I got the McDonald’s commercial, because somebody saw my Nina Simone cover on YouTube.”
With her album finally out in the world, the only way is up for Lang, who is looking forward to playing her material to live audiences, with an ambition to return to New Orleans for the iconic Jazz & Heritage Festival high on her bucket list. And at a turning point in her career, she’s never felt so at ease. “I feel like, finally, I’m in a place where I love my voice. I trust my songwriting. I know who I am as a woman…” reflects the musician. “I don’t have a record label. I don’t have a manager – I manage myself. I have a very small team of incredible people around me and they believe in me. It’s just a nice place to be in.
“What you see really is who I am and I love that. A lot of these record companies manufacture artists. They manufacture the story. They manufacture how they look. All because of the bottom line. It’s a business and I get it, but for me, I’m happy that I’m independent and I’m telling my own story.”
‘Beautiful Dreams’ is out now via Magnolia Blue Records.
