Hooked on Symphonics: k.d. lang says that, despite the logistical nightmares, her current symphonic tour is "musically rewarding."

"It's a nightmare," exclaims k.d. lang on the subject of her current symphony tour. "It's a total logistic nightmare. We have five sets of music that leapfrog around the country. We have to get there by 2 in the afternoon; the crew has to get there by 9 a.m., so you can imagine what that's like. We don't really even have a bus, we're flying and that in itself is a nightmare nowadays. It's logistically really hard, but musically it's ultimately rewarding."

The reward for lang must be considerable because the logistics she bemoans as a nightmare are all that and then some. On this tour, lang is playing with a symphony orchestra in each city she visits; the leapfrogging music she refers to is the symphony transcriptions for her set, which each orchestra learns in time for her to fly in on the day of the show and rehearse with each symphony for about three hours. It's a very sophisticated and yet somehow completely guerrilla way for lang to present her estimable Country-to-Pop-to-Standards catalog and, so far, the early shows have been, by lang's own exacting standards, "fantastic."

"It makes it even more special because you're incorporating that city's culture into your work, and you're in the nice venues and you're with those musicians, the new musicians," says lang of playing with a new symphony orchestra every single night. "It really adds to the momentum of the shows. They're all great so far. I haven't struggled with any of them. But you know, it's so rewarding at night, it's all worth it. It heals you from the day's travel and all the logistics, and then you're ready to do it again."

Although she shrugs off the selection of a set list from her nearly two decade career as "just something you learn to do over the years," the immutable fact is there is no room for adjusting that set list once the music goes to the symphonies. "You can actually really piss off the Pops orchestras by changing the set lists," she says with a laugh. "It's carved in stone. No wiggles."

For this tour's wiggleless set, lang relied on songs from her canon that would lend themselves easily to string arrangements but that would also follow the reverential theme of her latest album, Hymns of the 49th Parallel, her debut for her new label, Nonesuch Records. The album was conceived by lang as an homage to the Canadian songbook, something that has heretofore largely gone unnoticed.

She was inspired to tackle this project after working with iconic American singer Tony Bennett, who regaled her with stories about his own personal connection to the American songbook, a vast and compelling body of work that dates to a time when largely non-performing songwriters wrote and largely non-composing singers interpreted their songs. For Hymns, lang chose to cover some of her home country's most renowned songwriters and artists (Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen) as well as some of its most revered and yet less heralded artists (Jane Siberry, Ron Sexsmith, Bruce Cockburn).

It might have seemed easy for lang to feature Canadian songwriters, but how did she sift through the monumental songbooks of each to find the right songs for her project? "Both were decided basically on a personal relationship and my personal heritage," says lang of the singers and the songs.

"I had a collection of songs that I wanted to do, and then I felt an obligation to explore more and I went through millions of songs. The two things that made the decisive choices for me were my personal history with the song and to exemplify the concept that I have that Canadian songwriters use the four seasons and the geographical nature of Canada to express themselves spiritually. When I combined those two things, it was pretty obvious and it was a very easy choice."

For lang, it was just as important that each songwriter's work retain its singular identity. She has long cultivated a reputation as a torchy ballad singer and she had no interest in co-opting the work of the songwriters she was tributing into her own individual style.

"I excluded drums because I didn't want to attach a genre to any of the songs," says lang of the sparse arrangements on Hymns. "I wanted to sing them strictly as hymns and not change them or make them clever and put my own stamp on them. I really just wanted to sing them from my memory and my emotional center and treat them (with) as much homage and reverence as possible."

Although there are still several weeks left on the symphony tour, and Hymns of the 49th Parallel is still a month away from release, lang is ready to declare the experience a complete success.

"I think it's already a success just getting it up and running and feeling good about it," says lang. "I feel like just moving to Nonesuch and having the interest enough to book the symphony tour is a success. I've also gotten to the point where I realize failures are successes, too, if you're smart enough to learn from them."