Luba comes home, with pride (2024)

Canadian 1980s pop icon Luba smiles when she recalls the day she performed in front of 12,000 rock fans at the Montreal Forum in January 1983.

“Montreal shows have always been nerve-racking because it’s my hometown, but this show was crazier because it was my first big show, I was opening for Chris de Burgh and my first single, Everytime I See Your Picture, was at the top of the charts,” Luba recalled this week in an interview with The Gazette. “That show was a defining moment in my career. It was what we were striving for. I had played in so many small clubs and always wanted more. I wanted to headline on a big stage. Then at the Forum I got lost in the moment — it was like having an org*sm!”

In the 1980s, despite never charting in America, no female Canadian singer could touch Montreal pop star Luba: During that decade, Luba won three Felix Awards as well as three consecutive Juno Awards for Female Vocalist of the Year (only Anne Murray and Céline Dion have won more) and today remains one of the most successful female artists in Canadian music history.

Despite a lengthy absence because of personal issues, the pop-music hitmaker is making a grand return with her first public performance in 14 years, at a free outdoor Montreal Gay Pride concert on Aug. 13.

“I think I am more excited to do this show than I was opening for Chris de Burgh at the Forum because there are so many expectations,” said Luba, who will join 17 other performers — including Laurence Jalbert and Joe Bocan — at the “Et si l’amour” concert to fight hom*ophobia. “I’ve also wanted to perform at a Gay Pride event for the longest time because my gay fans are some of my most dedicated fans, who stuck by me through the lean years. The gay community also loves survivors with big voices, and I fit the bill. It hasn’t been a charmed career or a charmed life.”

If anything, Luba is a survivor.

“I took my own cues from the women I grew up listening to: Aretha Franklin, Dusty Springfield and Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart,” she said. “Then there was Tina Turner.”

After Luba performed at the 1985 Juno Awards at Toronto’s Harbour Castle Hilton Hotel, Turner spotted Luba from across the hotel lobby. “She made a beeline straight for me,” Luba said. “She had this aura, and she grabbed my hand and said, ‘You’re an amazing singer!’ She blew me away. Here was Tina Turner, who I grew up listening to on The Ed Sullivan Show, and she was paying me a compliment?”

Later that year, touring Canada with Bryan Adams, Luba joined the Vancouver rocker onstage to sing It’s Only Love, the rock duet Adams recorded with Turner. “I got the call backstage in Ottawa, put on some stilettos, a leather miniskirt and jacket, and channelled my inner Tina. The audience went crazy!”

Born in 1958 to Ukrainian immigrant parents, Luba — aka Lubomyra (which means “love and peace”) Kowalchyk — studied piano, guitar, flute and voice; during her teens she travelled across Canada performing traditional Ukrainian folk songs at weddings and festivals. She was a fine-arts student when she formed a band under her first name in 1978. Then, when her father died in 1979, she wrote what would become her signature song, Everytime I See Your Picture, as a tribute to him.

Despite Luba’s 1989 album All Or Nothing selling platinum in Canada, she was dropped by Capitol Records. Then her marriage to her former drummer and manager, Peter Marunzak, ended in divorce. Following the deaths of her grandmother and mother, her sister developed multiple sclerosis that required intensive care. So Luba put her career on hold.

After a long absence from the charts, she bounced back with 2000’s From the Bitter to the Sweet. This February, she released Icon, an anthology of her greatest hits, many recorded with legendary producers Daniel Lanois and Narada Michael Walden, who dubbed her the “Great White Hope.” The compilation also features the new song Heaven.

Following her performance at Montreal Gay Pride, Luba has more plans to reboot her career. “I’m working with Montreal musician Alan Baculis (formerly of the rock band Bootsauce) and hope to put a new band together, with new songs and a tour that I hope we’ll launch in the spring of 2015.”

Just don’t call Luba a living legend.

“I’m flattered, but I don’t see myself as that,” Luba said. “I’ve always worked hard. When things are tough, I think about Tina Turner and what she went through, and she’s my inspiration. If anybody’s a living legend, it’s Tina. I just do what I do. I love to sing.”

Luba co-headlines the outdoor Et si l’amour concert to fight hom*ophobia, Wednesday, Aug. 13, 7:30 p.m., at Parc Emilie-Gamelin (Berri Square) as part of Fierté Montreal Pride, which runs through Aug. 17. For more information, visit www.fiertemontrealpride.com