Lady Lamb’s Deep Love Tour
Singer/songwriter Aly Spaltro, better known as Lady Lamb (previously Lady Lamb the Beekeeper), will be embarking on a three-month tour this coming spring with over 30 stops throughout the U.S and Canada. Lady Lamb has been a bit of an obsession of mine since I learned of her music through an NPR interview for On Point in February of 2017. It had been an emotional morning for me that day, on my commute to the Nelson Poynter Memorial Library (where I was then doing my fieldwork for a Master’s in Library and Information Science as an archives assistant), so being able to hear this remarkable artist talk about her story and perform songs from the release of her last album, Tender Warriors Club, was a revelation. I even remember being so taken by her music and story that I commented on the social media thread for the live broadcast about how thankful I was for the reprieve from my anxiety and tears.
What I find so captivating about Lady Lamb’s songwriting is that her songs bespeak narratives which lack resolution but rather lend a sense of a life story yet to be completed – an indispensable characteristic of my artistic obsessions. In the interview with Tom Ashbrook, she defines the Tender Warrior as someone who makes a conscious effort to remain open and vulnerable despite the trials she’s endured. The vulnerability I was experiencing that day was something new to me, resultant of a relationship I was in despite having previously been single for ten years, which helped to encourage me to not close down emotionally. Her music, a mix of exultant optimism with raw and honest acceptance and expectancy of the hurt which makes life so rich, takes a novel turn on American folk with a hope for more travails so as to challenge our character and deepen our lives rather than a despairing of what has already come to pass. The descriptive depth of her songwriting with the emotional concepts described is breathtaking, and I often reflect on the lyrics to her song “Heaven Bent” wherein she sings, “Heaven herself – the tender warrior/ I believe she sent for us when she/ saw that we were trying our best/ Trying to be good/ Trying to be kind/ Trying to stay true/ Try, I just want to do right by you.” It is not so much our “success” but rather our courage to “try” to do what’s best, which is our own personal Passion, that defines us. It is a call to not recoil at existence by hiding behind titles or other such constructs that allow for easy identification.
Tender warriors approach the world with tender strength. Therein lies the true challenge. We tend to characterize strength as a cynical callousness of reason over emotion. Lady Lamb, however, challenges that notion by advocating that we confront all aspects of ourselves and others with an open sensibility that is the true honesty and strength of a full human being. In her song “Crater Lake,” she sings “Let’s be one another’s present tense/ We’ll go to the mountain by the lake, we’ll undress.” That notion of being naked before each other and treating each other as though we were all we had is so important to the ways in which we treat those around us. When treating someone in terms of the future it too often turns them into a means. Likewise, when we refuse to let go of the past, we delimit each other from being anything more than our crimes.
Moreover, her lyrics and themes bring to mind the existential moralist Emmanuel Levinas, who concerns himself with what he calls “ethics as first philosophy.” In traditional philosophy, the first is typically thought to be metaphysics or even ontology. These theories attempt to construct an edifice upon which further human understanding can be built. Levinas, however, rejects these impersonal structures and writes about how the first principles are those that allow for us to see each other face-to-face in the primal nudity of existence. We are not merely nor solely self-sufficient beings/entities but more so ones who need each other in an essential responsibility which opens up the world in all its complicated splendor. Likewise, in her song “Ten” from her second studio album and first with Mom + Pop Music, After, she sings “There’s a sweetness in us that lives long past the dust/ On our eyes, once our eyes finally close.” Rather than positing anything other than what we already are in the world, we leave a mark on those we’ve touched that remains long past our time on earth. Lady Lamb characterizes this as a “sweetness,” which I feel is a hopeful statement that posits a goal of leaving something good. Most people hope that they will leave a positive impression on those they’ve touched, and for the Tender Warrior this is the true challenge. However, she is not overly didactic in her lyricism. Rather, through her adept imagery, she crafts the message out of her experience which makes an enthymeme, or unspoken proposition, out of this responsibility we have to each other first and foremost so that we can better become ourselves.
I only wish that her tour would have brought her through Florida, but I may just have to take a trip up to Georgia to see her May 18th performance at Aisle 5 in Atlanta. During her 2017 tour, she booked house concerts in people’s homes and living rooms along with the traditional clubs and larger venues, which added to the intimacy of her career. Few artists, especially concerning those still active or alive, have reached me as does Lady Lamb. During the NPR interview a caller compared her emotive effect to Billie Holiday, and I couldn’t agree more. Her music is bare in the best possible way – a way which exposes her with the same courage she inspires in us to bare our own selves. And she does this without the flair or plumage of the typical pop artist. This tour will be a must-see of 2019 for anyone who appreciates the craft of songwriting and primeval core of artistic genius that makes music such a vital part of our lives.
LADY LAMB
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