Interview: Lady Lamb the Beekeeper Talks About a Love of Apple Cider Donuts and Her Creative Process

Aly Spaltro is unassuming and disarmingly sweet. She reads Stephen King short stories. She likes donuts and The Supremes’ music. Meeting her feels like making a new friend, if you happen to hang around burgeoning creative types who go by alternative names.

Aly Spaltro is better known by her moniker, Lady Lamb the Beekeeper. Although she has nothing to do with lambs or beekeeping, her moniker reflects a rare, whimsical intellect. A flood of creativity manifests in emotionally charged songs, and she isn’t even trying to play by the rules. Her lyrics turn the English language on its head, and her music twists and shifts to meet them. Sometimes her songs are upwards of seven minutes. Her trademark style has earned her attention from NPR, Pitchfork, and most recently, a Best of What’s Next feature from PASTE Magazine.

BestNewBands.com last spoke with her two years ago in Brooklyn. Since then, she’s released her first studio album, Ripely Pine, with Ba Da Bing! Records and been on the road touring. She met me in Nashville at Café Coco before her show at Exit/In where she played the last night of a solo tour opening for Thao & the Get Down Stay Down. She was as open and honest as her music.

Caroline McDonald: How’s the tour been with Thao & the Get Down Stay Down?

Lady Lamb the Beekeeper: It’s been good. I’ve been a fan of theirs for about six years now. I played a one-off show with them in Burlington about three years ago. I didn’t expect to be out with them again. But here I am, years later. It’s been great. I love them.

CM: What is it like to be playing solo again after recording and touring with a band?

LLB: It’s the first time I’ve done an extended tour far from home by myself. I did it because I was curious. I thought maybe I’d spend this week alone and see how it goes. And it’s been fun. It’s been good.

CM: So no problems being on the road alone?

LLB: I was nervous at first because there’s no friend with you to ask where you want to eat or what you want to do. You have to be self-reliant and responsible. It’s a healthy thing to do– to be by yourself for a while. I get in the rhythm of it and accept what’s happening. Then I just go to IHOP for two hours and read. It’s nice. It’s relaxing. It’s an experience that I think is a rare opportunity.

CM: You’ve had a lot of those! Not many musicians get to tour with Neko Case.

LLB: That was a dream come true for me. She is, in my opinion, one of the best female vocalists around. The strength in her voice is unprecedented. Every single night, she is on point. I would watch her, and I couldn’t believe the things coming out of her. The power in her voice is so inspiring.

I’ve been listening to her since I was fourteen. The first New Pornographers record was my introduction to her, and I was like, “Who is this girl?!” It turned out that my aunt (who’s one of my favorite family members) was a huge fan of her solo work. So she introduced me to that. She gave me her record for Christmas when I was fourteen.

CM: She’s an incredible lyricist. And so are you! It’s the first thing that drew me to your music. Tell me about your creative process.

LLB: A lot of times my lyrics are stream of consciousness. Straight up streams. I’ll sort of unhinge myself and write pages and pages of whatever comes out when you’re writing a steam. I started doing that years ago. I started writing after I went to a Fiery Furnaces show. I’ve been heavily influenced by their music. I saw them in Boston when I was sixteen. They had these limited edition books called Blueberry Boat (named after a record they put out), and it was stream of consciousness lyrics. I still have it somewhere. I can’t remember if they were actually lyrics from their records or streams that their lyrics were based off of. I remember thinking, “This is so weird. So this is how they write. This is how they do it.” So I tried it, and a lot of lyrics came out of it. It worked.

The lyrics are initially very connected to your brain and the present. But then as you get deeper into it and you start writing faster and it is all flooding out, it’s more off the path. All of a sudden you’re writing about things from years ago. Or words that rhyme. It’s just subconscious stuff. A lot of my songs have different movements because they’ll start about one thing and end up about something else. That’s because I tried to do a stream. And then I write the music to accompany the movements of the words.

CM: So lyrics come first? And then you edit them?

LLB: Yeah, I’ll take a long time highlighting parts. You’re the most self-actualized when you’re in the stream, when you’re deep in that and being nothing but earnest.

CM: Do you do it at a particular time of day?

LLB: No, it’s whenever it comes. A lot of it comes when I’m driving. A lot of lyrics will just pop up. Or late at night, that’s when I’ll actually sit and write.

CM: What kind of poetry are you in to?

LLB: This might sound obvious and cliché, but I was really into Allen Ginsberg in high school. But my favorite poet is a spoken word poet named Saul Williams. He’s also put out a couple records. I took this poetry class in high school my sophomore year and was introduced to all of these slam poets. They’re not the kind in the coffee shop snapping or whatever. Essentially they’re rapping. It’s really intense.

As far as lyricists goes, Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel is a huge influence on me.

CM: What did you listen to as a kid? Did that influence you today?

LLB: My dad played a lot of classic rock, but I hated it. Mostly what I remember is CCR. He played Dean Martin and the Eagles. You always push against what your parents listen to. But now I love it. It grew on me. One day I realized I was listening to CCR and loving it.

Of my own finding, I listened to Oldies radio a lot, especially girl groups from the ‘50s. I loved Diana Ross. I loved the Supremes, Lesley Gore, Otis Redding, Roy Orbison, The Isley Brothers, and all that.

My childhood’s earliest memories were of me listening to The Beatles. When I was five and six, my obsession was with The Beatles. And not just early Beatles, but druggie Beatles, like The White Album. I was such a weirdo. For fun I used to make game boards. I would make my own Beatles board games. I would do song themed ones. I made “Strawberry Fields” and “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.” The layout was like Candy Land: I would have the square boxes all around. And I would have dice, and I would glue their faces to the sides, which I don’t think meant anything. But along the game board, I would draw Lucy in the sky.

CM: Your early music from 2008 sounds really different than your last record. Why did you make that shift

LLB: I don’t know if it was a conscious decision. I think the conscious change I made was moving into the studio. Everything I made up until this release, I did myself. I made it in my bedroom or in the basement on this little, digital 8-track. I would throw all this reverb on it. I don’t know if every musician would openly say this or if they feel this way, but the honest answer is that a lot of the reverb was out of insecurity. I didn’t call myself a singer. I thought I would hide any faults with this wet reverb, and hopefully get away with not being a real singer. That’s really what I thought.

CM: That’s surprising because one thing people love about you is that you’re voice is so raw and it isn’t hiding anything.What do you do when you’re not playing music?

CM: I do really boring, unhealthy things. I live in New York, and I’ll spend my day deciding what terrible food-thing I can find. There’s this donut truck that I love. They make homemade apple cider donuts, and they fry them right in front of you. And they’re only in Brooklyn once a week. Otherwise they’re in Manhattan, way up town, which I never go to really. The donut truck was uptown, and I decided I’d go get one. So I took the train uptown and got a donut, and that was my fun thing for the day. I love to eat. I love New York for the food. I love that there’s a specialized restaurant for anything and everything that you could ever want.

So I like exploring new restaurants. And I like watching movies and going to the movies. And going to shows. I go to the Museum of Natural History a lot. My mom got me a year-long pass for Christmas, so I’ve been twelve times this year. They have new exhibits all the time. You can get lost in it.

CM: So are you glad you made the move to New York then instead of Boston?

LLB: The move to New York was best for me. I love Boston, but it felt too close to home. I feel like I get more opportunities in New York. It’s not trying to be rude or slanted; it’s just a given. New York has more to offer musically. And honestly, I didn’t want to deal with another New England winter. My car had just broken down when I made the decision to move to New York, and you can get a lot done in New York without a car. I haven’t had a car of my own in over two years, and it’s been totally fine. I’ll just rent a car for a tour if I have to. Or I’ll take busses to close shows. I wouldn’t have wanted to deal with it in Boston. But I do love Boston. It feels like a hometown show when I play there.

About
Latest Posts

Caroline McDonald

My first memory is of singing Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” quietly to myself during preschool naptime. Perhaps it’s because I’m from Nashville where an instrument lives in every home, but music has gripped me for as long as I can remember.

After dabbling in many parts of the music industry—recording studios, PR, management, labels, publishing—I’m expanding into music journalism because I’m yet to find anything more rewarding that finding and sharing new music.

A longtime sucker for girls with guitars, my musical taste unabashedly follows the songwriting lineage of Dolly Parton and includes Patty Griffin, Gillian Welch, and Neko Case. But not to pigeonhole myself, my music love is big love that stretches from R.L. Burnside to Animal Collective to Lord Huron.

I’ve recently moved home to Nashville after living in Boston and Big Sur for several years. I’d forgotten how music pours onto the streets ten hours a day, seven days a week. I’m honored to share the creative explosion happening here. If your band is in the area or of the area, please reach out!