Live, Laugh, Lady Lamb

CREDIT: Shervin Lainez

Aly, AKA Lady Lamb, is celebrating the 10th anniversary of her debut album, Ripely Pine, and what better way to do so than with a heart to heart? Things got beautifully emotional as we talked about how far she’s come over the past decade. Enjoy our interview below!

What initially made you fall in love with making music?

It was a life path that I wasn't expecting. It really caught me by surprise. I was really into film, and when I was in high school, I was actually enrolled to go to school to be a film editor. I took a gap year before and was home in Brunswick working at the local video store. I was just going through a bit of a rough time; I was 18 years old. I had a lot of big emotions, and I wrote a lot of poetry at the time. I just started experimenting with a guitar after hours after my shift and writing songs in real time. I realized instantly that it was fulfilling me in a way that I just could never have expected, and so I ended up just pursuing it and committing my life to it, basically, in that moment. Looking back, I'm proud of myself for being so young and being courageous enough to just kind of not know what I was getting into and to just go for it anyway. I'm lucky enough to have built a career by that first decision when I was young.

How would you say being from New England has influenced your sound, if at all?

I would say, inspiringly, it has deeply influenced me. My dad was in the Air Force, so we lived away from Maine for a while during my childhood, and I never had that sense of place, that feeling of home. Both my parents are from Maine, and all my extended family is there, so I just had all these stories while we were living far away in the desert or in Europe, and I longed for that feeling of home. When I finally moved back at the age of 14, I immediately felt like it was the first time that I had truly found my place, and I'm so grateful for that. I believe it inspired everything that I then went on to do artistically.

What was it like working at Bart & Greg’s DVD Explosion in Brunswick?

It was honestly the most formative time of my life. It was like the exact four years I would have spent in undergrad. My life revolved around movies and music - that was it. The store was right in downtown on Main Street, so it served as a community hub. Truly everyone in town rented there, and we all stood against streaming when it started gaining popularity. It was a genuine gathering place, where I made friends and got to talk about film and art with customers all day. That's how my moniker came about. Everybody in town knew who I was, so when I started pursuing music, I wanted to maintain a level of anonymity. That's why I chose to go by Lady Lamb. The sense of community was just that tight-knit.I usually worked the closing shifts, so I stored my gear there and would drag it out after hours. Sometimes, I would stay there all night and then sleep during the day, only to do it all over again. It was such a vibrant time for me, filled with inspiration and self-expression.

You used to go by Lady Lamb the Beekeeper - what inspired your moniker and why did you choose to shorten it?

When I was 18 and just starting to write, I kept a dream journal by my bed and wrote a lot of lyrics in the middle of the night because I was so inspired. "Lady Lamb the Beekeeper" was actually something I wrote in my notebook one night. The next day, I looked in the notebook and it was there, but I had no recollection of writing it down. This happened around the time when I had enough songs to put on a CD and share with the town. I put the little stack of CDs at the Bull Moose next door to the video store. Shortly after that, I started using the moniker, but I realized that it was too long and hard to remember. So, I decided to change it officially in 2014. However, I still have a soft spot in my heart for fans who remember me from back then. In fact, I'm even bringing back some throwback merch for this year's tour that says "Lady Lamb the Beekeeper".

This years marks the the 10th anniversary of your debut album, Ripely Pine. What inspired that album for you at that time, 10 years ago?

What inspired it was just a lot of of heartache, a lot of really just big feelings, like the feelings we all have when we're confused and young and figuring it out and trying to understand the world around us. At the time, I was really, really into a lot of indie bands that I discovered in high school like Neutral Milk Hotel, who writes lyrics that are really surreal and kind of off the wall, but very cinematic, and visual. I was really inspired to write in a lot of metaphor and I would say the lyrics are quite surreal. I'm having to listen back to practice for the shows I have coming up and and I'm honestly like, I feel removed from it in a way, in like a beautiful way. I can't believe how young I was when I wrote these songs. Some of them, I'm still learning from today. Just a lot of big feelings. I feel like they're the gift that keeps on giving, I still enjoy performing them. I feel tenderness towards the people that I was singing about in them and I'm still close to. It's just so thrilling to have had this record with me for 10 years and it for it to have affected people in a way that it's so visceral and I'm really excited to celebrate it again.

How would you say you have evolved as an artist over the past 10 years?

When I was younger, I was really afraid of being pigeonholed. I was really insecure about coming out publicly, I felt like it was a really hard time to be queer and be out in in the industry. I came out when I was 15, so over time, I've just like felt more secure with being myself outwardly and also being more direct in my music instead of like, kind of coding things or saying things in roundabout ways. I've tried to become more direct.

You just released a brand new boxset called IN THE MAMMOTH NOTHING OF THE NIGHT - tell us all about it!

It’s fresh and new! The boxset is a huge, whopping five pounds, pretty much it's like 35 songs. It's Ripely Pine remastered, which is exciting. It starts the record, so what's cool is for people discovering me there, they're able to discover Ripely Pine, again as if it's brand new. I also spent about a year and a half recording 23 new recordings for it. I produced the whole record myself. I wrote a lot and recorded a lot of it in my apartment in New York and and also at my house in Maine, and it is a few songs that are new versions or live versions of songs from Ripley Pine. I took a banjo song and turned it into a piano song and I took Bird Balloons, which is like a big banger and I made it more introspective and a solo acoustic song. Also, there’s a handful of songs that were never properly released that fans, especially fans from New England, would remember from me performing them when I was just starting out in 2009 or 10. So I've been carrying around a lot of these Lady Lamb songs for many years and they haven't had a proper home .I have an acapella song called Up In The Rafters, one called Between Two Trees that a lot of fans would recognize and I still play to this day. They could never really find them online unless, they was like in a like a YouTube video or something. This boxset is a way to give a home to all these loose songs that were looking for a place. It feels like it's a nice chapter closing. I made this whole boxset as a thank you to my fans for just being with me all these years.

As you were going through your music to add to the boxset, did you find any songs that maybe hit different for you or that you rediscovered as a favorite of yours?

Yeah, for sure. Even just in listening back to Ripely Pine to talk about having it remastered and everything, there were a couple of underdog songs on that record that I heard back and I was like, oh my god, that is that is a hit! I have a song Rooftop - that song is amazing. I'm going to be playing it again live, like I never play it live, you know, things like that. My song Mezzanine is another one songs that I've just thought of kind of, you know, have fallen away from in my life a little bit. Then also just recreating new versions of verbal wounds; took Regarding Ascending the Stairs from the record, spun the lyrics in a new light that I felt really newly connected to them. As much as I feel like I felt the motivation to make this boxset for my fans in gratitude, it has been a gift for me as well to just like reconnect me to my younger self and to just kind of, you know, look back on where you know where I came from and that kind of thing.

Your song Dear Arkansas Daughter has now gone viral on TikTok! Take us through that moment that you discovered that was happening.

I have a fan in Cleveland on TikTok. I opened a one recently and haven't been super active on it. My experience with it is really just my younger brother sending me the funny stuff, you know. I basically saw this video that I was tagged in through a fan of mine who has been with me for a long time. She was like, I've seen enough of these videos now that I'm worried Aly's gonna, you know, I'm not gonna be able to get a ticket to her show in Cleveland. I was like, hey, Rebel, what do you mean? She was like, let me explain it to you. I had no idea, so it was a complete whirlwind. A song of mine from 2015 has been, you know, making the rounds on TikTok. What is so amazing to me about it is it's a strange thing. It's just completely out of my control. Like, for months and months, I wasn't even credited. People didn't even know what it was that they were using. But what is so brilliant to me is that my dream for this boxset, which I would literally preach to anyone who would listen, is for for younger people to find Ripely Pine, because I was 18/17/19 when I wrote it, and I just I've been feeling so deeply in my soul, like this record deserves a second light shone on it, and an opportunity for young people to find it because this music they are going to connect to so much. What was so amazing about this TikTok thing happening, is that all these young people were finding the song which in turn, they were following me on Spotify, which means that the day that my boxset started streaming, they were all getting a notification for it and what does what is the first song on that? DEAR ARKANSAS DAUGHTER! I felt like my actual dream is coming true. It's truly just for people with big feelings, who are young people to find the songs. I couldn't be happier about it. That is crazy.

On September 23rd, you’re going to be in our neck of the woods at the State Theatre celebrating 10 years of Ripely Pine. What can fans expect from this live show?

I cannot stress enough, this is the most special Lady Lamb show that has ever happened in ever, probably because we're playing Ripely Pine front to back. I have a huge band on stage with me. We're 12 people, so we've got a string quartet. We've got saxophones, trumpet, trombone. We're playing every song for the first time ever as it was arranged because this was a really ambitious record, when I was 23. I layered a lot of instrumentation on it that I couldn't actually realistically perform. We're finally performing the record, just like you've always heard it with all the parts, and then we're performing a handful of songs from the boxset as well. It's going to be a huge party, it's going to be so fun. I feel like it's gonna also be very emotional. Even my drummer who's been playing with me almost 10 years, he was like, Aly, I'm going to be crying up there. I hope that's okay. I don't even know if I can handle hearing these songs with with strings for the first time. I was like, I'm right there with you, Derek, it's gonna be really beautiful.

Do you find that it feels a little extra special performing in Maine since you spent so much time here?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, there's not a city in the country that is more important to me to come home and play. The last show that I had at State Theatre, my mom was in the crowd and I got to walk out and sing a song with my arm around her. It's so great. I came up playing Space Gallery. It's really special. I can't stress it enough, I love coming home. My favorite aunt’s flying in from Chicago. Like all my aunts, my uncles will be there. My siblings, my parents. Yeah, it's gonna be really great. And also just a lot of fans whose faces I recognize from the last 15 years.

Here in Maine, our state motto is “The way life should be.” According to you, what is the way life should be?

Oh, that's beautiful. The way life should be is having integrity for yourself. Not comparing yourself to others and keeping your eyes on your own paper just knowing that you have your path and that everything in your life takes the time. It's going to take time and it's separate from somebody else's path. That's my the advice that I tell myself all the time. Honestly, I think living in Maine and experiencing the beauty of the state of Maine is is literally the way life should be, so I love coming home. I'm coming home in like a week to just go sit in the trees and, and vibe with it.

Much love to Aly for for the amazing conversation! Don’t miss her live at the State Theatre in Portland, ME on 9/23 - you can snag your tickets here. We can’t wait to welcome her back home!