Lady Lamb the Beekeeper


Photo by Shervin Lainez

Singer/songwriter Aly Spaltro, the voice behind Lady Lamb the Beekeeper, got her stage name from a dream. What the dream was she has no idea, but woke up in the morning to find the words scribbled in her bedside notebook, and her stage name was born. The 21-year-old Maine native crafts soulful melodic tunes on guitar and banjo set to lyrics about bedsheets and ghosts. She recently relocated from Somerville to Brooklyn (Brooklyn, we will fight you. Seriously. If great musicians were moths, you’d be the flame) and sings like she’s been chain smoking for 10 years and had a bowl of razor blades for breakfast. Her raw vocal stylings recall a mashup of Jenny Lewis’s crystalline tone and Mary Travers’s arresting vocal power.

Though Spaltro was awarded Best Folk Vocalist last year by the Boston Music Awards, the singer doesn’t consider her music to be part of the folk genre. “I’d describe it as dumpster chic,” she says. Either way, her emotive, sparse, and at times dark tunes have set her apart considering she’s only been playing and singing for three years, has been able to support herself full time with only her music since last November, and released her most recent album, Mammoth Swoon, in December. So what sparked her impassioned musical interest? “I have a lot of emotions and I’m plagued by nostalgia and need a way to let these things out of me so they don’t fester,” says Spaltro. “The most productive way, I feel, is to take my own experiences and fears and knowledge and sing about it in a way that is relatable or universal so it doesn’t become self-indulgent and instead becomes more of a way to connect with people.”

Believe us when we say Spaltro is on the up-and-up, and you should see her before she starts blowing up the festival circuit and rolling out national tours. Spaltro will be playing her first show as the headliner at the Middle East upstairs this Friday, June 3.

$10 (advance), $12 (day of show), 18+, Middle East, 472 – 480 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, 617-864-3278, mideastclub.com.