Farewell to Lady Lamb

Lady Lamb The Beekeeper - She’s Leaving Home

The last day of Summer 2010 was - in keeping with the rest of that season - warm, clear and delightful well into the evening.

The city of Portland buzzed with an arc-sodium glow and passers-by cut through the still of the night air, laughing and finishing their errands and carousing as Nick and I sloped down Bramhall Hill to Aly Spaltro’s apartment.

Thinking back, I get this impression that the night was very dark, black above the bubble of light projected from the street lamps and stadium and store neons. Like Portland was settled at the bottom of an abyss.

We arrive and hear her guitar and her voice bleeding through the windows into the parkside night. The doorbell doesn't seem to work, so we wait until the song finishes and tap on the glass. She pulls back the red curtains and peers out. She welcomes us, 'you weren't waiting long, were you?" She sounds genuinely concerned.

She shows us in, her apartment is stripped bare except for her rehearsal space. She's got candles and art still on the walls. The rest of her possessions are packed in boxes and cases, lined up along the walls. She's moving, she's leaving. But this little woman with a big voice is giving one final gift in an infectious, hooky ode. "You are the apple, you are the apple!"

She performs with a sincere, fervent burn. An ardent multitasker, she juggles guitar lines, a pear shaker, guitar effects, a kazoo, drums and, of course, her voice. She lightly steps on pedals in oversized shoes.

She wears a white summery dress.

It is the last day of summer, the start of the Fall. Autumn is, in fact, an hour and a half away as we record this performance and we're bidding farewell to summer and to a juggernaut in Portland music. Despite her diminutive frame, Aly's as big on the scene as her voice is on her.

She's playing ‘You Are The Apple’ on her first electric guitar. It's 'just a Mexican Strat' she says. And she's selling it before the move; she has a Tele now and she only has room for one. She says it's an awesome guitar, though. The T-Rex sticker agrees.

She's selling it, by the by, at an auction at her farewell show at Space Gallery (Friday, 10/29).

It feels like an iconic piece to me, for some reason. I'm glad it can stay in Portland. We'll always have memories of her cream colored axe with the calico pick guard and dinosaur stickers and the voice booming out above it.

She’s also selling her Ibanez acoustic at the show with a custom purple paint job courtesy of the artist herself. The 8 track that she’s recorded basically everything you’ve heard of her is set to hit the block, too.

I’m saying bring money to the show.

Aly was born in New Hampshire, raised in the southwest, gone to Germany and finally moved back here 7 years ago.

She’s been playing for about 2.5 years. Her first performance was at a tea shop in Brunswick that has since closed up. She got encouragement from her family and peers and decided to try the open mic at Slainte. After 3 weeks of not being able to push herself through the door she finally stepped in, plugged in. She got the last slot.

Will Ethridge and Johnny Fountain were there for that Portland inauguration and helped push her back out the door at Slainte and into her current position as darling of the scene.

And now she’s leaving. And it’s one of those bittersweet situations that the Germans probably have a word for but in English you’re left with a clunky, underwhelming sentence. Lady Lamb the Beekeeper is a prodigious talent and well loved in Portland, but she’s run into the limitations of Portland’s scene.

She can’t go anywhere if she stays here.

And someone with her talent and verve needs to get out, needs to get exposure. She needs what Boston and eventually New York can offer.

As a Portlander, my heart swells with pride that we’ll be able to say “DIBS” when her career takes off. But I keep thinking back to that blackness that hung over the city the night we filmed. Portland’s music scene is thrilling, it’s wonderful, it’s filled with talent and it sits at the bottom of an abyss. Undisturbed, in a way, by the whirling eddies and currents above it.

It’s a great scene, I love it. The City has an environment that’s very musician friendly, and the community rallies and supports each other. It is a great town to find out who you are as an artist, but there is not much of a chance for getting noticed beyond Portland without leaving and making your mark out there. And that’s a real shame, because there are beautiful and talented creatures here.

So Aly is slipping away, gliding off past the lip of the chasm and surging headlong into the waters of Boston and New York.

And she’s singing:

Alligators are here under the water.

You devour my heart you devour my heart like a strawberry cake at a birthday celebration

I need your love

I still need your teeth 'round my organs

For you are the apple

You are the apple.