“I’ve been transitioning into maybe an indie shift in the singer/songwriter genre. I mean, a blonde woman playing acoustic guitar doesn’t really resonate like it once did [laughs]. Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” says blonde singer/songwriter Lauren Calve, laughing. Calve admits to growing up listening to a variety of genres, largely inspired by her father’s subscriptions to music clubs like Columbia House and BMG, “where you get like 20 CDs for a dollar.”: “He’s a big Van Halen fan and Bruce Springsteen fan, that classic rock thing… and he loved powerhouse female vocalists, like Tina Turner, Whitney Houston, and Mariah Carey.” She also admits that Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill, Jewel’s Pieces of You, Radiohead’s In Rainbows, and Patty Griffin’s Living with Ghosts have proven to be important influences over the years.
Lauren Calve just kicked off a run of dates opening for John Douglas of Scottish indie rockers Trashcan Sinatras on the Lost In North America Tour Part One, which will find itself at The Loft at our very own City Winery next Monday, October 21st. The Washington DC-based artist played the Chinatown venue just last September, when she was on a double-headlining jaunt with Joey Frendo. And during a recent phone chat, she admits that she definitely appreciates that kind of venue: “The listening room definitely works well with my style of songs, which are all these intense stories. And also, talking to the audience and building a connection is the most important thing… 90% of my set is songs from Shift, which are very lyric-heavy, so it definitely requires a deep listening experience.”
Shift is the debut LP from Lauren Calve, which dropped last September and follows a decade’s worth of singles and EPs. “This full-length record is a bit more subdued than my roots rock. I think it’s a more authentic sound with how you compile songs, how it ebbs and flows,” Calve explains, going on to tell me that she feels like the LP not only feels more cohesive than the EPs, but also feels more true to herself as an artist: “My EPs were more like compilations of my songs… With the album, what emerged is a more authentic sound of the singer/songwriter genre, the storytelling genre… These songs came out of these introspective, deep moments where I was thinking about things like alchemy and Jungian psychology.”
Earlier this year, Lauren Calve and Shift won the “Best Country/Americana Album” at the 2024 Wammie Music Awards, which she tells me has been the ultimate highlight since releasing her first full-length: “I would say that has been the greatest validation after the album came out.” However, she also admits that recording the album in Nashville with a bevvy of impressively accomplished musicians was a major highlight as well: “I travelled to Nashville to record this album, and getting to work with musicians who comprised Sheryl Crow’s band [including drummer Fred Eltringham, guitarist Audley Freed, and bassist Robert Kearns] and musicians who have played with Nicole Atkins and Margo Price [including multi-instrumentalist Dex Green, who’s also played with our buddies Aaron Lee Tasjan and Allison Russell] was so amazing.”
It’s been more than a year since Lauren Calve dropped Shift, and she tells me that much of that time has been spent perfecting the way that she plays the songs in a live setting: “Since releasing Shift, I have been tinkering with my setup and my live sound… The dream is always to play with a full band, but it worked best for me to go out solo.” She also says that, while she’s never considered herself an especially technical player, the time on the road has definitely pushed her more in that direction: “I know some guitarists who are very particular when it comes to tone, and I’m not quite that, but I am pretty particular when it comes to tone, and I’ve been tinkering with what guitar I use and amps and pedals… I’ve been using a hollow body jazz guitar, an electric guitar, which I think captures the sound of the album better than an acoustic.”
The Lost In North America Tour Part One actually wraps with the Philadelphia show The Loft at City Winery on October 21st. While Lauren Calve tells me that she certainly has post-tour plans, with hopes of continuing to write new songs, part of that will be taking some time off just to live: “That’s an important part of the process… the process of having the material to draw from, to write from. I’m the kind of person who really needs to let things soak in and resonate.” And she tells me that process will definitely include a temporary change of scenery: ‘I’m taking a trip to the Southwest to this place I’ve really been wanting to visit, and take time writing and actually processing things and seeing what music comes of it.”
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