Lauren Calve on Her New Album ‘Shift’ & It’s Musical and Personal Impact

Written by Julie Hoffman

Recently we had the chance to chat with singer/songwriter Lauren Calve before she heads out to headline her Winter Sun Tour.

This is her third short tour to support her new album Shift, which came out in the fall (early September). This tour will have two shows in NYC, including one free show at Lincoln Center. For this upcoming tour in January she will be traveling with two other singer songwriters, Cat Ridgeway and Catterina — all of whom will have their own acoustic sets.

Some Background on Lauren Calve and on Shift: 

Calve has been singing most of life and has been professionally writing and recording original music for about 10 years.

She explains that with Shift, there was a literal shift in sound. “[The music] still has a rootsy Americana flavor to it. With this full-length album, Shift, there is a shift in the sound- singing differently, playing differently and writing a bit differently.”

She feels she was a bit more imitating the other artists she loved, respected and have influenced her in previous releases. Calve reflected that this time around she synthesized it and formed a more unique and original sound that manifested in Shift.

Calve explains she felt like a student of folk (Ameriana) music for a long time. “When I first started writing original music, I noticed I was singing in a bluesy soulful way that I hadn’t really been singing in that style before. I was just playing covers at open mics and in some groups in college, and my voice kind of shifted in the beginning to a bluesy style, which was surprising to me. It seemed to come out of nowhere. Growing up I listened to pop R & B artists and Tina Turner … and that kind of shift in vocal style had got me curious about Americana roots music.”

With previous releases before Shift, she felt that music was a product of that research as she was delving into the musical history of this country all while trying to figure out where that vocal and writing style, which seemed to come out of nowhere, was coming from.

Shift was recorded in Nashville at 3Sirens Music Group with producer, engineer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Dex Green (Margo Price, Aaron Lee Tasjan, Allison Russell) along with a stellar line-up of musical talent including Fred Eltringham on drums (ACM Drummer of the Year, Drumeo Country Drummer of the Year, Sheryl Crow, Willie Nelson), Audley Freed on guitar (Sheryl Crow, The Black Crowes), Robert Kearns on bass (Sheryl Crow, Lynyrd Skynyrd), Marlon Patton on drums (Larkin Poe, Lera Lynn), Jared Reynolds on bass (Ben Folds) and engineer Joe Costa (Ben Folds).  

What artists influence you? 

“Kathleen Edwards, Lucinda Williams … I’m a big fan of blues music (acoustic early Delta blues) and artists like Muddy Waters.”

What is your creative process? 

Her process has evolved a bit more with Shift. Calve explains she first has a concept or word play and makes a note on it. She’ll go through these notes — what she considers different prompts. “I’ll open one up and kind of sit down and start writing … expounding on  an idea on a chorus or line… and then from there, once I get a first verse and a chorus down lyrically, put music over top of it and come up with a chord progression that seems to fit the style that appears in my mind.”

If your music was ice cream, what flavor would it be and why? 

“[Cookies and Cream – her favorite ice cream]. I’m a texture person and you get the mix of vanilla and chocolate and texture of the cookies. I feel with Shift it is kind of like more of an exploration of sound textures – layering of guitars. It’s more atmospheric, more varied, and more textures involved.

I feel like with cookies and cream – you get that scoop in there and there is that layering of ice cream. Also, with the vanilla and the chocolate you don’t have to choose one or the other. I feel like with Shift it is kind of like the best of both worlds- in terms of the music sounding more authentic, the lyrics sounding more authentic and original to me and it’s like a nice blend of that.”

Dream venue? 

[Red Rocks in Colorado] “I’ve been there a few times and it’s a magical place. It’s otherworldly. Especially playing live, that connection with artist and audience, and that interchange is magical. Then to add another layer of being in such a gorgeous landscape is kind of like a holy trinity of playing music.” 

If going on tour with a major artist, who would you pick? 

“I love Lucina Williams and she just came out with her autobiography, and has been doing kind of a retrospective tour, where she kind of plays all of her music, all of her hits. She’s one of my favorite artists of all time, so I would love to play with her. A more contemporary artist I love would be Big Thief. I think that they are really cool and is a progressive read on Americano music and where it is headed and kind of the fusion of roots music with rock- kind of like that indie-alternative scene. I think they are really interesting and one that excites me a lot.”

When people go to your show, what do you hope they walk away with? 

“I hope that people can connect to the shift in the songs. The lead off song from the first album is Shift and the whole record was a shift for me — in both sound and personally. After writing these songs I went through some pretty major shifts — like ending a seven-year relationship. I realized that the songs and writing the songs during the process I had this underground tectonic shift, which there is some of that imagery in the song Shift, was happening internally and it wasn’t until after I put all the songs together on the album that I realized the connection and it kind of created this. It was kind of the catalyst for the eventual shift, kind of action points, that let me change some things in my life. So, I’m hoping that people can feel that in the song.”

“I really love playing solo acoustic because it is really intimate – versus the whole band experience. I can spend a bit more time telling the stories, the inspiration, explaining the shifts behind the songs and because of that hope that people are by the end of the show can kind of be a guide to accompany them in whatever shift they are going through or will go through in the future. I feel like that is a constant thing in life – we are constantly shifting, and I hope these songs can be a comfort or a guide for people going through their own shifts.”

What’s next? 

“I have been writing since releasing Shift. It is still more in that vein than my previous releases – becoming kind of coalescing in a way with Shift. It wasn’t a major shift in sound but it was major enough where I was rethinking everything – the way I played, the way I was singing. So now I’m figuring out the kind of sonic landscape of all of that. How to really mesh my voice playing and writing a bit more- so that it is more cohesive and sounds even more unique to me.”

“The Winter Sun Tour” Headline Dates (With Cat Ridgeway and Catterina):