American vocalist AJ Lambert, granddaughter of Frank Sinatra and daughter of Nancy Sinatra, has developed a unique way of interpreting both standards and contemporary songs. In her conversation with Paul Cavalconte she explores her early days with music, her artistic influences, and what it means to perform standards in our post-format world. 

 

The following transcript has been edited.

Paul Cavalconte: I'm Paul Cavalconte and hi, AJ Lambert.

AJ Lambert: Hello! How are you doing, Paul?

Paul: By the way, folks should know that it is Angela Jennifer Lambert.

AJ: Yes.

Paul: A member of, I would like to think one of the first families of American show business, but you ride a little under the radar on that.

AJ:  It was a long time coming before I felt like I was able to sort of talk about that legacy, to feel like I could honor it.

Paul: Own it and honor it, and now I'm going to lift the curtain on it cause some folks may not realize that you are the granddaughter of Frank Sinatra, the daughter of Nancy Sinatra, and of Hugh Lambert, who is a dancer and a choreographer, and probably was responsible for everybody doing the Gogo and laughing. Pretty much it.

AJ: That's all his doing, it's all his doing, yes.

Paul: What an amazing world to be brought up in and at the same time, boy is that a lot on young shoulders. So tell me a little bit about those early days of growing up in that environment. I assume it was out in LA.

AJ: Yeah, I'm from LA, contrary to what sounds like a super exciting life it actually was quite normal. I didn't dance around all the time and like sing my way at the piano and all that stuff. We had a really relatively normal upbringing.

Paul: You weren't the Von Trapp family.

[laughter]

AJ: No, no, no. In fact, I started out as a drummer. I didn't sing for a long time.

Paul: Like me, you're a little bit standards, a little bit rock and roll.

AJ: I started out more doing not standards.

Paul: So that bloomed first.

AJ: Yeah. That bloomed first.

Paul: But big time not standards, like there's kind of a punk side to you as well.

[laughter]

Tell me about your misspent musical youth.

AJ: I guess, I hope it's not misspent. I really feel like all that stuff informs later things anyway. I mean, I think if you're listening to people who speak to you at the right time, you're going to get your artistic inspiration wherever you get it. You know what I mean? I feel like there's masterful singers and all kinds of music, including punk, like there's amazing singers out there, so it doesn't matter that, to me, that they're not standards.

Paul: Well you do have some interesting tastes when it comes to contemporary music, and you've prepared a song for us in addition to a few things that you might associate with the Sinatra era that may surprise folks. We're talking to AJ Lambert who knows her way around a broadcast studio because you've hosted a program on the Siriusly Sinatra.

AJ: Yes!

Paul:  And what do you present?

AJ: I do a show called third generation. That's kind of where this record idea came from and my whole stuff came from, is the idea that you can find music that is of a piece with stuff in the songbook if you look hard enough or if you have an open mind about it, like, if you hear it in a certain way, you can feel like it's all of a piece. To me. That's what the show is about.

Paul: Well I'm very much with you, you know, in that particular mindset. Because I think that it is incorrect to assume that any song is capable of maturing or aging into a standard. And we're not being specific, which is a little unfair to our vast listening audience, but let's stay with that for a moment before we hear you sing one that will surprise us.

AJ: Okay.

Paul: Let's talk about new standards. Could you give me an example off the top of your head of a -

AJ: I think most of Elvis Costello's catalog falls in that category.

Paul: You betcha'.

AJ: I think most of... a lot of David Bowie's writing falls in that catalog.

Paul: Absolutely!

AJ: Not American, but good songwriting. I just, I guess I just don't think it's that complicated. If it's good, it's good, and if you have an emotional reaction to it, if there are lyrical things that can make someone feel something and you have a way to extrapolate a theme from one type of instrumentation to another that will still evoke the same feeling or a new one that you hadn't thought of before, I think that counts.

Paul: Well that's a fine lead into you performing some music because we've laid a little bit of a philosophical groundwork here, but, uh, what would you like to do first? Can I suggest that tune?

AJ: Yes!

Paul: By that New York oriented group that you wouldn't think of as makers of standard songs?

AJ: Yes!

Paul: All right. And what is that tune and what is that group?

AJ: That song is called careful you, and it is by a group called TV on the Radio who are acquaintances of ours and our brand, and we look up to them tremendously, and we're honored to be playing music of people we admire so much.

Paul: AJ Lambert.

[music]

Careful You, AJ Lambert accompanied by Elliot Krimsky on a keyboard that clearly is programmed to do a lot of cool stuff and it sounded great. And what a beautiful song that is.

AJ: Yeah, It's such a pretty song. It's so pretty.

Paul: So Careful You is a full length album and it is songs of others. And then there is the EP that came out to commemorate the anniversary of Frank Sinatra sings for Only the Lonely. So are these things being made at the same time or...

AJ:  I started doing the Careful You album in like 2016, at the end of that year. And it just took ages. I had to come out here cause I wanted to play with these musicians specifically, and I wanted to come out to New York to work on them. So it took a while getting out here and taking time to do that. When I did the lonely songs EP that came about just because I was doing the album live. I have album shows where I do the entire In the Wee Small Hours album and the entire Only the Lonely album with just a pianist and myself, John Boswell, who's amazing. So we went to electrical audio, Steve Albini's studio in Chicago, and set up a couple of microphones and recorded those songs.

And then a friend of mine named Greg from a band called Protomartyr, got involved and added the guitar flavor to it after that. And we did that in Detroit and it just happened within a month or so. And then it was like, Oh, the anniversary is in October, so let's put it out. And there it is.

Paul: So tell me more about Careful You. It is an album of so-called covers. I always hate that expression cause like Pat Boone covers Fats Domino.

AJ: Right right right.

Paul: That's, you know, you're reinventing, you know, songs. So name some others that are given the treatment, AJ Lambert.

AJ: Well, so we have a few that my grandfather did. We have Sleep Warm, and I'll Be Seeing You, and Ebb Tide.  And then there's things that are done by people like John Cale and Spoon. We do a song by a really great New Zealand artist named Shona Laing, who had a song out in the 80's that I just loved as a kid called Glad I'm Not a Kennedy. And I thought that, that was a fun one to do. It's a never ending repository.

Paul: And you stay very true to your point of view. You're not attempting to connect any dots here and say this logically leads to that. You're just choosing things that speak to you and saying, Hey, let's collect them and perform them on an equal footing.

AJ: And it wasn't even that difficult. You know, when we made the record at the start, it was kind of like, is it going to sound like one record? And it very much does it just, if the songs are good then it works.

Paul: So Sleep Warm and Ebb Tide are the songs we were talking about. And the cool thing about sleep warm is that there was a record that Frank made with his great pal, Dean Martin, which Frank Sinatra conducted. Which is an interesting connection there.  And Ebb tide is one of those songs on Frank Sinatra sings for only the lonely, which is in that strange category we were talking about. A sort of art song, and it goes in a big circle like the tide rushing in and pulling out, and rushing in and pulling out.

AJ: Yup. And it works really well.

[laughter]

Paul: Can we see how it works?

AJ: Sure, sure. sure! Definitely.

Paul: We're talking to AJ Lambert, she is describing and then going out there and proving how great and universal these songs are.

[music]

Paul: As advertised, Sleep Warm and Ebb Tide. AJ Lambert, there is Sinatra family DNA in abundance in what we heard.

AJ: Thank you.

Paul: The phrasing and your terrific pitch and the sweetness of your voice.

AJ: It means a lot to me. Thank you.

Paul: Do you sing along with Frank Sinatra records to kind of get calibrated?

AJ: I did!

Paul: [laughter]

Cause we all do, in the shower, in the car, you know.

AJ: Like, when I was learning how to sing properly... that's definitely my education, for sure.

Paul: So as luck would have it, the program, the song list of Only the Lonely and Wee Small Hours just happens to be right for you. There is songs of the correct emotional tenor of the correct life experience, you know, level.

AJ: That I couldn't have done 10 years ago, it would have been ridiculous,  to me. I just think that's weird. I think some people doing some of this music when they do it, it's kind of like come on, like do you really feel that? Are you really, really believing what you're saying? And sometimes I just don't buy it and I just think it's not good. I don't want to hear somebody just singing it cause it's a pretty song. I just, I don't like that. I think that's not fair to the writing.

Paul: AJ Lambert. We are in the 21st century, and a lot of the attitudes, you know, and the prejudices, preconceived notions that the last bunch of generations had in the 20th century are falling off in many aspects of life. One in particular regarding songs is the fact that our generation, more or less, was the first one to really rebel. You know, seriously rebel against parents music. Ironically, Sinatra was, you know, the president of that, you know, part of the world. There was a real push back in rock, and now things have turned around and it's softened through the years.

AJ: Yup.

Paul: So we're reaching a point now where we can look at all of songs without the format delineations that we had. you know.

AJ: I totally agree. I totally agree, I mean, all you have to do is look at what my daughter's father and I have brought her up on. I mean, she just listens to what we listen to and her knowledge of music is like, she loves Captain Beefheart and then she also loves whatever the hit is, like Ariana Grande's song or whatever. Like, she loves all of it because she doesn't know the difference. Music is music, and -

Paul: Doesn't know the difference, that great.

Yeah.

So in this post format world that we happily inhabit, AJ Lambert, what's next? Where do you think you're going to bounce the ball?

AJ:  Uh, in the coming days or in the coming year, or what?

Paul: Whatever, take it as far, take as long as you want to!

AJ: We have a lot of interesting stuff happening. We've done some new recording that is gonna be coming out at some point. I'm not sure exactly when, but it's a new single that's coming out and it's about as crystallized of this idea as you can get. Because we have a song called Mood Indigo, which you know very well, and then we also have on that same record, we have a song called One Rizla, which is by a very modern band called Shame. And there couldn't be two more polar opposite types of music if you wanted to sort of define things, but it's going to be one record that comes out and they're very, very related thematically.

And so there's that that's coming soon and shows and stuff. And you know, we're keep on trucking. Like I said, there is an inexhaustible supply of music for us to do because, there's so much great music in the world.

Paul: It's all free!

AJ: It's all there.

Paul:  It's going beyond category.

AJ: Well now, Paul, it's not free.

[laughter]

Paul: Well, not literally free. It's freed with a 'D' at the end.

AJ: Yes, exactly, exactly.

Paul: It's been unleashed.

AJ: It has been freed.

Paul: That's an interesting thing actually for us to kind of wrap up on the fact that, you know, the platform of the Sinatra era was first. Spinning 78 RPM records then came the LP, but yet jukeboxes.

AJ: Sure.

Paul: Now there is the ubiquity of music carried around in the miracle that is the smart device.

AJ: Yeah.

Paul: There's Spotify, there's people not having to pay for music like they used to. It's a complicated, it's an expanded universe, but it's complicated, isn't it?

AJ: Honestly, to me, if it all becomes the way that Alan Lomax was discovering folk music all over the world, and let's just like, those are the songs and they're just there. That's okay with me. I don't, that's okay. I'm sure the writers might disagree with me

[laughter]

Paul: Well, in our post format radio world. You are a welcome addition and thank you for the fantastic performance, and for being an adventure and very spontaneous in the way you react to music. I guess the answer to the question of what can we expect next from AJ Lambert is - she doesn't know yet, and that's perfectly cool.

AJ: Well, I have an idea.

[laughter]

Paul: When she knows...

AJ: You'll know.

Paul: You'll know. And that's good enough for us. Thank you, AJ Lambert.

AJ: Thank you.