Lauren Calve Dedicates New Single to Everyday People on the Front Lines

Storyteller, singer, and songwriter Lauren Calve just released her Wildfire EP.  Calve’s musical compositions blend blues and Americana, guitar and lap steel but go beyond tradition and embrace innovative melodies, structures and arrangements. 

On Wildfire, Calve writes about complex issues on tracks such as “On And On,” a song inspired by the documentary film Muscle Shoals, and “Shock Time,” a song that takes its name from one of Woody Guthrie’s journal entries referencing the electroshock therapy he almost underwent. The song came together after Calve read Naomi Klein’s book Shock Doctrine, which highlights the social and environmental “shock” strategies that those in power often take.  In the song, Calve brings together Klein and Guthrie’s “shocks” in a “fearful contemplation of misdeeds and the retribution for it.”

Calve wrote the current single, “Better Angels,” after listening to a radio interview with Jon Meacham who cited Abraham Lincoln’s inaugural address as inspiration for his book, The Soul of America: The Battle For Our Better Angels. 

“Meacham applied Lincoln’s message of ‘the better angels of our nature’ to the courage of the American people who dealt with the unprecedented crises of their era,’” says Calve in a press release.  “As I listened to this, immigrants were being contained, families were being separated, children were held in cages. Lincoln’s words still held a powerful resonance, and they gave me a deep hope that I hadn’t felt in years. ‘Better Angels’ was born from that surge of hope and optimism.”

It was a reminder that we would always rise to the occasion, no matter what.

“Meacham applied Lincoln’s message of ‘the better angels of our nature’ to the courage of the American people who dealt with the unprecedented crises of their era,’” says Calve in a press release.  “As I listened to this, immigrants were being contained, families were being separated, children were held in cages. Lincoln’s words still held a powerful resonance, and they gave me a deep hope that I hadn’t felt in years. ‘Better Angels’ was born from that surge of hope and optimism.  It was a reminder that we would always rise to the occasion, no matter what.”

Once Covid-19 started spreading, Calve couldn’t stop thinking about Lincoln’s message, and it reminded her of the everyday people on the front lines in the battle against COVID-19.  

“For me, they symbolize the angels that Lincoln talked about,” says Calve.  “The qualities of our better nature — courage, leadership, resolve, resilience, empathy, compassion, and altruism are all exemplified in the nurses, doctors, janitors, grocery store clerks, mail carriers, delivery truck drivers, pharmacists and other essential workers.  They are the ‘better angels’ in the lyrics while embodying the true spirit of the song and of Lincoln’s famous words: ‘The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.’” 

The song’s lyric video expresses what she was feeling and express the gratitude she had for the people who are “out there every day in my neighborhood, in my town, and throughout the world selflessly serving our communities.”

“I wanted to say thank you to them, the better angels in my life that were helping me get through this rough time and still are today,” say Calve.

 The video features Calve and her family as well as photos of her mailman, police chief, food clerks, pharmacist, and even her cat. 

Calve recently performed the song and was interviewed by Z100’s Garrett Vogel of The Elvis Duran Show on his Instagram LIVE . The song has also been featured on Spotify playlists such as CMT’s Next Women Of Country and the Round Up as well as DittyTV’s Ditty Dozen. In addition, “Wildfire” is being featured this month on Blue Ridge Outdoor Magazine’s Trail Mix VI.

Album art: Photo by John Figura and graphic designby Adam Neubauer