“I've always felt right about singing” : The Line of Best Fit meets Samantha Crain

Oklahoman native Samantha Crain sings of bygone days and simpler times, her music a blend of folk and country, her voice a tremulous force of nature. Crain’s quirky interpretation of the genre helps her songs rise above the mundane, and her understanding and love of literature imbues the tracks on latest album You (Understood) with a clear narrative. Combined with her outstanding voice, the words and music on the album create a map of people and places she’s encountered on her travels, but everything always leads back to her home state, a place with a rich musical heritage.

We caught up with Samantha on her recent tour of the UK to talk about that new record, her home state, and playing on the same bill as a British comedy legend.

I begin by asking that as Samantha is from Oklahoma, the home of great musicians from Woody Guthrie through to Flaming Lips, was it inevitable that she’d pick up an instrument? “Not really….I didn’t really start playing music at an early age,” reveals Samantha. “I was about 17 before I started playing guitar at all and then about 18 or 19 before I started writing any songs. I was more of an outdoorsy and sports-interested person for most of my life. My musical knowledge before then was pretty much just what I heard on the radio or what my dad played around the house (a lot of Peter, Paul, and Mary).” What about the state in general, would she say it influences the music she writes and plays? “Yes. I would say most, if not all, artists, even if they try to get away from something reminiscent of their home, can’t help but have little bits of that influence show through.” And is Samantha happy to let that seep into her music? “I’m not really trying to get away from those sounds or images of my upbringing and current life. I wear them blatantly on my sleeve.”

Continuing with the discussion of place, did Samantha initially pursue music as a way to escape Oklahoma? Yet that’s where she lives today? “Yeah that’s about right,” admits Samantha. “I just wanted to ‘see the world’ as cheesy as that sounds. It’s not that I hated Oklahoma, I love it and I love my family and friends here, I just wanted to see other places and live life on the other side.” So Oklahoma’s still the place you return to when you’re not touring? “I’ve lived in a lot of other cities too during tour breaks but I travel so much for the music that when it’s time for a break, I really just want to see my family and be around familiar faces and landscapes and cities. Plus it’s really cheap to live in Oklahoma!”

As Samantha currently records and tours under her name alone, I ask about previous records and tours. She’s played with and shared a name with The Midnight Shivers in the past, so did she want to push out on her own or did the band come to a natural end? “I’ve always really considered myself a solo artist,” confirms Samantha. “I like to collaborate with all sorts of people, which is why I don’t really have a set group of players with me anymore. I didn’t realize it would be such a big deal for me not to be playing with the Midnight Shivers, but it obviously was because people are still talking about it even though we haven’t played together in close to 3 years now.” So what happened to end that particular collaboration? “I don’t really want to get into the ending of that partnership. It wasn’t a natural end, but it wasn’t ‘cause I was ready to move on either…it’s much more childish and cliché in that it has all the makings of dramatic band biopic.”

Turning to Samantha’s new album, You (Understood), it seems to be a record about relationships, but not in the conventional sense of boy-girl trials and tribulations. A collection of snapshot moments shared with a selection of people, was this intentional as she wrote/recorded the album, or did it evolve? “I think the first group of 5 or 6 songs just evolved that way,” explains Crain, 25. “They were all written in a short span of time and I realized this link between them all and this different, more abstract way that I was writing lyrics. So I wrote the remaining songs to match up with them so the record would feel cohesive to me.”

I wonder if, given that Samantha likes to collaborate a lot in her music, some of the memories refer to getting together with others to play music. She doesn’t seem to think so: “I don’t think any of the songs on that album are about people I’ve collaborated with musically. Most of those songs are snapshots of my time living in Grand Rapids, MI and the great little community of people I got to fall into there.” So when you do collaborate on a track, how do you go about it, is it searching out “kindred spirits”, or do you stumble into things? “As far as working with others, I do find myself searching out kindred spirits a lot but some of them are pure luck. For example, when I met Frontier Ruckus, who helped out on my song ‘Santa Fe’, I wanted to be their best friend and I wanted to make music with them. I just loved everything about them. So I think I’ve wormed my way into their lives pretty well now!” And what about when she plays live? “My live collaborations with First Aid Kit on my song ‘The Dam Song’ was something we just sorta stumbled upon in a dressing room. The whole room just stopped breathing when we hit that 3 part harmony for the first time. It was something unplanned and just magical. I do like to search out musicians and singers that I’m interested in working with though. It’s one of the best things about music, I think. Sharing. Experimenting.”

I ask about the differences between recording and being out touring. Does Samantha work with the same folk on record and on tour – who’s in the band and how did you meet? “The last record was a collection of musicians that I don’t usually play with live,” she reveals. “They were Joey Lemon, Ben Wigler (who used to be in band called Arizona), and Eric Nauni (who is in the Oklahoma bands, Student Film and Gang Starr Museum). But I have a 7″ coming out in January that John Vanderslice produced and my current live drummer, Anne Lillis, does play on those songs. Currently in live shows, I have a few different formations that we work with. One of them is me, Anne on drums, and Penny Hill on bass and the other formation is me, Daniel Foulks on fiddle, and Kyle Reid on guitar. Anne has been playing with me for about 2 years now. I met her because she used to play in Jessica Lea Mayfield’s band. Penny is my best friend from back in Oklahoma and she has her own musical project (Penny Hill) but wanted to take a break from that a little so picked up the bass and started playing and singing with me. Singing with her is one of the great joys in my life. I love singing with her. Daniel, I met through common friends in Oklahoma, and same with Kyle. They are both tremendous players.”

I turn the conversation back to the album and in particular the track and single ‘Santa Fe’. It sounds like a yearning for times past, so I ask if Samantha looks backwards for inspiration – her music could be seen as “old time”, I guess, a voice from another age. “I’m definitely a nostalgic person,” she agrees. “I get a lot of inspiration from the past and past experiences. I feel like I know so much about the past but nothing about the future so that’s what I can write most confidently about. I’m such a futuristic thinker in my real life, in that I’m a worrier and neurotically need to always know what is going to happen next so I can plan for it, so I tend to escape that mindset for when it’s time to make music and focus on things that have already happened.”

Speaking of making music then, who were your influences when you started to play or make music? “Well originally I was very influenced by more literary figures than musicians, because, at the time, I was studying writing.” Were there any writers that stood out as major influences? “Flannery O’Connor, Breece D’J Pancake, D.H. Lawrence, Walt Whitman, Dylan Thomas, Anais Nin, Henry Miller, John Keats…these were all my original music influences.” Was it different when it came to writing songs? “As I started writing songs though, I started listening more intently to music and to songwriters and Paul Simon and Neil Young became my beacons. I was also listening to a lot of Andrew Bird and Ryan Adams then as well.” Is there anyone around at the moment you like, or would recommend? “At the moment I’m listening to a beautiful album by The Weather Station, an album called Prologue by the Milk Carton Kids, Photographs by Robert Ellis, and a lot of Django Reinhardt. Also there is an album called Can’t Get Past the Lips by an Oklahoma band that my friends are in called BRONCHO and it is the coolest thing to happen to music since David Bowie.”

One thing that jumps out on You (Understood) is Crain’s voice. It’s got a distinctive natural twang to it, some compare it to Joanna Newsom but it’s perhaps not as potentially divisive as that. It works perfectly with the dusty country sound, and I wonder if she was always confident in how it sounded, or did it take time to find confidence in it? Her answer is firm and – yes – confident. “I may not be an entirely confident person in a lot of areas on my life, but one thing that I’ve never hesitated with or second guessed was singing. I’ve always felt right about singing.” I ask where she records and whether or not she enjoys being in the studio. Given that she tours a lot can Samantha find somewhere comfortable to record? “I really DO love recording,” she affirms. “It’s such a fulfilling process for me. I usually go where the producer I’m working with wants to work. I can find inspiration in almost any place so to have a producer and an engineer who knows their way around the studio well is more important to the process I think.” Where has recording been recently? “I’ve recorded at Echo Mountain Studio in Asheville, NC and also at Tiny Telephone in San Francisco. Any of the recordings that I’ve done with Joey Lemon have been in various incarnations of his home studio and I’ve recently done some work at Blackwatch Studios in Norman, OK too.”

Outside of the studio, Crain and her band have been on tour with, of all people, Adrian Edmonson and the Bad Shepherds. I asked Samantha if she was aware of his comedy background in the UK with The Young Ones, and how the tour went. “I was aware of it but I hadn’t seen any of his comedic acting. The tour has been great and he and his band are endlessly entertaining in the dressing room. Ade is always popping off hilarious one-liners and Troy is actually a wizard of a magician. And I love magic. So I’m just like a kid at a great entertaining circus around them every night.” Given that she’s essentially touring an album that’s been available for over a year in the US, I ask if it was strange to be introducing those songs as new to the audiences turning up. “It is weird to be talking about an album that has been out for a year,” admits Samantha. “I’ve moved on from these songs in so many ways and I’m just ready for the next thing. But I try to tap into what I think was in my head a year ago when I’m singing these songs for people over here in UK for the first time. I’m not very good at writing songs on the road. I collect a lot of ideas in my notebook and on recordings but I usually have to wait until things wind down to put them all together in finished songs. But I feel a big surge of songs coming.”

And on that final note, what’s next for Samantha Crain? “I go back to the US and do about a week of dates in the Pacific Northwest and then I’m going to Michigan to record a 7″ with Frontier Ruckus and Small Houses, two Michigan based music projects. Then a full month of Midwest, Northeast, and Southeast tour dates with Ben Weaver and American Aquarium.”

With her wayfaring unlikely to be satiated by a period of recording, we can surely expect Samantha Crain to be back on these shores soon – and with many years ahead of her we can expect more music and stories from such a precocious talent.