Cheering For The Other Side

They developed a friendship which became a partnership, Rose helping Crain figure out her sound, Crain enabling Rose to start a record label. In conversation they compliment and encourage, cheerleading each other past self-deprecation and into confident new chapters.

“I always want it to be Loose Women,” mock-sulks Rose. “We met on Loose Ends, which is actually highbrow, isn’t it, really?” Rose approached Crain after her performance on the radio show, in shock that she hadn’t warmed up her voice before playing. “She was like, do you not warm up or anything? Like, you don’t do any vocal warm-ups?” Crain laughs. “And I was like, no, I guess not. Her mind was blown away.”

“I was in ultimate awe,” admits Rose, joining the laughter.

A couple of years later Crain played The Shacklewell Arms in East London and invited Rose down to watch the show. Afterwards they shared a couple of whiskeys and Rose asked Crain to support her on her Something’s Changing tour across the UK and Europe. Their time on the road only strengthened their friendship and Rose’s admiration for the Oaklahoman performer. ”Seeing Samantha play every night at the quality that she plays, consistently, winning over crowds of people with her songs and her art was just pretty overwhelming,” Rose smiles.

During the tour Crain was in the process of mixing her new album, a record that chartered a personal battle for recovery following a string of car accidents. She was already playing songs from the record live, “If I have something that is really close to my heart, I want to perform it in that moment,” she says, and was also sharing the mixes with Rose, open to her input.

Rose questioned the mix and Crain acted on it, finding a new engineer to work the recordings. “It was just nice for somebody to be like, what do you want it to sound like?” says Crain. Meanwhile, Rose had fallen in love with the album. “I went to my label, Communion, being like, you guys have to sign Samantha, she’s unbelievable, this album is ridiculous,” she laughs. “And then they were like, you should just have a label, under us, as an imprint. Samantha’s album was the ambition behind Real Kind Records, like right, we’ve got to make sure the world hears this album.”

It was an astute move by Communion to enlist Rose as their new talent scout. A Small Death is a beautiful, moving and impactful work of art. The songs are rich in their instrumentation and Crain’s tender and at times yearning delivery is packed with hope and hurt in equal measure. Despite the often heavy subject matter, the overall sentiment is uplifting, revelling in its own existence and catharsis. There’s a confessionality to tracks like “Joey” and “An Echo” that sways acceptingly in its country-led narratives. But there are moments of strident and joyous melody too. “Pastime” and “Garden Dove” soar and drive with pure confidence. Crain strikes a balance across the record, sharing her life through direct lyricism that simultaneously feels vulnerable and poetic, and involving her listener on the journey with warm and hazy production that can comfort the hard knocks.

The relationship between Crain and Rose is certainly not a traditional label and artist one, but it works. Here, they discuss the album, it’s journey, themes and ambitions with a few laughs and a lot of heart.

LUCY ROSE: Obviously there’s so much to discuss when it comes to this album and your journey making it. Overcoming trauma seems to be an integral theme of the record, so perhaps we should start there?

SAMANTHA CRAIN: I had this moment in my life around the time my last record came out in 2017 which was just this compounding, when it rains it pours, barrage of problems. I’ve always struggled with tendonitis and carpal tunnel really badly and I was in a period of three months in three different car wrecks. I’m not a bad driver, people ran into me all three times. My health was declining in general because of how much pain I was in because of the wrecks and the tendonitis and carpal tunnel, and financially the car wrecks put me in a really bad spot too. These are things I feel like only Americans will relate with. I guess people with universal healthcare don’t understand how easy it is to get buried under bills when stuff like this happens.

I got into this really dark place with that and also personally, my family life was breaking down and a lot of my friendships and relationships. I got into this really bad place where also, psychosomatically my body was shutting down and I couldn’t use my hands at all. I would wake up in the morning and it would be an hour or two before I would get feeling in my hands. I couldn’t play anymore and I was bedridden, just couldn't do anything.

Eventually I started coming out of that with both mental and physical therapies. In that period of time your identity is stripped away from you. I’m in this reconstruction period searching for who I am apart from ‘Samantha Crain the musician’. I think subconsciously we give ourselves a persona so we can get through life. Eventually it’s exciting. There’s a giddiness to finding all these new facets of your personality. And so that’s what this record was made out of. This record was the way that I got through it, and in that I found out that it’s going to be easier to get over things in the future, hopefully.

So fascinating. Was there a moment where you were starting to be able to use your hands again and you picked up a guitar? Was it like these songs, in that period of time where you couldn’t play, had subconsciously built up inside you? Was it quite a subconscious thing that felt like it was happening without you knowing it?

Yeah, during the time that I was in my house not doing anything, not being able to work or see people, I was still keeping a lot of notes, writing things, keeping voice memos. If nothing else, as a record of this period of my life, like an audio diary, almost. Within the first two or three times that I picked up a guitar again, I pulled out those notes. And there weren’t really melodies, it was just words, and it just came out. It was really different in that way for me because normally with writing I keep a big collection of melody ideas and lyric ideas and puzzle-piece them together. But this one felt a bit more easily inspired.

Subconscious is a really good way of putting it. I feel like that’s how the very first songs I wrote came to me, it did really feel like capturing lightning in a bottle, and it’s been a really long time since I’ve felt that sort of feeling again. I think it has something to do with vulnerability, allowing yourself to be open to receiving something like that. I was in such a vulnerable and childlike state, almost. I had no expectations of ever writing songs again so I could be this open vessel for letting it happen.

It feels like it’s almost like having no boundaries. Because you’re not overthinking oh, what’s gonna happen next is I’m gonna finish this album, then start the next one. It’s been taken away from you completely. And when you’re given back the feeling in your hands to play again, you’re not thinking great, I’m gonna go start writing an album now. You’re just like, I can play the guitar again. Just the joy of like, I can do this thing that brings me such happiness that I didn’t think I’d ever be able to play again. It’s almost like that freedom in your own thoughts and perspective that I imagine allowed you to write the songs that you’ve written this time. That whole other world that sometimes barges in when you’re writing songs I imagine just didn’t exist. I mean, a lot of the subject matter goes back, what? Ten, fifteen years? Perhaps that’s a part of it?

Yeah, a lot of the stuff that I’m unpacking in songs are things that I’ve been pushing down, stuff that I wasn’t letting myself move on from and I think because of the situation I was in, because I didn’t think I was ever going to be able to write songs again or make a record again, I was just thinking as I was writing, I’m just getting this stuff out. And that affects what you end up saying. I was just stoked to be able to play. I was like, well if I’m here and I’ve got these things that I want to move on from, I’m just gonna put them down in these songs as a cathartic release to get that out of my life.

I talk about various emotional, abusive relationships. I talk about my mother being in prison. These are things that are ancient as far as I’m concerned, stuff I’ve been dealing with for years. But I’ve never been able to talk about them because of embarrassment or not being able to face it myself. There’s this thing that happens anytime you have to have a hard conversation with somebody, it builds up in your mind that that conversation or someone’s response to something is always going to be so awful that you’re not going to be able to move on from it. But then when you actually have the conversation, it doesn’t even register. It’s not that big of a deal. That’s a thing that happened with this.

I thought that if I ever mentioned a lot of this stuff that it would be the end, people would be like woah, she’s over-sharing. Or my family members would be embarrassed that I brought these things out into the open. Someone in my family said, thank you for writing that because I would never be able to write that and I feel the same way. So I think a lot of my fears attached to that, I just got to move past.

It’s so interesting and it's also fascinating that your family said thank you for writing that. It’s so great. It shows how powerful your songs are and music is. I’ve said from day one, thank you for being brave enough to say the things you’re saying in this record because I know that I tread the line of ooh, I’ve overshared, this is embarrassing or it’s too much and now it’s gonna make people feel uncomfortable. But it’s made an incredible record of songs. When you finished this collection of songs what was the plan?

My friend Brian has a studio in Oklahoma City where I’ve done a lot of demoing in the past and I’ve produced a couple of local bands’ records there so I’m really familiar with the studio and I’m just really comfortable there. Recording a record for me can be pretty intense, emotionally, because it’s really long days and if you’re getting too much in your head and overthinking things an entire studio day can go out the window. Like, I’ve just wasted $500 today because I’m on my period.

So when it came time to record I was like, I need to do something really low pressure. So with this record I was like, I’m gonna do it here so I can just go in for two or three days and then take a break and then come back and do two or three days. It worked really well because a lot of these songs I ended up having to relive as I was recording them which was really heavy and so I needed those days in between to deal with that.

From a production standpoint, the thing that I kept having in my head that I was trying to convey was, you know that feeling when you’re going through old photos or letters and it’s not even a feeling of nostalgia, it’s like you remember the memory but you don’t really remember it innately? That’s how I felt looking back, trying to remember the person I was going through this pretty traumatic intense time. I couldn’t imagine being that person, even though it was me that experienced it, sort of like this fever dream. So from a production standpoint that was what I wanted to capture. I’m sure there’s some great German word that explains whatever that feeling is.

I don’t know if I made this up in my head or if you said it once, but it’s kinda got that nostalgic 90s feel to the record. Like a part of what you’re describing is looking back at a time. Even when I’d heard it for the first time it made me feel nostalgic about my youth somehow.

I love when something immediately feels familiar to me, especially with music or movies. But I also know that can be a really dangerous place to exist when you’re creating as you can just get caught in this loop of trying to make something that you’ve already heard. It’s like trying to remember things from your life that have been covered up and pushed to the side. That’s a different motivator than trying to create something that you remember really well.

You gave yourself, not rules, but you had things like, I’m not going to play any electric guitar on this record. Where did you find those outlines of what you wanted as a running theme or thread to go through the music?

Limitation is the word you’re looking for. That’s something I like to do with records because it’s that feeling of immobility when your palette is endless. I’m one of those people that likes to have three or four things on the menu and I’ll choose from that. If you put me in a cheesecake factory where the menu is the size of a small novella, I’m immobilised. I don’t know what to do. I tend to do the same thing when I’m making something, I just limit my palette because it forces those moments of invention and creativity.

So if you’re recording a song and all you can think about is man, it just really needs an electric guitar here, then you’re forced out that zone of relying on that instrument and you have to think, well, what else gives us that texture? What can we do in terms of compression or reverb to have that feeling? I think it just makes the whole process a bit more alive. You’re constantly having to be in that creative state. With this record I decided my limitation was no electric guitars. I just have a bunch of negative connotations connected with the electric guitar because I’ve just been in a world where every dude is nahnahnahnah, like shoving their crazy noodling in my face when all I want is something tasteful.

You’re engaged to an electric guitar player, right?

Yeah, yeah. It’s like, there’s obviously good tequila out there but sometimes when you smell tequila all you can think about is that one time that you puked all over the street when you were twenty-three years-old because you had too much shitty hairspray tequila. Sometimes that’s how I feel when I hear an electric guitar.

"As an independent musician, there’s something that’s created at a show, like this shared space, shared experience, that actually gets people to a point of appreciating an album even more."

I was thinking about how the live side has obviously been really difficult, not going into pandemic world, but we did manage to do one show that Paul Weller came to. The greatest thing about Paul Weller coming is Sam was like, who?

It was right there. I got back to the States on March 6th and they shut down the borders right after that.

But the show was absolutely awesome. I do feel so grateful that I’ve been able to hear the album, hear you play it, and obviously Paul. How do you feel about not being able to play this record live?

I’m trying not to get too much in my head about it because I don’t really know what’s going on. It’s a decision I don’t have to make until I have an option. Of course I want to be able to play the songs for people. There’s something about singing those songs live. And just for myself, this year was supposed to be my test out year to see how I transitioned back into a heavy touring schedule. I want to know how that works for me and what changes I need to make, how I’m relating to the songs.

So that’s the main thing for me, personally, that’s been put on hold. I think from a personal growth standpoint I was really looking forward to seeing how my hands were gonna hold up and all that, but it will happen whenever it happens. I hope I can figure out some way that makes sense to present the songs to people other than the album recordings. I think also as an independent musician, there’s something that’s created at a show, like this shared space, shared experience, that actually gets people to a point of appreciating an album even more. That’s why people buy records at a show. Like, how can I get further into this experience. So from an independent musician standpoint, not having that takes away from the main way we connect.