FEATURE: Spotlight: Samantha Crain — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

Samantha Crain

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ONE of the most interesting artists…

on the scene today is Samantha Crain. She is a Choctaw songwriter, musician, producer, and singer from Shawnee, Oklahoma. I have not heard too many Choctaw artists. It is fascinating learning more about Crain’s heritage and hearing her sing in Choctaw. Crain won 2 NAMMYs (Native American Music Awards) in 2009 for Folk Album of the Year and Songwriter of the Year. She also won the Indigenous Music Award for Best Rock Album in 2019. I am going to focus on her most-recent album, 2020’s A Small Death. In mid-2017, Crain was involved in three car accidents within three months. It left her in physical and mental pain and without use of her hands. Unable to write or play, she dictated voice memos to her phone. It is an amazing and harrowing story that led to one of the most memorable albums of last year! I can only imagine she must have been going through after her third car accident. Such a traumatic and terrible time where she might have wondered whether she would write and perform again! Although there is rumination, pain and sorrow through A Small Death, there is light and beauty. It is a naked and honest album that will blow you away. A Small Death is Crain’s sixth full-length release. I would advise everyone to check out her previous work. I am going to start by bringing in an interview from Secret Meeting. They spoke to her last year about A Smell Death and where the title came from:

“The album title itself poses a curious sentiment. The image of a small death becomes almost oxymoronic – the idea of everything ending completely, but only by a fraction. ‘Through that traumatic moment in my life where I had lost feeling in my hands, and was really grappling with my identity as a person outside of being a musician, it occurred to me that everything is sort of always starting over again at various points in our life,’ Crain explains on the album title. ‘It’s just trying to convey those points in your life where you are hitting the restart button.’ The title is taken from Joey, a song literally centered within the tracklisting, allowing Crain to almost hit this restart button again and again through the record’s lifespan.

In the height of the trauma, Crain has been living through her difficulties, both mental and physical, which left her unable to write music. Her relationship to music, from how she plays guitar to what she searches for through her lyrics, has had to evolve, to adapt from this period of emotional and physical upheaval forced upon her. ‘I feel like this particular time in my life forced a new way into writing,’ she tells us. ‘Since I was shutting down, and becoming a forced convalescence, I was keeping audio diaries, more as a therapy tool; I never thought they would become songs.’ An introspective therapy tool, these audio diaries informed the lyrics on the record. This period of inertia has also played a dictating role in the ways Crain can play music. Eventually regaining the strength in her hands to pick up her guitar, she has had to make concessions in musical complexity, for the sake of being able to make music. ‘I’ve had to veer more into open-tunings, because I still struggle with my hands,’ she explains. It is an interesting move away from how I would traditionally write songs.’ This change against the tide of tradition has not hampered the record though. Rather, the lyrical depth is thrust to the front, confronting the listener as intently as Crain confronts herself.

‘This record was really cathartic for me,’ she later explains. ‘I think different people create for different reasons. Some people create to process things while they’re happening, and some people create to move on from something after they’ve spent time processing it.’ Likening her cause to create to the latter, she seems grounded and reflective; ‘I’ve spent all this time processing these traumas, but now that I can create this record, I can move on from it.’ Developing these songs unknowingly, without the context of a record in the initial stages, has allowed Crain to beckon this sense of catharsis. ‘It freed me up to exist outside the normal context of what I would be comfortable including in songs in the past,’ she says. ‘It has let me dive into those deeper layers of the autobiographical, self-confessional aspects. I have always considered myself to write close to the heart, but because I didn’t have this [self-built] construct of how songs should be or how they have been in the past, it has lent itself to something that hits a little bit deeper.’

Not only is this depth of her self-confessional nuance present through her lyricism, it informs the record’s soundscape too, in its slow-moving climbs and sombre tones, at points creating a feeling akin to waking from slumber. Self-producing the record has allowed Crain to ensure this feeling is preserved throughout, likening it to the sense of being in a fever dream. ‘[It’s] like that feeling where you remember something, not innately, but you remember the memory of it. Like whenever there’s a story that’s been told in your family, for years and years, and it becomes part of the canon of your reality,’ she explains. ‘The reason why that was the feel I was trying to convey in the production of this record is because that’s how I feel about these two years in my life. I know I was the person who went through this heightened emotional and physical stress, but I don’t remember that innately, it feels very dream-like.’ This feeling is most clearly addressed on Pastime – created through a textured background vocals of chanting aums, creating for Crain the effect of this ‘trance-like, meditative feeling, where you can’t tell if you’ve been listening to a song for 30-seconds or 30-minutes. So that was the experiment – to bring that feeling into the record.’

The penultimate track on the record sees Crain singing in Choctaw – her ancestral language. Written in the mode of protest song, We Shall Overcome, When We Remain bears great significance to Crain, from rewriting stolen tradition, to cultivating and celebrating her heritage. ‘Writing in the Choctaw language, over the last few years, is something that has become really important to me,’ she says. ‘Mainly because I believe it is the one way, the most important way to hold on to the survival for those indigenous cultures and tribes.’ Continuing, Crain explains the importance of surviving indigenous languages in light of responses she has had to previous records – highlighting a widespread ignorance towards indigenous peoples. ‘I even ran into [this ignorance] reading reviews of my record, where it mentions my heritage isn’t apparent in my music, which just is not true,’ she tells us. ‘What that is doing is playing into the stereotype of what little knowledge people actually have of Native Americans; of what they do and how they live. It makes me think if I’m not playing a hand-drum or a flute, then I’m not making indigenous art. Which is really belittling. I think it’s really important that people understand that if I make anything, if I make a little drawing right now on a piece of paper, if I write a poem, if I cook a meal, those are Choctaw because I am Choctaw.’ A tool for rebuilding indigenous identity and culture that has been wrecked by land removal and genocide, Crain further highlights the importance of continuing these languages through contemporary music. ‘I think it is a really useful tool to say, “It’s not possible for me to learn the songs of my ancestors, because I can’t find them anymore. They were taken from us. But I can write my own new songs in our language, and those can be new traditions to us.” That’s why it is so important to me. It can be quite a powerful thing to get young, indigenous people in the mindset of creating new traditions’”.

A new Samantha Crain song, Pick Apart, arrived a couple of weeks ago. I will include that at the end of this feature. I am excited to see whether we might get another album from the amazing songwriter soon. Last year, Americana Highways spoke with Crain and asked her about the importance of singing in Choctaw:

“Americana Highways: A number of the songs (“Reunion,” “Pastime,” “Joey”) on your new album seem to have you looking back at your past and assessing how it’s affected your present. After a half-dozen albums, what led to such intense self-reflection?

Samantha Crain: I couldn’t use my hands. I think any sort of check in with mortality will cause self-reflection. As I was in a time of reconstruction following these traumas in my life, I began to search for and learn about who I was as a person outside of my self-appointment and identification as the musician, Samantha Crain. Without the physical ability to play instruments at the time, I spent time talk-writing poetry into a voice recorder, reading, walking, talking to people, living a quiet life. I felt like I was getting to know myself from scratch, peeling off a costume that I was put in as a child and allowing myself, for the first time, to dress myself and fully lean into my curiosities and sensitivities.

AH: “When We Remain” is written and sung in Choctaw. How important is it to you to be able to sing a song of such perseverance in the language of your ancestors?

SC: For many indigenous Americans, the traditions and connections to our ancestors were stripped from us, generations of abuse and genocide and dislocation created a huge chasm for us to truely know the ways of our passed elders. Therefore, it is imperative that we as indigenous Americans can create our own traditions and become empowered in the fact that “if I make something–if i write a song, if i write a poem, if i paint a picture, if i cook a meal–it is Choctaw, because I am Choctaw…no matter if it matches the colonial idea and stereotype of what would be considered indigenous art or creation.” The language remembers, the language connects us over that chasm that was forced.

AH: Before recording A Small Death, you suffered through some pretty significant physical ailments, You weren’t able to play music, which you’ve described as a sort of loss of identity. Now, with not being able to tour or play shows due to COVID-19, are you experiencing anything similar, or is this different?

SC: It is very different. It wasn’t the loss of being able to tour or play shows that distressed me, it was the inability to have use of my hands, for basic things too, not just for playing music. That is a very different circumstance. As an artist, I am used to pivoting, I’m used to feast and famine, I’m used to having to get creative in order to pay my bills….the pandemic is uncomfortable and hard, yes, but it isn’t a loss of identity.

AH: Your previous albums, for the most part, seem to have been more singer-songwriter-ish – that is, a little quieter, with simpler arrangements, etc. A Small Death has, overall, a bigger, more expansive sound. Was it a change that you had in mind while writing the songs, or did it develop more in the studio?

SC: I never think about a project I’m working on in reference to another one of my records while I’m making it. All production and arrangement are simply in service to the song and I try to follow that gut feeling. Looking back, I actually feel like A Small Death is quite reserved in its production and arrangements compared to some of my other records. So I just feel like we’re on different pages on how we view these albums. I feel like my last album You Had Me At Goodbye was a very expansive and out there record and then my first record Songs In the Night was a full rock band on every song. So it’s possible you’re referring to one particular album that is quieter but I’m not sure which one you’re referring to, probably Kid Face or Under Branch and Thorn and Tree”.

I am going to round up soon. The reviews for A Small Death were pretty impressive. It is an album that people responded to. In their review, this is what American Songwriter had to offer:

“Acclaimed singer/songwriter Samantha Crain has released her first album in three years. It’s the first since recovering from a debilitating illness which created such severe physical pain she was bedridden and couldn’t play or perform. This disc’s title, her sixth, implies the issues she persevered over to craft these eleven tracks.

Opening “The Echo” with lyrics “But then became the summer when my hands appeared so useless/I felt like a little baby and my pride evaporated like the water in a skillet…” just scratches the surface of the intense feelings stirred up in these often harrowing but passionately played and sung pieces.

Musically, it’s not all gloomy. Crain takes over the producer’s chair from veteran John Vanderslice (who successfully helmed her previous three releases) bringing in such unlikely instruments as pedal steel, trumpet, clarinet, accordion and saxophone, all infusing subtle textures to songs that might otherwise buckle under their lyrical weight. “When We Remain”’s lyrics of “When we remain, we will be the flowers and the trees and the vines that overcome the forgotten city,” is sung in both Choctaw and English (Crain is of Native American descent).

There are more moments like those in the stark, slow, melancholy “High Horse” where she says “I know the shape of a great heartache/I know the weight of a big mistake/I know the sound of a warm crescendo falling away,” than there are somewhat lighter passages such as “Pastime”’s yearning “And it feels like… you were always there.”

Crain’s striking vocals wrap around her indie folk/rockers with requisite sensitivity and intensity. She sounds appropriately dreamy on “Holding to the Edge of Night” then shifts into a thrilling higher register on the chorus of “And it is so good around you” in “Garden Dove.” She delves into this often wincingly personal material with a passion and honesty that can only emerge from deep within. There are times when it seems like you’re spying on the artist as she sings her penetratingly intimate lyrics. Tunes like “Tough for You” recount a story that is likely ripped from her past. Its words of “I bit through my top lip when I was a kid and a ball of scar’s still there/And I remember so clearly the blood everywhere/A quivering chin and a single tear” reflect that often dark approach.

Listening closely to A Small Death (pre-order/pre-save) all the way through is like watching a melodramatic foreign movie; spellbinding and deliberately paced with an ambiance that leaves you reflective but anticipating better times are (hopefully) ahead”.

Samantha Crain is a terrific artist who is one you should know about! Even though she has been releasing music for years now, there are people who might not know about. Go and check her out. I know that we are going to see even more outstanding music from the Shawnee-born artist. In Samantha Crain, we have a marvellous songwriter…