The last time we saw Choctaw singer/songwriter Samantha Crain in the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection was August of 2022, when she opened Union Transfer for Murder By Death. And while Adam Turla’s indie rock outfit are preparing to return to the Eraserhood venue for their last-ever Philadelphia appearance this coming Saturday, July 12th, Samantha Crain is gearing up for a local headlining show of her own, July 16th at Fishtown’s “mini rock n’ roll ballroom,” Johnny Brenda’s (which will be opened by Jess Nolan, frequent collaborator of our phriend Lydia Luce and member of Jenny Lewis’ touring band), a show which I may or may not actually be more excited about… “When I was younger and coming through, we had a lot of friends living in Fishtown, so we’d always wind up somewhere rowdy and fun,” Crain jokes with me during a recent phone chat, before openly admitting to having an exceptionally bad memory and not remembering much else about her time in Philly…
Samantha Crain is currently touring behind her seventh full-length (and first in half a decade), Gumshoe, which dropped this May on Real Kind Records. The themes of the album – which Rolling Stone notes for, “Some of the most sophisticated and affecting songwriting from her nearly two-decade career.” – revolve around Crain’s journey from spending the majority of her life as an outsider to her recent years spent helping her partner navigate addiction and a newfound involvement with her community (including working at a wildcare rescue and a liquor store), which has not only impacted her interpersonal relationships, but also her approach to art, resulting in an album that she tells me sounds not only like her, but her and her band of friends: “I’m trying to focus on my personal relationships being more vulnerable and reciprocal, and that has sort of seeped into the record making process… I think the main difference between this and previous releases is that I’ve always been pretty controlling of my output, and that hasn’t always served me well. Good artists, I think, are really open to receiving input from other people.”
While it may have been five years since Samantha Crain’s last full-length, 2020’s A Small Death (and four since 2021 EP I Guess We Live Here Now), she tells me that that gap isn’t quite what it seems: “When people say it’s been so long, honestly, it didn’t feel like I wasn’t doing anything… I did do three film scores [laughs], and I just lost track of time.” This includes 2020 feature The Dark Divide, Disney+ mini-series Echo, and award-winning film Fancy Dance by Erica Tremblay, which premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, all of which Crain says has contributed to her recent propensity for collaboration: “It’s a more extended version of working with a community, because you’re not trying to get across what you think the movie should be, you’re trying to get across what the director thinks the movie should be.” She tells me doing scores has had an impact on her musical abilities as well: “It’s stretching an entirely different skillset. In the studio, I usually just play guitar – sometimes I play piano, but usually I have someone else do it – but with this, you’ve got like a month to cobble things together from these clips, and then maybe a week with the final cut, but it comes together really quickly, so I’ve stretched my instrument legs more.”
In addition to her work in television and cinema, Samantha Crain has also found herself collaborating on her own music videos for this album cycle. While she directed all of the visuals for A Small Death (which she says was fun and rewarding, but often exhausting), the recent videos for “Dragonfly,” “Dart,” and “B-Attitudes” – which were all shot in her home of Oklahoma, reinforcing her connection to the community in which she has spent her life – had Crain enlisting the help of filmmaker Dylan Friese-Greene, who she tells me helped to ease the process to a significant degree: “With the videos that we’ve done, the way we formulated them is I spent time listening to the tracks that we chose, relaxed on the couch, had some wine, closed my eyes, and thought, ‘What visual images are we going to have for these songs?’ And then I looked up some visual images online, and he just ran with that.”
The headlining dates behind Gumshoe (whose title references 1980s video game Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?, a childhood obsession of Samantha’s… and apparently many fans who’ve come out) kicked off in early May, with two Oklahoma gigs, which have thus far taken Crain through parts of the UK and Europe, in addition to much of North America. The shows have been Samantha’s first extensive trek in a number of years, which she tells me wasn’t exactly happenstance, but admits that the first two nights managed to give her just what she needed to get back into touring mode: “The Oklahoma shows the weekend after it came out were really great… The reason I haven’t really played live in a while is because I’ve sort of developed a case of the yips, where I’ve been having stage fright, but seeing how supportive they were really set me off on a good foot for this tour.” And she says that the crowds to follow didn’t disappoint either: “The audiences may not be the biggest, but they’re small but mighty. Everyone’s been so attentive and ready to have an experience with me and with each other.” However, she admits that there was at least one particularly enthralling crowd that was far from small: “The London show was great, super packed and people singing along, even though the record had only been out for like a week.”
Crain tells me that the show features mostly Gumshoe and A Small Death tracks, along with a few fan favorites from earlier in her catalogue (including “Elk City,” off of Samantha’s John Vanderslice-produced fourth LP, Under Branch & Thorn & Tree, which turns 10 this month), and she says that she’s approaching performances in a slightly new way: “One thing that I really wanted to do with this band, which I don’t always think about, is I really did want to make the live show sound like the record as closely as possible, and I think we’ve done that successfully.” She also tells me that she thinks her current live setup is perfect for barroom spaces like Johnny Brenda’s: “When I’m playing solo, I much prefer a listening room or theatre, but with a band, when the songs are kind of rocking a little more, I prefer a standing room. That’s where I started, so it’s like getting back to my roots.” And when I ask Crain what fans may be able to expect from her after these dates wrap at the end of the month, she does suggest that there’s something kinda big in the works: “The goal is to have another single out this fall, which is basically done, we just need to mix and master it. It’s sort of a collaboration with someone else that I’m not sure I’m allowed to mention, but I hope it’ll be out in the fall [laughs].”
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