By Doug Hill
The Norman Transcript
NORMAN — Samantha Crain is unquestionably on a roll, but she’s ambivalent about what that means.
“I guess I’m ‘excited,’ but hate using that term,” Crain said in a telephone interview Aug. 10. “It’s not that simple when you have put a lot of work into something. Artists accept things as they come and are glad when recognition happens.”
Crain recently was featured on National Public Radio’s “Weekend Edition” show, reviewed in the Washington Post and won the 2009 Native American Music Awards’ “Songwriter of the Year.” She has released two LPs on Ramseur Records in the last two years that have won fans world-wide. Crain and her band are playing a set at the Dust Bowl Arts Market Festival on Campus Corner Saturday.
“Being on NPR is good for reaching a wider audience,” the former Shawnee resident and Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma-affiliated Crain said. “Growing up where I did, there weren’t a lot of outlets for playing music.”
She remedied that by becoming a musician without borders. Crain has been playing around the country mostly non-stop for four years.
“I don’t even think of it as touring anymore,” she said. “We have breaks once in awhile, but I’m more or less on the road all the time.”
With her band that includes Anne Lillis (drums) and Josh Timbrook (bass), Crain is sharing a bill with Murder By Death in a set of U.S. concerts this fall.
“Those shows are mainly along the eastern seaboard,” she said. “And we have one performance in Ontario at the Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards Festival.”
Although Crain very much considers herself part of the Oklahoma arts community, she refuses to let that diminish influences she’s received elsewhere.
“Some people put up a wall and solely label themselves as an Oklahoma artist,” she said. “I think that’s close-minded and have no problem claiming other hometowns around the country.”
Crain has migrated to cities in Michigan, Oregon and Missouri, where she has lived for months at a time.
“Grand Rapids has a great community of people, and the weather is completely different up there,” she said. “Portland is a good biking city with lots of musicians, and St. Louis is someplace I feel really comfortable.”
Essentially, Crain has been making America her neighborhood.
“I know the roads, grocery stores, places to eat and the bars I like,” she said.
Travel actually was Crain’s first goal. Her passion for music and being able to make a living playing it trails the wanderlust. This constant mental, emotional and artistic stimulation from new locales has undoubtedly contributed to the freshness of her song writing. Crain’s lyrics are complex without being cryptic. They’re poetic, while avoiding sappiness.
“Sometimes people tell me that a song affected them a certain way, which had nothing to do with what I was writing about,” she said. “I think that’s all right. It’s OK if people make my songs their own. I’ll still have my personal thing in it.”
On Crain’s newest album, “You (Understood),” there’s a song titled “Santa Fe.” It’s about one of her adopted neighborhoods in the Land of Enchantment.
“Last summer, I had a short romance with a Lakota Sioux guy out in Santa Fe,” she said. “He lived in this warehouse with a bunch of other painters and sculptors. I fell in love with the city, being out there a lot.” She described the town accurately. “It’s one of the few places I can go in the U.S. and feel like I’m in a different country,” she said. “It has a magical feel to it. I’m very attached to Santa Fe, feel strange when I leave and excited to come back.”
Her love for the place and person is distilled into the four-minute long song.
“I’m having fun,” Crain said. “We’ve had to make some adjustments for that, like only traveling blue highways.” She travels with her band in a truck and trailer.
“We don’t take Interstates,” she said. “This has to be a sustainable life for me, and I can’t do that just seeing Wal-Marts and eating fast food.”
She described the joy of visiting national forests and stopping for an hour or two in random towns to ride her bicycle around.
“We have to get up earlier so we won’t be late for gigs,” Crain said. “But it’s completely worth it, jumping into rivers, seeing places you wouldn’t otherwise and meeting people who will actually talk to you.”
