Samantha Crain

"I need to have those times of being fully in bloom, then fully hibernating. That's how I get my best, most genuine work," Samantha Crain (samanthacrain.com) says. She's a seasonal songwriter who actively takes time not to write, and those times are the hibernation stages. Some of Crain's songs hibernate too: the title track off her new album took twenty years to write.
Crain's writing process is like a wide-angle lens. She likes to write at the dining room table in a chair that gives her a view of the entire room. "It feels like an unplanned mood board if I need a starting point, with lots of stuff in my periphery," Crain says. That mood board produced one of my favorite albums of the year.
I first discovered Samantha Crain (samanthacrain.com)'s music on Reservation Dogs (hulu.com/series/reservation-dogs-5a310c23-e2db…), one of the best shows on television ever. (I've also interviewed (songwritersonpodcast.com/deerlady) Deerlady (deerlady.net), a phenomenal band whose music is also on the show.) Crain's latest album is Gumshoe (samanthacrain.bandcamp.com) on Real Kind Records.