Samantha Crain and the Midnight Shivers
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Samantha Crain and the Midnight Shivers

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Music

The best kept secret in music

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"NPR Review"

Open Mic, October 3, 2007 · Samantha Crain is a rural folk musician from Shawnee, Okla. Citing both Bob Dylan and Radiohead as influences, her new EP The Confiscation integrates traditional folk, modern aesthetics, and a distinctive voice that sets her apart from other folk artists.

Samantha Crain's band, the Midnight Shivers, is responsible for creating a full sound that compliments Samantha's style and songwriting. Their slow, southern instrumentation creates an interesting contrast from her unique accent.

At only twenty-one years old, Samantha shows promise as a hard working musician. She'ss already done several national tours, produced recordings, and gained the support of a booking agency. - NPR


"Touring the Indies Blog Review"

If you've got a hankerin' for some splendid americana then this is an album I heartily recommend.

It's five blisteringly beautiful rootsy tracks by Samantha Crain and The Midnight Shivers called 'The Confiscaion EP'.

Her voice is similar to that of Erin Mckeown with a bit more chew and drawl and her music is in the tradition of folk that blossomed from the early days of bands with jugs and washboards. In fact she put out an EP prior to this called "i'm going to meet the devil and i don't know what to wear" that drops a couple notches even closer to that end.

I'm not sure if the "i'm going to meet the devil and i don't know what to wear" EP is still available but you can always hit her myspace profile and ask. It's worth your time -- neat little CD -- very raw.

I do know that as of this writing you can get 'The Confiscation EP' direct from her and that's the method I recommend. As much as I love CD Baby -- the more money you can get directly to the artist the better as far as I'm concerned.

Samantha Crain is a seriously underrated artist. It takes about a minute of your time to hear for yourself via the samples included here or the player on her myspace profile.

Tip: Try 'Beloved, We Have Expired'

You'll thank me later for this... - Touring the Indies (Woman in Indie Music)


"Progress on the Prairie"

I have been waiting for this moment: when I find a musician from Oklahoma so amazing that I become a disciple. She is brilliant…this girl does it for me. Makes me feel like I can stave off any impending doom, slowly, maybe. Makes me think about the stories of survival we as humans tell ourselves, our friends and children to preserve ourselves and imprint ourselves on loved ones. Makes me doubt that religion atones for any atrocity. Makes me wonder about what a trick life can be. I think about finding amazing love, it fading, and what a tragedy that is. I think how miraculous it is that in the middle of all tragedies–war, hell, torture, rape, death–there is something unexplainable in us humans that surfaces and makes us want to keep living. All those deep thoughts AND there is harmonica, tambourine, hand-clapping and a banjo to boot.

Go get more of her music at http://www.myspace.com/samanthacrain. Also check out her company, Green Corn Rebellion Music.
- Progress on the Prairie Blog


"Life On the Road"

Samantha Crain and the Midnight Shivers together again.

By Shea Stewart (Contact)

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Samantha Crain and the Midnight Shivers’ tours consist of quickie excursions around the country, days filled with drives through the heartland of nowhere and nights spent out there in the spotlight.

The trio — Crain on vocals and guitar, Andrew Tanz on bass and Jacob Edwards on drums — is hitting the road again, circling the mid-South playing 10 shows before Nov. 19. A December tour is equally brisk, playing nine shows in 11 days in Illinois, Missouri, Tennessee and Kentucky.

But when your mode of transportation is a Ford F-150, touring in two-week bursts crammed with shows is the best option. The band members ride in the cab while their equipment is stored beneath a camper in the back.

“I wouldn’t recommend it,” Crain said. “It’s difficult.”

But the use of the F-150 as “tour bus” was not the only reason the band began to shorten its tour hikes.

“When we first started, we would just go on for months at a time,” Crain said. “We would just go for two months at a time. There was a lot of wear and tear on us and the car. So we started these two-week trips.”

In between tours the band returns to homes in different towns in different states — Shawnee, Okla., for Crain, and Perryville, Mo., for Tanz and Edwards — working various day jobs (including dishwashing and warehouse work in the past) and raising enough money for another two-week journey.

“We’ve done just about anything for two or three months to save up a little money for touring,” Crain said.

In the days leading up to the tour’s kickoff Thursday in Oklahoma City, the band will reconvene for the first time in about two months for six days of extensive rehearsing.

“We leave on a Thursday for this tour,” Crain said. “We will have some intense rehearsal. We hope to be ready, but we have that ability to look each other in the eye and play.”

The sandwiching of tours between day jobs is paying off for the band though, with a new EP released in July to tour behind and a slowly building fan base. In fact, when the band played Little Rock earlier in the year, the trio ended up playing two shows in one night for its fans.

“We’ve played the White Water twice before,” Crain said. “One show was scheduled and the other just kind of happened after we were in town.”

“The unplanned show was really neat. We had played Easy Street and went to White Water afterwards. The same people who were at Easy Street were at White Water, as well, so we played again. The people were really supportive of us and responded to us really well.”

The new EP, Confiscation, was recorded in March in Greenville, Ill., in the basement recording studio of the band Berry and produced by Berry band member Joey Lemon. The trio were joined on the album by guitarist and vocalist Beth Bombara along with a host of other musicians, including members of Berry.

Confiscation is a spare affair, five songs showcasing Crain’s unique vocals and singing style, and a minimalist sound of shuffling acoustic guitar and brushed drums. The slow instrumentation of the EP leaves the songs vulnerable, but Crain’s lyrics deliver an emotional punch, such as her confessions of “I did something wrong” on the harmonica-powered “Traipsing Through the Aisles,” and her plaintive voice filling the empty spaces of the emotional devastating “Beloved, We Have Expired.”

The new EP follows 2006’s i’m going to meet the devil and i don’t know what to wear, a six-song set that is pastoral in its shuddering musical delivery but unveils wistful lyrics.

“I think a lot of my songs don’t come from personal experience,” Crain said. “I don’t usually write on an introspective wavelength. I try to keep a more universal perspective.”

In true do-it-yourself style, the band’s EPs were released and its tours are booked through Green Corn Rebellion Music, a musicians resource group founded in May 2006 by Crain.

“We have been shopping the EP to record labels,” Crain said. “We hope that something will work out for us. It’s really neat, kind of a grassroots thing where we book the shows, market ourselves. But grassroots can only go so far without financial support.

“I think we are taking good steps headed in the right direction.” - SYNC Weekly (Little Rock, AR)


"The Chills"

White Water favorite Samantha Crain and the Midnight Shivers return to Little Rock Saturday on their never-ending tour. Based in Shawnee, Okla., the group plays meditative folk. Crain's voice is unquestionably the focus. Tremulous in one instant and boomingly clear in the next, it's strong and strange and wide-ranging. As a compliment to its varied quality, Crain writes compellingly conflicted lyrics of love and despair, colored with moments of great brightness and devastating darkness. - Arkansas Times


Discography

I'm Going To Meet the Devil and I Don't Know What To Wear EP (2006)

the Confiscation EP (2007)

"Devils In Boston", "Hold Each Other Up", "Traipsing Through the Aisles", "Beloved, We Have Expired", and "The Last Stanchion Goes Belly Up" are currently being played on radio.

Photos

Feeling a bit camera shy

Bio

Sometimes music is a collision of opposites. Realities clash and coexist, and the tension that results is scary and strange, but undeniably beautiful. Maybe that's why Samantha Crain and the Midnight Shivers embody so many conflicting unities and clashing identities. With a blow-your-hair-back vocal presence that occasionally yields to whisper-soft vulnerability, Samantha Crain unites the sounds of confidence and desperation. Traditional folk arrangements tremble beneath the tasteful drumming of Jacob Edwards, the heart-beating bass lines from Andrew Tanz. Lyrics about disaster and despair peacefully coexist with anthems of community and reconciliation. Here are darkness and light; here are life and death.

These colliding realities stem most notably from Crain's unlikely artistic heritage, which she wears on her sleeve but just as readily transcends. Hailing from the state that birthed both The Flaming Lips and Woody Guthrie, Samantha Crain writes with both the brazen conviction of the latter and the unflinching creative ambition of the former. Hers is a folk tradition indebted to Radiohead as much as Bob Dylan. Her shadowy arrangements and razor-sharp lyrics blur whatever superficial lines of genre or aesthetic may seem to separate these influences. It seems whatever the ingredients, she has a place for them in her inexplicable artistic recipe. Her sound is deeply rural and southern, but also itinerant and urban. Like Jack Kerouac before her, Crain is lost on the subway, sleeping in boxcars, leaving lovers behind, and dining in small town obscurity all within a few short days.

Nearly more remarkable than her creative vision is her practical ambition. At the young age of twenty-one, Samantha Crain already has a booking agency, several national tours, and dozens of self-produced recordings to her credit. Her and her band's tireless work ethic promise years of fruitful touring and recording, and their dynamic live performances are gathering a widespread community with every subsequent tour. They are uniting opposites, living deeply, and working fruitfully, with no signs of slowing down any time soon.

Currently they are playing shows and promoting the Confiscation EP which was released Summer 2007. It was produced by Joey Lemon of the Chicago-based band, Berry.