PROFILE: SAMANTHA CRAIN

Samantha Crain is a successful procrastinator. It just works for the Choctaw songstress. So, you left a few of your songs to be written after you’re already in the studio recording your as album, no big deal. As long as you get it done, that’s what matters, right? When you’ve been featured in magazines like Paste and Rolling Stone and were nominated for three Native American Music Awards, winning one for Songwriter of the Year, you must be doing something right.

But as posh as all that might sound, the Oklahoma native—who never had guitar lessons when she was a tyke, never trained for hours a day—is still quite humble. “I didn’t find my stride until I was 18,” she says. “I didn’t come from a really wealthy family so we all had good imaginations. I wrote a lot of short stories growing up. You had to entertain yourself.”

And that’s exactly what her music does: engages your imagination and wanderlust and engenders the desire to strap on some cowboy boots and hike through the wilderness.

Crain, who quit college after a year to pave her path, started teaching herself guitar, drew from her love of poetry and writing and just went with it. The leap into the music world was definitely better than the most likely alternative: coasting. “I know that if I hadn’t made it a point to leave and go do something I would be doing the same thing, like working at Walmart and have two kids and stuff.” Torture. Crain says she might go back to college at some point, but she’s in no rush.

Crain, who considers herself born with a predisposition for wayfaring and seems to be something of a tumbleweed, claims she could never be happy working for someone other than herself. When she was starting out she was never sure whether the world needed another musician constantly trying to prove their worth.

“I don’t necessarily think I’m an innovator. I think that I have a certain amount of ability to record things about the world around me and kind of remix ideas.”

For Crain, writing and playing is just how she has learned to live: “I think the idea of careers is kind of overblown.”

“I think expecting someone when they’re eighteen to pick something they want to do for the rest of their life is one of the most unfair and weirdest ideas ever, but there’s plenty of other ways to go about making a living for yourself other than going to college and getting a degree. You just have to be creative about it.”

Mull that one over, mom and dad. In today’s society when your Bachelor’s degree pretty much only gets you a piece of paper, Crain has an upper hand by carving her niche instead of hoping to just fall into one.

“It’s hard to look forward to things in this modern day and age, so really, all you can do is figure out what sustains you and what makes you function as a member of society. This just happens to be the way that I feel like I can function.”

SAMANTHA CRAIN

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