Samantha Crain and the Midnight Shivers
The Night Holds Even When No One's Held
Jan 19, 2010
Words by Sean Moeller
Illustration by Johnnie Cluney
Sound engineering by Mike Gentry
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Welcome to Daytrotter
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Lions
unreleased
i wrote this song when i was living in grand rapids, michigan
last winter...towards january i was really starting to feel the
effects of the soupy grey sky, bone hurting cold, and snow covered
sidewalks every day....one day while walking to the library, i saw a
big snow/ice pile against a wall that a few holes and ridges had
thawed in and it looked just like a lion...when i got to the library i
pulled up a chair and started writing the beginnings of this
song...the lion being this icy thing that just wouldn´t give me any
sun on my face or tshirt weather
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Beloved, We Have Expired
original version appears on The Confiscation
i wrote this song when i was out on tour
with my favorite band, Berry...it was my first year touring and with
that year i had a lot of really troubled and dramatic short lived
romantic flings just because of my youth and confusion...i wrote it
after talking to a friend in a boston dunkin donuts about all of these
people and its reflects on all that
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Songs In The Night
original version appears on Songs In The Night
after i put out The Confiscation, i kept hearing
how sad and troublesome everyone thought my songs were...i´ve never
really considered myself of a blue disposition so i figured the first
thing i wanted to do for the new album of songs was to write an upbeat
hopeful little ditty...it was around christmas time and to me, advent,
is one of the best pictures of hope i could think of, and so came this
songs which became the title track of the album…
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Banana Fish Revolution
original version appears on Songs In The Night
this song is based on my interpretation of the
story "a perfect day for bananafish" by JD Salinger....a friend of
mine from nashville was originally going to do a compilation album of
9 different songwriters writing a song for each of JD Salingers Nine
Stories...this was the song i wrote for the album which never
materialized so we decided to start playing it live and then recorded
it for the album…
The night following this late morning taping played out in Des Moines, Iowa, about two and a half hours west of here, where Samantha Crain and the Midnight Shivers were opening for the Avett Brothers at a lovely room called the Hoyt Sherman Place. It's a theater with plush seats that forces a sit-down crowd, more prone to take in an evening of entertainment with a wine glass outstretched from a manicured and tanned hand, at the end of a freshly pressed dress shirt sleeve, rather than a crowd that's ready to stomp and stammer like Miss Crain would like it to. She'd love it to, really, to meet her halfway, getting all fussy and sweaty and letting out her sorrows with her winged songs of fiery objection. Crain is short in stature, but to cross her would be to write your own death certificate if her energy and soulful performances are indications of anything. She punishes the hard soles of her cowboy boots as if the pounding on the floor could change things, could reverse the damage done to her, by whomever did it. She comes to us with a sun-shiny-ness, but it wears off like a coat of watercolor paint in a thunderstorm when she starts playing. It's at that point, when the microphones are live and hissing and the lights dim a touch for the evening, that Crain cradles her hurt and those spiny wrongs that are the monsters in her closets, the ones that constantly reach out to her for her attention. It's when she can send them back to where they belong and that's in her past, but that never erases them forever, just wipes them out of view for the time being, until the night falls again and the mind gets restless. Crain invites us into what feels like her cozy little house, a gorgeous old wood-framed joint with a personality, beautiful shutters nestled around the windows and a green, green lawn that looks back upon a wrap-around porch with a creaky swing. We are hearing the songs that she's making to her lost loves, to her new babies and to their forecasted, sad expirations. She just throws another log on the fire, gets another drink and works through all of her painful and touching emotions - all of which are coming down the line in a fine southern drawl and with the dreaminess of starlight and moon beams. "Lions," a new song that makes it's debut in this session, features many of her greatest assets - that pulsing drive that gives her the ability to drum up all of her concerns and turn them into living beasts that need to be scared away or else they'll just live on and prey, the angelic touch of her soft but powerful voice, and a quivering tone of uncertainty and fear in a voice that dares to be vulnerable and brave all at once. The final line that rings out at the end of the song is, "Gonna getcha through this," and it could be what keeps her blood pumping, this idea that there is some help out there to assist in getting through another day, despite being sick and tired of all the rejection and poor results. Crain seems to believe in the overriding goodness of it all and not the monsters, not the sad times or the people who perpetrate the sad times. She seems to want these to burn brighter, to be there for her when she needs them the most, but the truth is that they choose when they want to be around and she's left with whatever strength she has in herself, chanting over and over again, as she does on "Beloved, We Have Expired," "To be held again/To be held again/To be held again/Oh/Oh…." It has to be enough, that hope.
Samantha Crain & The Midnight Shivers Official Site
Samantha Crain & The Midnight Shivers' Debut Daytrotter Session
Ramseur Records
