Publish Date:
03/25/2014
Samantha Crain Playing Free Show July 4
at Myriad Gardens; John Fullbright Joins
Gardens’ Free Lineup Aug. 1
If you want to celebrate the Fourth of July with some great indie folk-rock,
the Myriad Botanical Gardens has a great free show for you Friday.
The Myriad Gardens will be the site
of two big free, public concerts
presented by TEEMCO: Samantha
Crain will perform July 4 and John
Fullbright will perform Aug. 1. Both
concerts will start at 8 p.m. and
the Gardens will have a festive
atmosphere with food trucks, and
cold beer from Coop Ale Works. Ice
House will be open, ser ving Nic’s
burgers, fries, beer and milkshakes.
The concerts are in addition to
the weekly Acoustic Thursdays
presented by TEEMCO at the
Gardens. On Friday, I’ll bet you can
see the Bricktown fireworks from the
Gardens, too.
A Choctaw Indian, Samantha
Crain grew up in the small town of
S h a w n e e l i s t e n i n g t o h e r f a t h e r ’s
Dylan and Grateful Dead records,
dabbling in painting (a pursuit she
took seriously en ough to later land
a gallery exhibition in Oklahoma
City) and trying her hand at writing
short stories. When she became
62
TEEMCO Meet TEEMCO
intrigued by the notion of writing
songs, Crain reworked a series of
stories she’d written while taking
creative writing classes at Oklahoma
Baptist University into the songs she
then recorded for her self-released
E P, “ T h e C o n f i s c a t i o n : A M u s i c a l
Novella.” The quality of the material
and the bold way in which she
delivered it inspired North Carolinabased Ramseur Records to sign the
fledgling artist to a deal; the indie
label gave the EP a more formal
release in 2007.
Crain made “Songs in the Night”
(2009), her debut LP —and her first
proper recording—with the Midnight
Shivers, a band she’d formed not
long beforehand. It got the attention
of Rolling Stone reviewer Will Hermes,
who wrote, “Her voice is gorgeously
odd—all fulsome, shape-shifting
vowels that do indeed billow like fog.”
She followed it a year later with the
stripped-down “You (Understood)”
(2010), recorded in a converted
barn in W ichita, exposing the primal
extreme of her sensibility. “Like a
prairie-bred, meat-and-potatoes
Joanna Newsom, Crain’s vocals are
quivering, emotive and visceral,”
noted Liz Stinson in Paste. Her third
LP, “Kid Face,” was released last
year.
Born and raised in Bearden, near
Okemah,singer/songwriter John
Fullbright was barely out of high
school when he began playing the
festival circuit. Raised on the songs
of hometown hero Woody Guthrie
and steeped in the rich Americana
artistry of genre-hopping mavericks
l i k e To w n e s Va n Z a n d t , R a n d y
Newman, and Steve Earle, Fullbright
started his music education on the
piano at the age of five. He later
added guitar to his arsenal, and in
his late teens he began honing his
craft at the legendary Blue Door in
Oklahoma City, eventually releasing a
live album with the venue’s founder,
Greg Johnson.