Sometimes, when I hear a band is coming to town, I like to slow roast the music on my rotation for, I don’t know, about a month. That’s what I’ve been doing with the tunes of Samantha Crain and the Midnight Shivers, the rootsy indie rock act from Oklahoma that’s playing a free show at McMenamins Old St. Francis School Wednesday night (7pm).
The band, obviously, is led by Samantha Crain, a young, small-statured lady who strums and sings much louder than her size. The sound is reminiscent (and I apologize if this is an easy comparison) of Jenny Lewis when she was playing with the Watson Twins or maybe an even-more Americana-drenched version of the Cave Singers.
Samantha and company have been getting some much-deserved attention from the press and the music-listening community at large this year, making the band just one more act to play the McMenamins tour on a path to something much bigger.
Here’s a video of the band playing in the Paste Magazine studio about a year ago: