The Queen of Oklahoma re-interprets her back catalogue in a live solo setting with just guitar and her voice.
Carter Sampson is Oklahoma through and through – she is even affectionately known as the self-styled Queen of Oklahoma and has for the last two decades (at least) been a firm favourite in that state, playing around 200 shows a year across the country and overseas – she has just finished a tour of the UK, far from her first, as regular readers of this magazine will attest. She was born and raised in Oklahoma City and writes and records songs about relationships, her family, stories from her childhood, and expansive Oklahoma narratives about past events and fantastic characters (such as Rattlesnake Kate, about whom more later) – all sung with a trademark Oklahoman twang and covering various styles such as folk, country, roots and blues. And she sings of bad days and difficult times while always seeming to invest them with a positive vibe and genuinely seems to be at peace with her world. There’s an inherent contentment in her music and it permeates so many of her songs. Her last two albums, “Lucky” (2018) and “Gold” (2023) were highly praised, not least by this magazine where they each were rated 9/10. The general tone of her albums is one of authenticity – that is how she describes her music which has moved over time from folksy fare to a more country roots sound – she believes the Americana tag is a good umbrella moniker for good authentic music.
So, after a string of nine albums, Sampson has decided to put out a live solo album, recorded at her favourite local venue The Blue Door, where she can put a different slant on tracks from her previous albums, exposed to the quality of the songs with just an acoustic guitar for accompaniment. “I play a lot of solo shows as well as with a band and wanted a stripped-down recording to highlight the songs and me singing them”. If you have been a fan of her last two outings, both full band releases, then you can trace their beginnings via eleven of the songs which first appeared on “Lucky” and “Gold”, and which currently form the basis of the setlist for her concert tour, which was reviewed by my esteemed colleague Graeme Tait here. As a big fan of her last two albums, it’s great to hear the more emotive interpretations of the songs some of which are in some respects even better than you imagined, exposed with just guitar and voice, a voice that is powerful, playful and gladsome. On her albums she often sounds like Patty Griffin or Emmylou Harris, live solo she just sounds original.
The album kicks off with four straight songs from “Gold”, the lovely ‘Home’ (about trying to make it in the music business), the title track (written as a kind of thank you note to her mother) and ‘Drunk Text’, a light-hearted look at a burgeoning love, then the wonderful song of eternal hope ‘There’s always next year’ – “Don’t beat yourself up for letting yourself down Most of us get another go around You didn’t do great You did the best that you could You didn’t win when you thought we would You played with heart and fought with no fear Hallelujah there’s always next year”
It’s a nicely balanced set with story songs interspersed with relationship and family histories, like the aforementioned ‘Gold’ and the lovely ‘Peaches’, about Sampson’s happy childhood in Stephens County, a district of Oklahoma. ‘Pray and Scream’ is a darker song about being trapped by a wildfire or tornado and ‘Black Blizzard’ recounts the old dustbowl days in the state. One of the highlights is a brilliant song (‘Ten Penny Nail‘), about the triangular relationship between Guy, Susanna Clark, and Townes van Zandt, delivered with considerable intensity. Another is ‘Rattlesnake Kate’ which tells the story of Kate Slaughterback back in 1925, who allegedly killed 140 snakes “on her own, on her own”, being a self-reliant woman “married six times, but none of them took”. Two songs not written by Sampson, a wistful cover of ‘Moon River’ (apparently her favourite song) and the sweet, but not saccharine, love song ‘Hello Darlin’’ written by Zac Copeland show Sampson’s more mellow side.
While you might miss the wonderful guitar stylings of Kyle Reid from the full band studio albums, this solo performance (recorded and produced by Reid) is a beautiful ‘interlude’, if you will, in the ongoing development of Carter Sampson and we wait patiently for the next episode when she gets back into the studio. Sit back and enjoy this labour of love in her beloved venue.
