Samia thinks Honesty is Cool
⤏ IN CONVERSATION WITH RHIANNON MCGAVIN
⤏ PHOTOS BY REN SHELBURNE
It’s morning and it’s gorgeous in Los Angeles, which it basically always is, which lends every mundanity a poetic tenor. Your personal problems, now contrasted by floral imagery, easy and sunlit. You’re a bit sad for the usual reasons, yet there are orange blossoms everywhere. Bursting.
I’ve positioned my laptop to take advantage of this particular lighting for my Zoom call with Samia, home from her recent tour for indie delight The Baby. The singer of “Show Up” discussed poetry, showtime rituals, and other ways to maintain a soft heart through the churn of time and space.
Rhiannon McGavin: Your album is called Baby. I read in another piece that so much of the album is just you coming to terms with the fact that you need people, and you are needed by people, and that it's actually okay to want and desire these things. I want to know more about “baby” stuff. What was your favorite dessert as a kid?
Samia: Oh my God. I totally thought this question was going in a different direction and I was preparing my answer. My favorite dessert as a kid was ice cream. It still is. I love ice cream.
RM: Like specific flavor or just the whole concept?
S: A milkshake will make me sick, but in a perfect world, it would always be a milkshake. I don't really care. I've learned that I don't really care about food. I only need like, four ingredients. I really don't understand what makes food good or bad beyond that logic. Do you know what I'm saying?
RM: Yes. Simplicity, the purity, the pure nature of it.
S: I don't have a very refined palette is what I'm saying.
RM: What was the first book that you remember reading by yourself?
S: Oh, wow. All by myself. There was a book of poems, but I don't remember who the poet was. I found it in the library. Oh, I wish I remembered this person's name. I was so young, but I read it over and over again. I had ADD and so reading was awesome, but I would get distracted super easily. I loved reading, but I would only read half of a book and then I'd move on to the next book.
So when I discovered short stories and poetry I was like, well, this is where I need to live. I was obsessed with this one book of poems, so I would keep coming back to it and I would try to paraphrase the poems, like re-write them to see if I could. I think I owe a lot of my interest in writing to that book. But also probably the first book I read was Junie B. Jones or something.
RM: That's such a good writing exercise too. I'm going to make a wild claim and say that it's really easy for musicians to practice. They have scales. I think it can be difficult for writers to find a way to practice that form. Rephrasing poems that you found in the library is such a good way to do that. From that, who are your lyrical influences right now?
S: Father John Misty was the first lyricist that I became obsessed with. It happened in my freshman year of college. I was always obsessed with lyrics and I grew up listening to Sondheim soundtracks because my parents were into musical theater. That was like my gateway into songwriting. Then I fell in love with like Elliott Smith and Daniel Johnston and Nirvana. It was just the weirdest combination of voices.
I'm trying to think who else? I think it was with Father John Misty and Angel Olsen that I really felt like I was understood by a songwriter.
RM: They're all such storytellers too. Which I see a lot in your own work, having just enough information to key the listener in. Which also feels like poetry to me. A lot of your songs begin as small poems, is that right?
S: Yes.
RM: When does it become a song for you?
S: A lot of the time the poem comes with the melody idea. If I'm setting out to write a song, then the melody and the words usually come at the same time. When I was writing my first album, I was writing poems every day, because I was seeing someone who I could only communicate with by writing poems for.
RM: I understand, say no more.
S: I took pieces of those poems and turned them into songs. That was a pretty unique process for me. Usually, if I'm sitting down to write a song, it'll all come at once and then the arrangement happens later.
RM: That's beautiful. I kid you not, last night I was recording a voice note of me reading a poem for someone.
S: Oh, yes. Sometimes when conversation fails.
“Usually, if I'm sitting down to write a song, it'll all come at once and then the arrangement happens later.”
RM: Do you have any favorite poets writing right now?
S: Yes, I always say Anne Sexton, Maya Angelou, William Carlos Williams, Eileen Myles.
RM: So good.
S: Jeffrey McDaniel is a poet that I recently discovered using this poetry app on my phone. It's like a wheel that spins through random poems. I found him on there and then I accosted him on Instagram like, “Please teach me how to do what you do!” He was super sweet. I think he's definitely my favorite new discovery in poetry of the last year. His work is like a window for me because I have never read anything like it. Like I have never heard, just, anything that like.
RM: I love that so much. Do you have a favorite poetic form?
S: I don't know if I have like a favorite classical poetic form. I just like having a window into someone's brain, and I like stream of consciousness. I like when people say stuff that doesn't make sense to me, but it makes sense to them. I can project my own experiences onto it. Not that that's what you have to do to be able to appreciate or be inspired by art, but I think that details are so cool and I think that trying to be relatable on purpose doesn't really work for me. I find a lot of relatability in people just talking about their lives however they're experiencing them.
RM: I absolutely adore this. The album moves around a lot geographically. We're in Minnesota, we're in New York, but you were born in Los Angeles. You spent most of your childhood LA, but your family moved to New York when you were a teenager. Where are your hometowns in the album for you? Because I can hear bits of LA and New York for me, but where are the hometowns for you?
S: When I think about being a kid, I think about LA, but then when I think about learning about relationships and falling in love and becoming autonomous, I think about New York. I consider New York to be more of a hometown because I had every first there. I navigated the world for the first time on my own there. There's little bits of everywhere on that record.
RM: The album has a very strong sense of self throughout. It's a coming of age, a Bildungsroman, it’s about figuring shit out. There's a root-core that's very strong. How do LA and New York feel different for you?
S: In LA you have to drive everywhere. You have to be really intentional about where you go. Your days are planned and you end up doing what you know. In New York, things just happen to you and you have no control over anything ever. Any plan you make is going to inevitably be different from what you expect it to be, because there's so much going on and something always goes wrong.
You end up meeting different kinds of people from you. There's just, in my experience, so much more diversity and different kinds of life experience in New York. Not because it exists more in New York than it does in LA, but because you run into every type of person and every type of experience every day. In LA, I don't know. I just haven't experienced a lot of accidental anything there. I think LA, too, is super nurturing in a way that New York is not. People are looking each other in the eye more and looking out for each other a little bit more.
I still definitely haven't figured it out, but that's just my experience. I think there's no real better or worse comparison to be made. They’re just vastly different. Also now having lived in Nashville, I've learned so much about stillness and meeting people who prioritize the quality of life over anything else. In New York and LA, it's all about the grind and getting somewhere. Everything's a means to an end, and everyone's just working towards something. In Nashville, there is a lot of that, but I’ve loved meeting people who just want to be happy. Every moment is an end within itself for them. That has been so inspiring to me.
RM: In LA we have more sunshine, but not the whimsy of public transportation.
S: Exactly.
“Trying to be relatable on purpose doesn't really work for me”
RM: I'm glad that you brought up Nashville, and also you just got off this huge tour. What is the first thing that you look for in a new city?
S: Honestly, coffee. I feel like coffee is the best part of my life. When I get upset, I think like, "Oh, it's okay, because tomorrow I can still have coffee."
RM: That makes complete sense. I know some poets who bring little mementos from home when they go on tour. That’s a big part of their tour routine. How do you maintain a sense of home when you're on tour and you're flashing through all of these different places?
S: That's a good question. I have this stuffed pig that I have grown more dependent on every year of my life. I got it the day that I was born. I cannot go anywhere without this pig now, and I actually got an AirTag from the Apple Store and I put it inside of my pig so that I never lose it. That was quite controversial.
Some of my friends thought it was cute and others were very worried for me. But it is really grounding and nice and I feel like of all the things I could be doing to make myself feel comfortable, it could be worse. I feel very close to everyone in my band and they really feel like home to me, but I have two friends in my band who I've been touring with for five years now. We all lived in New York together. I think having them around has been a great constant in my life.
RM: Do you all have a pre-show ritual that you do together to get in the right headspace?
S: Yes. We hug and we say, “You're the best band!” to each other over and over again. It's basically just that. We're just kind of screaming at each other and then we look each other in the eye and say, "I love you," and then we go on stage.
RM: What's your post-show calm-down ritual?
S: I eat my dinner that's been sitting on the table for like four hours at that point. Then I call my boyfriend and I steam. I have this little like, facial steamer that I also rely heavily on. I just sit there and hope that I don't have to do anything else.
RM: Valid, valid desire. My best friend introduced me to your music when we were living together over quarantine. They just played the album nonstop when we were living in K-Town. It's like, I don't know. Just for me, it feels very intimate. Like even when you're shouting and screaming for a song, it's mellow. The production of it feels holistic and gentle. I'm not a music person. I hope this makes sense.
S: Oh, totally. That's so nice. Thank you.
RM: It's a very intimate album. It begins with these voicemails from your grandmother. How do you decide the boundaries of what to say in public?
S: Oh, that's been a real learning curve for me. It took me a while to figure out the difference between letting myself be honest and exploiting other people's stories and experiences. I do recognize that every album from a female songwriter gets labeled “a confessional,” but I think I do write confessionally and everything is autobiographical. Everything is true, for the most part, down to the details and the names and the streets. I think it just helps me. That is what’s so cathartic to me about songwriting. I've tried diluting my writing, making things bigger for the sake of removing myself from the story, but it doesn't do the same thing for me. I've really had to figure out how to make sure I'm not dragging other people into my catharsis.
“I've tried diluting my writing, making things bigger for the sake of removing myself from the story, but it doesn't do the same thing for me.”
RM: You didn't ask for my advice for your next album, but I think you should lie more.
S: I'm so bad at lying. It's a problem. I also don't believe it the times that people have written about me and tried to not take responsibility for the narrator of the song. I just don't buy it. It sounds like it would be major hypocrisy to try and throw that back at people.
RM: Yes. Well, hey, it's good to see what the muse looks like from the other end.
S: Yes, true.
RM: Do you show lyrics to your subjects before they become public?
S: On the first record I did because most of that record was about the same person. I was working with them, so sharing was just intuitive. There have been times when that hasn't been the case, and I've just released a song, and then someone's been like, "What the fuck?"
I would love to hear other people's opinions on how to make it go more smoothly. If something's blatantly about someone, then you have to talk it through, I would say.
RM: Yes. On the one hand, it's really fun to be like, “Well, this was my experience. I was also there in the scene, I get to talk about it however I want to,” but on the other hand, you also have to be a person and in community with other people.
S: Totally. I think honesty is cool. It's difficult, but honesty and communication are good.
RM: That's a good mantra. Okay. Last thing. Not because I'm curious, but what was the first lie that you remember telling as a kid?
S: Oh, my god. Oh, my god, I don't know. I don't know what the first one was, but I do have a really funny lying story which is just a testament to my inability to lie. I went to London to play a free show for this thing called Sofar Sounds. It was so not a big deal that I didn't think I had to get any paperwork. When I got to the border, the border patrol lady was really mean to me and asked if I was entering the country to work. She saw my guitar and she was giving me a really hard time.
At first I said no, like I was just going to see friends. Then she started asking for names of the people that I was going to be “casually playing music with” and I panicked. I finally just was like, "I'm so sorry, I lied to you. I'm playing a paid show here." Then she said, "Okay. Well, even though it's a free show, we're going to ban you from the UK." I passed out. I fainted. I just fell over sideways. Everyone I told that story to was like, "Why didn't you just keep lying?" but for some reason, my moral compass took over and I couldn't lie, even to my own detriment.
RM: Oh my god. I'm so sorry.
S: No, it's really hilarious. I think it's so pathetic and so funny that I passed out.
RM: I get it. Are you allowed back in the UK now?
S: Yes. She was just trying to scare me. It wasn't a big deal.
RM: Why? For what?
S: I don't know, she just was having a bad day or something. It was also four in the morning. I was preparing to get back on a plane at 4am. I'm actually going back to the UK this year. I haven't been back since that incident, but I'm going back now.
RM: For shows or for fun?
S: I think for some shows later on. I probably shouldn't be even saying that but who knows.