Johanna Samuels
Catching up with Johanna Samuels; press photos courtesy of the artist.
Brooklyn by LA artist Johanna Samuels has been making her coastal rounds recently at The Satellite & NYC’s Union Pool in support of her brand new EP Home and Dry: Told a Lie available today & we have the premiere listen streaming in its entirety. Samuels made a name for herself through the New York’s hotbed of talented songwriters, singers, arrangers, composers, & visionaries before moving way out to the west coast. Johanna’s piano penned songs strike the sentimental sides of the heart that tell tales of experience, emotive inquiries, & inner & outer thought dialogues where privy conversations here are appropriated as lyrics. Her music chronicles the chapters of life that have been lived & read, measuring the distances traveled, compromises made, and questions that investigate why people arrive in our lives as quick as they depart. All this and more sets the stage for Home and Dry: Told a Lie.
Johanna Samuels’ new EP begins with “Stop You” that illustrates a hands off approach in understanding another individual’s happiness. “Well I want to put a stop to your feeling so bad most times, but if you want to stay mad I know I’m never gonna stop you.” Johanna zooms in on the desire to intervene & affect the emotional chemistry of a loved one, while also respecting the autonomy of another individual’s free will & choice to feel the way they want to feel. “The Beast” weighs out the should I stay or should I go choices with a heavy but certain heart expressed between the keys & woodwinds in lyrics like, “it would be such a disservice to myself to stay, because I don’t want to change so I push you away.” The lens moves from topics of relationships, migrations, & pensive moments of being stuck in your head exhibited on “Tired Of Me” that delivers honest & embarrassing confessionals that feels familiar & human that mixes doubts, insecurities, & more in act of self-analysis. Johanna continues this introspective mode on “Good Ship” that operates with a choral luster where the effect of the strings & keys heighten the mood right before Johanna destroys you with lyrics guaranteed to choke up the most hardened of hearts: “I know what’s right, I know what’s wrong, when my good ship comes it’s because I waited, you don’t want good, you don’t want strong.” Closing out Home and Dry: Told a Lie, Samuels enters the echo desert caverns of Lady Lazarus-esque territories on “Into the Throes” that invites all to turn and face the strange of the uncertainty of what dreams tomorrow and the next day after that may bring. Read our following interview with Johanna Samuels.
When & where were you when you discovered your own musical calling & draw?
There was always music in my house growing up, both listening and playing.
I loved harmonizing with my favorite records and learning them on piano.
Writing my own songs didn’t cross my mind until I was 19, after that it was pretty all-consuming.
What sorts of song writing, & drafting rituals or approaches have you adopted over time?
I try my best to sit down at the piano or guitar everyday and when a chord progression returns a few times I’ll hum a melody. Sometimes the words will come with it—other times I’ll chew on the melody for a few weeks. Lyrics are usually last. I try to get out of the way as much as possible.
A conversation with Johanna Samuels; press photo.
What sorts of ideas of home, and deception, and more informed the making of Home and Dry: Told a Lie?
I wrote these songs while packing up my life in New York and moving across the country. I was returning to Los Angeles, where I had grown up. I spent a month on the road and found myself returning to what home really meant to me. At the same time I was thinking about the stories we tell ourselves; what we choose to remember about where we come from and what we need to forget.
Which particular authors & artists & auteurs have you found yourself gravitating toward lately?
Comedians Maria Bamford & Kate Berlant. Margaret Glaspy’s new record. Mitski’s new record.
Johanna Samuels behind the scenes, writing her new EP; press photo.
Summer & fall wishes?
Planning to play out as much as possible. I’m always writing more. Would love to get the chance to get back in the studio and do all this again. Also, there’s a pretty bitchin’ full moon tonight. Looking forward to that!
2017 projection, meditations, prayers, etc?
More listening. Less fear.
Johanna Samuels’ new EP Home and Dry: Told a Lie is available now.
