‘LUCKY’ STAR
Luck is on Oklahoma songwriter Carter Sampson’s side
Carter Sampson called her new album “Lucky,” but “grateful” would have been just as apt. Released in October on Tulsa label Horton Records, the record is a collection of new songs, covers and co-writes on the theme.
“I have a whole lot to be grateful for,” Sampson said.
Since her last record, 2016’s “Wilder Side,” she’s had a lot of good press, traveled and performed nationally and internationally with measurable success and watched the Oklahoma City chapter of the Rock and Roll Camp for Girls that she founded flourish. She also completed a successful Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for “Lucky,” most of which was written just over a year ago.
“Lucky” opens with the title track, a rollicking, countrified rumination on the good fortune that’s brought Sampson to where she is today, and it closes with a languid, almost tropical take on Shel Silverstein’s “Queen of the Silver Dollar.” In between, the songs vacillate seamlessly between her gratitude and her grit — the vulnerable moments book-ended by tougher songs like “Ten Penny Nail,” inspired by an anecdote she heard about a tumultuous love triangle, and “Rattlesnake Kate,” based on the true story of a woman who killed 140 rattlesnakes to protect her child − then made herself a dress from the snake skins.
In both faces — the softer, lamenting Sampson and the obstinate one — her Oklahoma seems to be showing more than ever. “Peaches” is a sweet expression of gratefulness for her childhood in Stephens County, in which she calls herself “one of the lucky ones.” In a recent interview, Sampson also mentioned she’s “gotten more country” as she’s gotten older, something she traces back to her mom’s Emmylou Harris and Dwight Yoakam albums, which were on repeat while she was growing up.
“It was stuff that I thought was really lame mom music, all the stuff that I hated,” Sampson said. “Now I’ve realized, as you do when you get older, that music is truly where my roots come from.”
Sampson’s roots have been purposely transient throughout much of her life, but, despite, or maybe because of, her travel, she said Oklahoma is where she belongs.
“I spent like the first 19 years of my life trying to figure out how to get out of Oklahoma, and I did. I’ve lived other places,” Sampson said. “But for the last few years at least I’ve been traveling the world and the country and telling people Oklahoma has a lot to offer. I feel a connection here. This is my home.”
There’s a feeling of Sampson having found her voice on “Lucky,” settling into her talents and tastes and getting comfortable with who she is as a writer and performer, in the context of her home and in the company of her closest collaborators.
“All I got don’t mean nothing / if I don’t know who I am,” Sampson sings gently on “All I Got,” one of the songs co-written with Scott. Who she is a celebrated songwriter with a promising career and a new record full of collaborations that amplify her voice. What she’s got is luck.