Today we’d like to introduce you to Samantha Margret.
Hi Samantha, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
When I was in elementary school, my parents gave me a mini tape recorder. I would carry it around singing. At the end of the day, I would get in the backseat and sing. I so badly wanted one of them to listen to the little melody I had written and ask, “what song is that?” I wanted them to think it was a “real song.” In some ways, I think I’m still trying to fulfill that childhood dream.
I didn’t grow up thinking of music as a career though. I studied poetry and thought I would be an English teacher who did music on the side. Of course, “on the side” started taking up all of my attention. That’s when I decided to try out music as a job. Since then, it’s been a lot of trial and error. The music industry can feel like a blackbox when you’re trying to look in from the outside. I’ve been lucky enough to find a lot of great communities along the way.
I started out writing and performing at the West Coast Songwriters competitions. That’s where I met a lot of the songwriters who showed me how things worked. One friend invited me out to Nashville. I stayed with her and wrote with her and her friends. That trip was eye-opening. That’s where I began to see what my job was as an independent artist and songwriter. Even though most of my work is in LA now, I still go back to Nashville to recenter on music.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I think that very few roads worth going down are smooth. This one is no exception. I like to joke that as songwriters, we move between two poles. Sometimes, I write something and think, “am I a genius?” Other times, I finish a day of work and think, “am I absolute trash?” It’s a journey of extremes. Finding balance is hard. It took me three years to create a daily workflow that allows space for the full range of artistic expression AND deadlines. I’m still learning what a healthy relationship with social media means for me.
Of course, there are the struggles we’ve all heard about for women in the music industry as well. I walk into venues and have front of house engineers try to explain my own gear to me. I’ve been on co-writes where my male co-writer thinks it’s a date and acts unprofessionally. And, social media has no shortage of men who think I should care what they think of my body and my songs. Fortunately, I’ve gathered a team of talented women around me who get what I’m going through and support me. From my management team to my mastering engineer, I’m surrounded by talented women who stick up for me and for themselves. That makes it a lot easier to brush off the people who don’t matter.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I am most proud of my song, “Feminist GF.” I wrote it about a real phone call gone wrong, and I released it because I liked how it came out—simple as that. It was one of the first songs I put out with no pressure on other people liking it. It’s got a lot of rage, a feeling I have been told over and over that people do not like in a woman. But people responded in a way I could never have imagined. I still get messages from women telling me about listening to it to pump up for big events or to come down from difficult interactions.
We are all pressured to be some ideal public persona, constructed by the worst systems in our culture: capitalism, racism, patriarchy, etc. This song was a reminder to me that what we actually want from one another is just recognition of the full human experience. We are all full of rage and joy and so many other emotions.
I think writing and releasing music with that in mindsets me apart in my industry. I’m not trying to ride the latest trend or abide by playlisters’ definition of pop music. My aim is to make music that reaches all the corners of my human experience. Hopefully, some of those corners connect with others too.
Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
I have had so many mentors and supporters along the way. Once, at a bar I was playing, a woman put a receipt in my tip jar with “keep going. You’re great!” written on it. I still have that receipt in my wallet. Of course, there have also been many people close to me who have shaped my career and my music.
When I was playing competitions in San Francisco and had no idea what I was doing, Mira Goto, another artist, invited me to stay with her in Nashville. She was the first person who really laid out what a songwriter’s job was day-to-day. She introduced me to Steve Seskin who became my first real songwriting teacher. My mastering engineer, Piper Payne, has had my back since before my music was really any good. She’s gone above and beyond, taking panicked calls about non-mastering related production problems.
I’m also lucky to be surrounded by songwriters I love and respect who help me through both encouragement and critique. My community at my Thursday night song club through the LA Songwriters Collective has their fingerprints on my recent releases. My producer and constant collaborator Easy Morning, my family, and my management team at Taller Mgmt hear everything (the good and the bad) and let me know what’s what.
And that really is only a snapshot. The trust that I have in my community is the only way I can get any project from a vulnerable idea in my head to a song out in the world.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.samanthamargret.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/samanthamargret
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/samanthamargret
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6UStOMnpXDL-pBL1E_11jQ
Image Credits
Kathy Krusen, Erika Christine Photography
