Singer Songwriter John K Samson
Who?
According to his site, John K. Samson is a singer-songwriter from Winnipeg, Treaty One Territory, where he also helps run a curling league and a chapter of Book Clubs for Inmates.”
And that is as good a description as you can give in one sentence. Unfortunately for me, I plan on doing a few more sentences.
Singer Songwriter John K Samson
Weakerthans
I first heard John with the band Weakerthans and I have the feeling that my next sentence will be as much a help to you as this one. The band appeared on Stuart McLean’s Vinyl Cafe.
I told you.
Though it is unfair to both great raconteurs, Stuart McLean was Canada’s Garrison Keillor in that both created and related wonderful stories about a fictional place. Humor is the centerpiece of both men’s skill. And both men have musicians play live.
Singer Songwriter John K Samson
Canadian
Stuart McClean was a proud Canadian and promoted Canadian performers. Unfortunately for we often-myopic Americans, many of these great Canadian performers are unknown south of their border.
The Weakerthans and John K Samson are prime examples. Like McClean and Keillor, Samson songs typically tell tales. Short stories, like “Winter Wheat” which begins…
| Woke up in a parking lot Air mattresses gone flat The sun selecting targets for the shadows to attack So make a visor with your hand Squint at where you’re from A lonely line of buildings you can block out with your thumb Salute the way we tried |
Singer Songwriter John K Samson
No stinkin’ categories
Categorizing the Samson’s melodies is useless. We don’t need no stinkin’ categories! Folk, punk, indie rock, post-punk, hardcore punk if you insist. Simply great music if you don’t.
Winter Wheat is also the name of his most recent release, his second solo album. I love it. I love all his work whether solo or Weakerthans.
Let’s just follow one trilogy. The first from the Weakerthan album, Reconstruction Site. A cat begs its owner to get out of his doldrums:
Plea From A Cat Named Virtute
| Why don’t you ever want to play? I’m tired of this piece of string You sleep as much as I do now And you don’t eat much of anything I don’t know who you’re talking to I made a search through every room But all I found was dust that moved In shadows of the afternoon |
Singer Songwriter John K Samson
Reunion
Then from another Weakerthan album, Reunion Tour comes…
Virtute The Cat Explains Her Departure
| It had something to do with the rain Leaching, loamy dirt And the way the back lane came alive Half moon whispered, “Go” For a while I heard you missing steps in the street And your anger pleading in an uncertain key Singing the sound that you found for me |
The end of the trilogy is sadly but not unexpectedly the end of Virtute. From Winter Wheat,
Virtute At Rest
| Now that the treatment and antidepressants And seven months sober have built me a bed In the back of your brain where the memories flicker And I paw at the synapses, bright bits of string You should know I am with you, know I forgive you Know I am proud of the steps that you’ve made Know it will never be easy or simple Know I will dig in my claws when you stray So let us rest here like we used to In a line of late afternoon sun Let it rest, all you can’t change Let it rest and be done |
Singer Songwriter John K Samson
Much more
Of course, there is more, much much more, to John K Samson than songs about a beloved cat. The the deep sense of love and belonging these three songs display are typical of Samson’s songs whether the love and belonging have succeeded or gone away.
Link to NPR review of Winter Wheat album.
Singer Songwriter John K Samson
Since then…
In 2018, Samson recorded a version of Fellows’ “Saturday Night at Utopia Parkway” for a split single with American musician Kevin Devine.
In 2019 he collaborated with Safia Nolin on a cover of Taking Back Sunday‘s “Cute Without the E” for her EP xX3m0 $0ng$ 2 $!nG @L0nG 2Xx.
In February 2020, Samson wrote and released “Millennium for All”, a song supporting the activist campaign against the new security restrictions at Winnipeg’s Millennium Library. He followed up in July with the single “Fantasy Baseball at the End of the World”
In February 2023, Fellows and Samson released Hold Music, an album of almost entirely instrumental music except one song with vocals by Samson. The album was credited to Vivat Virtute, the name of Fellows’ online music and crafts store.