‘I’m just really more interested in other people’s lives than I?am in my own’ says the ever-humble John K. Samson.
Lead Weakerthan’s solo EP is back with the streets he knows
It’s easy to conflate The Weakerthans with the band’s musical and lyrical spearhead John K. Samson. In fairness both the singer and his band defy their punk rock roots through intelligence and sophistication and both can comfortably wear adjectives like “soft-spoken” “articulate” and even “endearing.” Confusing matters more the two have been largely inseparable since Samson founded the band in 1997 after splitting from Winnipeg agit-punks Propagandhi — his last official solo release was in 1995. No surprise then that despite the musical contributions of the rest of The Weakerthans (contributions Samson has always been eager to acknowledge) to many fans he and the band are one and the same.
That isn’t likely to change with City Route 85 the first in a planned series of solo EPs from the singer-songwriter. City Route 85 quite literally covers familiar Samson territory — the route in question is better known as Winnipeg’s Portage Avenue. Although the series will eventually take the singer out of his hometown and into small-town Manitoba it’s only fitting that Samson has started his solo path on familiar ground.
“Winnipeg has become the way I interpret the world” he says of his civic muse. “It’s a city that has everything I think a writer needs. It’s got elements of a big city and elements of a small town and it’s got injustice and a vibrant arts scene and terrifying politics. It’s really got it all I think and yet is this really geographically isolated place. And despite our extremely connected world there’s something psychological about the real physical isolation of a place that has an impact on the people who live here.”
It’s provided him with ample fodder over the years. Though his songwriting is hardly impersonal Samson’s lyrics shun the usual girl-done-me-wrong scenarios that dominate pop songwriting — probably a good thing as he is happily married to fellow singer-songwriter Christine Fellows. Instead he crafts word-perfect postcard-sized vignettes and insightful character sketches from stories about medical oddities to personal criticism from the perspective of a pet cat. The Manitoba road series is just an extension of his fascination with the lives of others.
“Maybe because I’m really undisciplined in general I find it really helpful to have structure and direction” he says of the project. “I’m also just really more interested in other people’s lives than I am in my own anymore — I mean writing about other people’s lives. I don’t really find much interesting about myself to write about.”
Even still there’s always the possibility that topics like “Cruise Night” a particularly Winnipegian phenomenon where souped-up cars idly drive up and down Portage Avenue might be too obscure for Samson’s ever-growing audience. But where some songwriters aim for universality and end up with bland platitudes Samson believes that a little specificity goes a long way.
“It’s a gamble that we’ve taken before with some songs on Weakerthans records and it seems to work” he says. “There’s something really universal in writing about specifics in that it makes people recognize the specific things about their own lives that maybe have been underexplored by the culture…. It’s a nice feeling when someone seems to get what you’re saying about a place that you care about and relates it to a place that they care about or the people that they care about.”
