John K. Samson is the singer and songwriter for The Weakerthans. He lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where he’s also the managing editor and co-founder of a small publishing house, ARP.
“John Samson’s lyrics move me with their detail and empathy. He has an ability to explain feelings we’ve all had but couldn’t verbalize. His songs are beautiful, brutal, honest and comforting, all at the same time.” — Craig Finn, The Hold Steady
“John K. Samson is fluent in the inexpressible. Find him on the page or find him in the ether—just find him” — Alissa York, author, Fauna
“John Samson’s smart, soulful music has saved my life so many times. He’s the prairie poet voice of my generation and also of my kids.” — Miriam Toews, author, A Complicated Kindness
About Provincial
Traveling four routes woven into the prairie landscape, Provincial, the first solo album by The Weakerthans singer/songwriter John K. Samson, finds familiar landmarks and forgotten ones; shivers through long winters and uncertain memories; works its way home.
Since 1997, John K. Samson has written four acclaimed albums with The Weakerthans. This too is a collection of loud, quiet, beautiful songs. Provincial began with a simple idea: to explore four different roads in Manitoba, the province where Samson lives.
These are Provincial’s thoroughfares: Manitoba Highway 23 leads to Ninette, about three hours south of Winnipeg. Provincial Road 222, 90 minutes north of the city, goes from Gimli to Riverton, skirting Lake Winnipeg. And Portage Avenue (aka City Route 85) is Winnipeg’s primary artery; it turns into Highway 1. They became Provincial’s ley lines. “They’re the places I kept going back to.” Samson talked to relatives, friends and strangers; he visited archives, a tuberculosis sanatorium-turned-RV park, a forgotten cemetery. Before very long, he says, he “started to feel like the project was leading [him] somewhere.”
The result is this collection of evocative songs, recorded in April 2011 at Toronto’s Six Nassau Street, and Prairie Recording Co. in Winnipeg. Working with producer Paul Aucoin and mix engineer Cam Loeppky, Samson gathered an eclectic and talented group of musicians, old friends and new, including bassist Doug Friesen, guitarist Shotgun Jimmie, Constantines drummer Doug MacGregor, and Samson’s partner and collaborator, the songwriter Christine Fellows. Other songs benefited from the strings and percussion of the Correction Line Ensemble. “It’s scary to be working without the fellowship of the Weakerthans,” he reveals, “but there’s always just the thrill of making something that didn’t exist before.”
This is an album that fits beside Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, Sun Kil Moon’s Ghosts Of The Great Highway, Mountain Goats’ Tallahassee — or on a mixtape with Grandaddy, Jonathan Richman, REM, Lambchop, and The National. While the teenage craving of “Cruise Night” recalls the Cars, “Stop Error” invokes Bach; for “When I Write my Master’s Thesis,” a grad-school anthem, Samson’s inspiration was all jukebox serendipity — Bob Dylan’s “When I Paint My Masterpiece,” sailing out from the corner of a Yukon dive-bar.
Samson mines the precise, the particular. A song about a demolished building, about small-town coders. Songs about dying villages, Icelandic longing, staff-room romances, Grand Theft Auto. A song written as an online petition (a campaign to honour the valiant hockey player Reggie Leach). Hymns for the departed, rockers for the living, Provincial is a record full of fierce, tuneful, vivid stories.
Provincial is available in North America on Epitaph/ANTI, and in Eurpoe on Grand Hotel Van Cleef Records, along with a book, Lyrics & Poems 1997-2012, published by ARP.