What? Music? Weekly

The whole thing is magic. The songs are all spells. Even if you don't think they are. It's like anything else you practice or repeat; like writing, “I will not interrupt the class.” on the chalk board a hundred times while all the other kids have recess. This one is like an incantation for my own invisibility. It's a Jedi mind trick. This is not what you see. You have made me the authority so you...

I think of myself as a romantic, but really because someone called me that. At the time I was 29 and I didn’t know what it meant. I thought maybe it had something to do with wooing. I was on the west coast. My friend had hired me for a series of musical engagements at bars and restaurants in Seattle. I was meeting with someone from my home town for drinks after work, her work. She was closing a pl...

A confluence of events that together create a meaning or expose a path is a kind of magic. Life is not simple. A chance meeting, an error, a journey- it's all blank, until as a combination it becomes. The thing about emergence, be it that of a piece of art or a whole world is that it can not be expressed in full as the sum of its parts. Its disassembled parts are just stuff. But when it all comes...

I have never thought of myself as Country. I am a townie. I’m a Yankee. My dad was a college professor and a fifties liberal. My mom is a compassionate, educated woman. When the Shame Train band started to happen I was surprised at how country it came off. The first record has twang from Randal Davis and accordion that is not German or Mexican sounding. There might be country songs on it. Truth be...

https://samknutson.bandcamp.com/album/where-the-covers-deep Advice can have this aspect of power over/ bossy pants if it is not carefully doled out especially if nobody has asked for it. Sometimes mature interaction can involve going into a situation that’s maybe already emotionally sideways and touchy to say, “why not try it this other way”. You might get bit. You have to be brave and do the best...

Man! I wrote some songs about what it was gonna be like to be a jaded, burnt out old rocker who had had minor success. When stuff started to take off for the band after the first record I was like, ‘All right, but I know what’s gonna happen.’ Used to Play {What? Music? 16} is from the perspective of someone who got caught up in the idea of themself as a musician from the perspective of a young fan...

As I get to know myself, which as I get older I realize takes the whole time, I see things in myself that I can't see in other people, things that I still tag as normal for me but no longer assume are the kinds of things all the other kids have going on upstairs. I have found an unstudied attention to some simple Buddhist principals to be of some assistance to the personalized foibles of my me-nes...

I was writing on purpose when I wrote the Ragdoll Rag. I don’t know what made me think I could, or that I was good at it. I have never been one to take a compliment, much less believe one. I felt like I was pulling it off. I did believe I was good at it and that it was important to do. There is all kinds of s**t about my life at the time I wrote this song that would not survive any scrutiny. I was...

I grew up in a college town. I live in one now. In the summer it gets quiet and grown ups and their kids become the herd. Then like rain on the ocean ten thousand young adults appear, clean and unruffled and judgemental and cosplaying adults, gloriously unsupervised, freshly autonomous, fit from having grown into their shape and for no other reason. I was an odd, thin young man when I was one. I h...

It's possible that one of the most overused, juvenile, half assed, phoned in, made up, weak sauce, cheesey, tired tropes in all of story telling in all its forms from straight up lies to justifications is that it came to one in a dream… But I swear to you this came to me whole in a dream- the guitar part, the words, the melody, all of it. There's no bigger story really. The guitar part was pretty...

When I was 29, it was a very good year… I had bought a car and got gigs in the Pacific northwest. I was doing a singer songwriter thing in the Midwest where I lived in a big college town. I had been out to the Pacific northwest and back trying to maintain a relationship I was unable to maintain. I was writing songs and had opportunity to play them in front of small crowds for money, and in rooms w...

I'm not always goal oriented. I don't run with the sharpest focus. I enjoy things that I notice happening along my route to the store or to work or just along a bike ride I do to keep fit. I try to stay open. Being too focused keeps you from seeing some random beauty that's inconspicuous, but there. It's a great big world. It's counterintuitive to imagine it seeming bigger the closer you look or t...

Most often, it’s nice when something catches. It’s like if you tell a story at a party and everybody engages and they clearly enjoy it. Writing a song that catches people is like that. An audience perks to it and cheers after. There is the rare occasion that something feels more pertinent over time. That can be great. Maybe a thing takes a long time to catch on or it quietly naturally spreads due...

This video is from right around when the song was born. There's an additional verse. Opening for Irirs Dement at Woolies in Des Moines winter 2013. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=K_jDEw1MuFM&list=RDK_jDEw1MuFM&start_radio=1&pp=ygUiU2FtIGtudXRzb24gdGhlIEhpZ2h3YXltYW4ncyBXaWZlIKAHAQ%3D%3D This ties in to last week's deal. I had a long really nice conversation with someone I have known for a long time...

I have a tendency to say limited, contained things like they are whole and big and already accepted as true. It helps me sometimes. Other times not so much and what’s maybe just as likely is that I'll tune out the part that doesn’t go along nicely with the rest. I don’t think I am alone in that. We all steer the narrative a little. There is no way to include everything so we omit. Sometimes there...

Everybody quits eventually, is a statement that is true. You can argue it’s not, but eventually you will lose. Metaphores are fun, huh? They are the verbal punctuation reality needs to be properly understood sometimes. They ask a reader or a listener to look at what they are seeing from a different angle. A broader understandong can stem from a metaphore. A secret you might need only some people t...

My girlfriend has a horse. It’s amazing for people to get what they always wanted. It is complex to succeed. Most of the examples that come readily to mind of people getting what they always wanted fall into a regretable midlife crisis variety or a make a wish foundation variety. Rarely do we get regaled with tales of the ordinary I-saved-up-for-a-bike or I-have-paid-my-debt-completely variety. I...

I hope you make art. I think everyone does. Some people put effort into conforming. It's a natural inclination to be in the pack you're in. But you can't do it exactly the same; if it's not flattery, it’s copying. That difference, that flare that makes the group member an individual- that's art. Everyone does art. All the things you try are art. When you look back at old pictures or videos from ye...

Two-year-olds don’t know the danger inherent in ambition, as it lays itself out in the wake of a course of action* is the question, why[?]. If you’re climbing a long hill, you can be strong and focussed, but when the tired starts to weigh your pace, when you start to falter, it coincides with that very question. Why? When you play through a cute little P.A. system in the corner of a massive, empty...

https://samknutson.bandcamp.com/album/gone https://youtu.be/Cv0H9CIu-a4?si=IaWc3v9iSMXcmpmB This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samknu.substack.com

https://samknutson.bandcamp.com/album/where-the-covers-deep https://youtu.be/4j7ug91FUzs?si=mKUfG6FVpPQa8DSr This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samknu.substack.com

This particular song ties so many things together. During the last century there were juke boxes in all the bars full of 45 RPM singles. The place where you interfaced with the Juke box might be all full of mirrors and you could see the little records mechanically take their place on the turntable. Kids in pizza joints used to get quarters from their mom and go pick the same song over and over. I...

This particular song ties so many things together. During the last century there were juke boxes in all the bars full of 45 RPM singles. The place where you interfaced with the Juke box might be all full of mirrors and you could see the little records mechanically take their place on the turntable. Kids in pizza joints used to get quarters from their mom and go pick the same song over and over. I...

This one is from the cutting room floor. Ten years ago, I had started this project. It was big and musical and it was a group of friends and we traveled and played and it ran out of steam, and I chose not to continue to push, for many reasons. I had started working on what I was determined would be a record. It became Donkey Island. We recorded on and off for more than a year before letting it lan...

I wrote this song when I was 25. For the record, I got carded for cigarettes until I was 29. I was by all accounts a kid when I was 25. I did not have financial goals or complex responsibilities. I had to make rent and I needed beer money. The rest of my head space was taken up with dreams. Kids dream differently from grown-ups. The way you imagine the world as a young person is similar to a dream...