Parables
from the ’Peg

>> The Weakerthans return with
more Manitoban probin’

SWEEPING SAGAS: the Weakerthans

By JOHNSON CUMMINS

There’s always been a stigma attached to Canadian artists singing from a distinctly Canadian perspective, one that would just have most of us breaking out in hives. Chances are, we wouldn’t bat an eye if some Sarnia boy suddenly sang about the glories of driving his rusted pickup truck down Highway 61, but when a Canadian band sings about it being “25 below at Portage and Main,” or worse, “Montreal calling,” our skins start crawling. If our patriot hearts do indeed swell with pride at the mention of a “soaker” or a “tuque,” the tickers turn a tin ear when being crooned to.

The Weakerthans’ lyricist/singer John K. Samson sheds light on his Winnipeg surroundings through singing his “first person fiction,” but also manages to sidestep being a musical Farley Mowat, or a Canadian playing with caricatures while sniggering up their hockey-jersey sleeve. His spoken word piece, “Gump Worsley,” about his childhood hero—a Canadian hockey treasure—induces goosebumps, while his ode to medical-experiment disaster David Reimer, “Hymn of the Medical Oddity,” is as bonechilling as a Winnipeg winter night.

“I guess I would just call it regional writing,” admits Samson. “There are a few exceptions, but most of the songs are set in Winnipeg again on this record. I guess Winnipeg, for me, is just a handy route to explore different themes and ideas. I think most people have a love/hate relationship with where they’re from, and I’m no different. I actually love the Winnipeg winters, and the artistic community is great, but it’s also a really poor city that’s poorly planned, with a quarter of the children living under the poverty level, so it can also be really frustrating.”

Although Samson’s geographical references are there if you look hard enough, they merely provide the setting while he lets his disparate characters weave the story. Probably his most direct Winnipeg reference is in the song “Tournament of Hearts.” Much like what W.P. Kinsella did for America’s favourite pastime, Samson carves analogies from what could arguably be the worst televised sport of all time—curling. It turns out Winnipeg is so cuckoo for curling that it boasts over 21 clubs serving its 600,000 inhabitants. Samson, of course, can sweep and slide a rock with the best of them.

“I was actually trained by a world champion when I was 13, so I like to think I’m pretty good, and I have been told I’ve got a pretty good form. I just really like the language of sports, because it’s just so specific and there are just so many metaphors within the language. For me, curling provides such great analogies and words for what a lot of people are feeling, like not being able to place a stone where you want, or the obvious of just sliding through life.”

True, Samson’s rich characters could be placed in almost any country, but he does admit that there is just something about Winnipeg’s frigid winters and prairie isolation that draws the words out of him. “I think there’s a kind of power in writing about distinct cultural quirks because it makes people think about their own cultural quirks and take a new look at the places they live in. People tend to think the real world goes on somewhere other than where they are, and I think that’s a real danger.”

With Jenn Grant at le National on
Friday, Nov. 2, 9 p.m., $20, all ages