What? Music? Weekly

sam knutson
  • 0.0 (0)
  • Music Commentary
  • Weekly

An original piece of music weekly with a brief history. And maybe a video. samknu.substack.com

  1. 5d ago

    What? Music? 53

    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 together you really have something. I envision some fictional driftless town that holds all the romantic aspects of the nearly unfarmable, but fully stocked for a kind of survival landscape I grew up in the townie shadows of- the driftless. A poor old picker who's hearth I can drift into the light of to be accepted and enjoyed, I imagine there. I bring news of the world at large to a tiny place that is whole without what lays beyond it. I haven't been home to where I'm from in so long that my fiction of it is more real to me than the place itself. I know I can't see it for what it is, but I identify as being of it. Being from what I can no longer grasp puts me adrift, but I'm comfortable. I can sail in this. I can make it to anywhere from here. Home is where I am, but it's also what I call the place I am from. It's a concept- home. And when I’m not at home, I can conjure it. I conjure it. https://youtu.be/cRqNPQavqlc?si=9VhOCGZ5LCc3tfgx 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

  2. Oct 20

    What? Music? 52

    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 told, I grew up in an anti-Country household, although we did watch Hee Haw. My dad played the banjo, but I am not certain he ever played it outside of the house. Country music has a many splendored past. It’s a million anecdotes. South of the Mason Dixon line, you can sleep in your car year round if you need to and this might seem like an unrelated detail, but if you are touring and playing for the door you might not make enough money for a hotel. If it is ten below you are gonna need some money or some friends. The weather might not seem that important, but of a thousand bands on a thousand nights in a thousand towns the ones that make it might need an advantage. Success is not a meritocracy. It’s a series of fortunate coincidences. Winter nights have an effect on your fortune. But I still write what can unequivocally be called a country song from time to time. A 5.08 mile and a ten dollar bag… Are what stood between me and a law degree hot wife and a Jag And the liquor made clear it was knuckle down time You came to your kind of wealth and I came to mine. And it’s true what they say, when the cat is away, me and my bretheren’ll find ya and bring a light to your face where the lines of disgrace from six days of work have defined you. Nothing is lost, but the gains don't appear in the columns of a ledger book kept tidy year after year. It shoes in my face and the ease of my smile.im the hitch hiker silently winning the argument mile after mile. And it’s true what they say, when the cat is away, me and my bretheren’ll find ya and bring a light to your face where the lines of disgrace from six days of work have defined you. Nothing is lost, but the gains don’t appear in the columns of a ledger book kept tidy year after year. It shoes in my face and the ease of my smile.im the hitch hiker silently winning the argument mile after mile. I'm the hitch hiker silently winning the argument mile after mile. If you zoom out it’s all the same song for the same reason that what we call Country is a million anecdotes. It’s all music. Ryan Bernemann and I recorded this at the onset of what was my favorite version of this band. It was Me and Ryan and Adam Bernemann. Oversimplification- I love a power trio. I’m not even joking. I love some orchestral boop boop beep beep pop music and Classic rock guitar bands but three people making great music together is big enough and small enough and obvious enough. Nobody even knows Adam Bernemann can sing. I haven’t talked to him in years. My friend Todd visited from Minneapolis and he brought me Adam’s jacket that he left in Todd’s place 23 years ago. It had pay stubs in the pocket. Me and Ryan recorded this in his living room in his apartment before he was married before the tornado took out the dairy queen across the street and it became a show standard. It’s simple. Twang in a hurtin tune that tells a story- Country. https://youtu.be/S9EsjMb70ek?si=UJjlS4O2ZaZO16xk BANDCAMP LINK: https://samknutson.bandcamp.com/album/splendor-3 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

  3. Oct 13

    What? Music? 51

    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 you can. You can show someone you respect them and offer council as an equal. I used to say, “I ain’t tryna be your boss,” as a lead in to an untried method. People get the idea that they need to go out there and take charge, or that someone has to. The notion of leadership has this high place. I find the people and ideas and inspirations for the solutions to what we observe as problems are often something we barely noticed, someone who knew where we were headed and planted a seed, someone who guided your hand in the moment where you needed it and let you learn how it should happen without needing to be recognized, or a dog. Someone who stands in front of a room full of strangers spouting advice and telling you what your future holds isn’t doing leadership. That’s called theater. It’s rare that something like winter shows up unannounced. The leaves on the trees change color and fall off. The wind has a hint in it. The sun stays lower and doesn’t stay out as long and even a legitimately warm day’ll get cool enough at night to trigger the furnace by dawn. When the wind blows, when the night falls, if a rain comes in it carries the message that winter is coming. You’re no longer sure you should stay out in it the way you are in summer. It feels like a warning. You might not be properly attired. Winter is coming, it all says. I hold that anyone intent on unironically laying out your future for you is after your money, and winter is no exception. Even if you are dead broke you can open a window in the summertime and let in the cool night air. If you can’t keep a fire going when it’s ten below, your life is in peril. The people who lived in the Midwest before civilization zhuzhed it all up had the good sense to get on a river and head south when she started hinting at inhospitable. Once the trees were cleared and the conduits of modernity had been drawn between will-labor-for-realm-coins and dig- it-up-and-light-it-on-fire there was no longer any reason to pull up stakes. The days getting shorter doesn’t have a notable effect on being able to make ends meet. There are things you can depend on in all of this and one is that it will get better. You might have to work on it. Nothing is always easy, but it goes up and down or the cycle feels like that as you go through it, like a roller coaster more often that like the inside of a clothes dryer. There’s a tunnel. Then you are out in the sun again. And you only get to the next part if you keep on. It’s maybe too bad that you can’t feel yourself changing the world, but you are. With every breath you are making the atmosphere. With every step you are moving parts of the world and things alive that you will never see that have been born and will live out lives and breed and die and winter is just the part where it slows down and the details get buried until spring. And there will be spring. But it’s part of a cycle, so it’s not exactly the future. It’s the thing it did before, again. It’s the light returning. It’s part of forever all the way out like it was all the way back. 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

  4. Oct 6

    What? Music? 50!

    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 with the refrain, “You used to be” at the end. Sheesh. This one rides the same character also from the second person with the added detail of a young music professional coolly gently tugging the fame-is-this-way chain from the other side of the ocean at the start. I had a few examples of the kind of success I was interested in- recognition and respect but not TV fame. I was just starting to make those kinds of distinctions in a way. Greg Brown and James McMurtry and if I sat and thought about it a bunch more singer songwriters who were having careers but were not household names (Ani DeFranco) were my examples. They played in big rooms in major markets and some bars and small halls. They had a string of records that people liked- Bob Mould. People who were not writing catchy pop tunes or touring a big production around- working musicians who were putting the rewards of their success into their own pockets, people I could see from close up if I wanted to - Richard Buckner. All of the pursuits I had toward my continued financial fluidity at the time were dead-end. I worked in kitchens. I was a young thirty something looking at old forty-something line cooks drowning themselves in beer and whiskey to medicate their knee and back pain. No one I knew had prospects for retirement or healthcare, but we all felt pretty bullet proof. We ate well. We drank too much and we knew why we all felt bad when we did. It's a whole lifestyle. The prospect of being a musician for a living long-term had the same insolvent financial future with the benefit of a near absolute permissiveness for drugs and alcohol and what we’ll simplify to womanizing for the sake of brevity here. I loved the idea of becoming the songwriter whose job was songwriter as a romantic notion, but I was aware enough of the responsibilities of real adulting to tell stories about what a s**t idea it was. Here's one now. When you've been to every roadsidea joint and captured every heart, been down every two lane black top, freeway, gravel and dirt rut road, you can roll onto that soft shoulder and turn into the night. When you’ve given up your days and turned your nights into religion, given up your mind and changed your eyes it’s your decision to heed the law of the winner’s word, and take the show down. And you're not free you’re just more liquid so you've got to stay out of the cold. It’s never not now, just downshifted and you’re old. And you’ve got no guns to stick to cuz you’ve got no row to hoe and you’re pissed cuz you’ve been licked by a girl who plays guitar with a bow you can roll onto that soft shoulder and turn into the night. And you’re not free you’re just more liquid so you’ve got to stay out of the cold. It’s never not now just down shifted and you’re old. It's never not now, just down shifted and you’re old. There’s some irrelevant double entendre that just seems mean spirited to elucidate from now and here. Suffice it to say that I thought more of my own songwriting than I did that of some of my more famous contemporaries from the same scene. I hadn't yet started telling myself it's not a meritocracy. Maybe I already knew I was a homebody. I still have a romantic story I tell myself of being on the road to play, and I love hotels, but I need some kind of anchor, a steady, to hold off the pressure of losing money on the road like a minor hit or foot pics on only fans, some commodifiable virality. I don't need to win the internet and I prefer it to be something that fits within how I see myself, but no one is buying today. Traditional P.R. firms don't even work with music anymore. Oh Spotify. It's like you read that quote Jim Musser used to close his column with- “The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side.” -Hunter S. Thompson And I'm old. This is the Bandcamp link: https://samknutson.bandcamp.com/album/gone 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

    What? Music? 50!

  5. Sep 29

    What? Music? 49

    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-ness. I can see why Buddhism has seen the success it has seen over the course of its way. Even without study, some of the ideas and principles therein offer aid in living with common neurosis- the kinds of things everyone has. The phrases and ideas that have worked their way into the cultures where Buddhism really took root are helpful to the people within those cultural landscapes in the same way that the little bible things we western folk all thoughtlessly say to each other are an aid to us. Again, with little examination it is clear that some of the little phrases there are, come from the same place or cover the same part of our internal chop. This too shall pass. एतदपि गमिष्यति One of the tenets of Buddhism is an awareness of impermanence. All the things that are now will not always be. If you have the sort of internal weather that I do, it is a comforting reminder. Sometimes I am overcome with the notion that there is some impending overwhelming disaster about to befall me and there is f**k all I can do to prevent it. Sometimes it is an absolutely crippling notion. It makes me scared and unable to act and changes the way I live my day to day because… it seems like I need to give it my attention, this disastrous notion. I can remind myself that it will pass, that I wont always feel that way. For example, I’m not currently bothered by it. But in a very real way, it’s true. The disaster could be that everything is passing from the earth: us, our stuff, our friends, everything that we hold dear. The trick is not being bent out of shape about it. There is still stuff to do to be in the world. I am not certain there is anything we can do to make it better, the world, but we can help each other to be ok while we are here. Sometimes a song comes from the place where I know some of the true events of the world are upon me and that regardless of my fate as an individual, the whole thing will go on, and that it should go on and that it will go on even without my encouragement. But I do feel obliged to offer a little, perhaps off-putting encouragement as a reminder that the real is real. In Coeur d’alene I will take my stand Coeur d’alene I will make my stand Coeur d’alene I will make my stand if you’re with me I will hold your hand So come with me I will set you free Come with me I will set you free Come with me I will set you free Don't want nothin’ that ain’t meant to be Babe, when I was young I staid on the run I was young I stayed on the run I was young I stayed on the run Never did nothing I well should have done When I was old I did what I was told I was old did what I was told I was old did what I was told Took that money. Put it in my fold So When I die leave me where I lie When I die leave me where I lie When I die leave me where I lie Only fools believe they’ll learn to fly In Coeur D’alene I will make my stand Coeur D’alene I will make my stand Coeur D’alene I will make my stand If you’re with me I will hold your hand If you’re with me I will hold your hand If you’re with me I will hold your hand I feel like for my sake and probably for yours I do well to remind myself when I telescope time out in to the disaster that is my end, that I am not there, that I can not see it from here and that I’m in the middle of a right here that is so vast I couldn’t possibly know it, much less anything I imagine beyond it. I'm in the middle of the place that I am, in the time that it is and everything else is just my passing thoughts, my impermanent self imagining other limited impermanences as if they are more important than right now. I do well to remind myself that this too shall pass. THIS IS THE BANDCAMP LINK: https://samknutson.bandcamp.com/album/lucky-13 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

    What? Music? 49

  6. Sep 22

    What? Music? 48

    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 living an unexamined existence and taking days as they came. It sounds romantic and to me it was, but it was surviving a lot of blows and saying things like, whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, which is objectively b******t even in dim light. I certainly thought I was holding it together in my daylight hours. I was working what to me now were s****y jobs with pride of purpose, barely peaking my head above full of s**t and really just believing myself to look successful, to look fine. I was years into daily getting f*****g knocked out and I was employed and housed and had a group of friends some of whom were getting daily knocked out and some of whom just saw me when I wasn’t. Most of the time I didn’t feel like I was f*****g up. There were people in the world who lived their lives like I did and were senators and movie stars and writers and artists. It almost seemed like a path to be on. It took me way too long to figure out why it was so rough. Sometimes not being alone in something means that you are supported and sometimes it’s just encouragement for bad behavior and there is no line dividing the two. Strangely to me [both at the time and from here] I was loveable, if briefly. And when you are broken that’s what you attract. Also though if you are unforgivable and someone takes you in that is worth its weight in reciprocal forgiveness. You see yourself looking back and accepting your damned fool ass and it just might make you smile. Not only can it make you smile, you can see honor in things you might never have considered. Things that seem to have worked. We’re here aren’t we? Obsessive little relatings that flashed by in a night or two or went on between bouts of too hammered to carry on for months seem like specs from here, but in their moments were whole and the take aways real and the things that didn’t die in the black of unremembered time are reliquaries of a rare era. They’re like vanity photos from an adventure no one knew was doomed full of smiles and cigarettes and drinks. Everyone seems to be in the middle of something and it’ll be years before anyone knows what they were in the middle of is falling down. There is an education in it. You laugh when you fall down, because you can still get up and not everyone does. The small tragedies pale. The blows become immaterial in their own number not as overwhelm, but as acceptance. Coping is built and will hold. And it’s not hard that you get. It’s sweet. It’s ripe. It’s done. Some people know they’re cooked and revel all the same, shields up, rolling unsafe, whistling in the dark and they might be saints. We’ll all be long dead before the canonization takes, and all the foibles will have been forgotten, the errors erased, and a golden light added in their wake, their birthplace marked, their tales told, those who judged them harshly seen as blind to obvious glory. https://samknutson.bandcamp.com/album/re-inventing-the-wheel 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

    What? Music? 48

  7. Sep 15

    What? Music? 47

    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 have certainly spent a few pennies finding the depths of melancholy, pushing the up button well aware of the downside. I used to think I was strong enough to take anything. I felt bad for grown-ups who couldn't break free of the cycles in their lives that were obviously crushing them. I managed to be unaware in thinking these things of the cycles in my own life, doing the same to me. It seems that all the strong judgements a person can have about the world are lensed through the only complete example they have of how to be a human- themselves. Those senators harping on the unholyness of same sex relations and hooking up with their pages behind closed doors are too choice an example. We learn these behaviors. We are very simple creatures. We should take care to remember that each other is, that we are. And those patterns we can so acutely observe in those around us are a mirror we don't recognize our own image in. It's like a show. You are in the show. You're essential to how you see it and how it goes. I think most adults see it sooner or later. We see the level of rebuild we will need to undertake if we f**k with the status quo in our little lives and stories. To a kid this looks like fear. To someone who hasn't built anything or seen anything mature in the web of their existence and influence, it can look like a cop out to just keep wearing the same outfits and getting the same haircut and to keep going to the same f*****g job you hate. But to an adult entrenched in a world that functions to pay the bills and keep the wheels on so regular life can keep going down the road the functionality overrides the consistent injury of a boss who is a dick or work that destroys your body or challenges your ability to keep it together. We might even be wired for it. Soldiering and slavery seem abhorrent, but they are long traditions. Service work and sex work seem like they might be humiliating from outside, but people find real joy there too. So, what's the point? Well, it might be that when you hate, you hate yourself, and that if you have compassion and attempt to understand or relate or connect, you will see yourself. Both are in our nature- hate and compassion, but one involves a consideration that is civil and good and connects you to your kind and the other is one that can only truly be done without those things. Ok, now touch gloves, and come out compassionately when the bell rings. THIS IS THE BANDCAMP LINK: https://samknutson.bandcamp.com/album/gone 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

    What? Music? 47

  8. Sep 8

    What? Music? 46

    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 specific and a little outside my skill set so I had to really buckle down and practice to get it to where I could play it and sing it. And in the dream I was playing it for this girl, Sarah that I knew at the time. After I’d learned it I played it for her and it made both of us pretty uncomfortable. It's not very much like anything else I have come up with. It's cute and all, but that's not how I talk. I played it at the first Opera House Project show and this guy Matt Skinner said it was the best thing I'd played. I continue to relearn and practice it. It has a special place for me because for all the things I have said about being a vessel that songs come through and just hearing them when they come, this one was whole in my head before I ever got to a guitar with it or tried to sing it. It really does seem to have come up of its own volition. All the songs are touchstones to me for where I was in my life at the time I wrote them. They kind of attach. This one floats, independent of the rest and haunts a little. My habit when I wrote it was to drink a bottle of red wine with and after dinner, before I went out, to prime myself. It filled my heart. Like anything you keep with you a long time, it changes. What it means changes. I'm not sure it had a meaning when it came to me, so maybe it shouldn't, but it feels like isolated joy, like a man who passes out in a pile of clothes every night. Inspiration is funny. The recording is old. It's part of a collection called, Re-inventing the Wheel that you should purchase from bandcamp and import simply to your mobile device. You know. The one you listen to podcasts on. Maybe it's my soul I'm supposed to show you for free, but I gotta eat this winter so… THIS IS THE BANDCAMP LINK https://samknutson.bandcamp.com/album/re-inventing-the-wheel 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

    What? Music? 46
See All (63)

About

An original piece of music weekly with a brief history. And maybe a video. samknu.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    sam knutson
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    63
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © sam knutson
  • Show Website
    What? Music? Weekly