What? Music? Weekly

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

  1. 6d ago

    What? Music? 25.1

    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 talk like I know you. I’m talking about myself I guess. I take the stuff I see sometimes and I dress it up with melody and lies to make it seem, you know, cool. It all comes from someplace. I have said the songs I write come from real events and that is true in a vague enough sense. I’ll walk you through this one. Talked to old Bo at the counter getting lunch the other day. There’s a buffet style Indian lunch place and there’s an older famous guy who eats there sometimes when I am eating there. We are neighbors so he’ll generally come over and say, Hey. He’s a good dude. I had played this place in Wisconsin and they had remembered him playing there to me [Cafe Carpe in Fort Atkinson Wisconsin]. They’d said it was the perfect thing for them- right room, right vibe, nice easy going crowd who drink beer and eat. He said something to the effect of, I don’t wanna do road gigs anymore in a it’s-the-end-of-that-part-of-my-career kind of a way. When I reimagined the conversation in my head it’s a diner with a lunch counter and he’s just saying he’s done. F**k, this could get long. He said he could see the end of a long road comin’, but it won’t show up today. I get obsessive about a riff I like. I’ll wander around the house in ug knock off slippers and strum like a f*****g looney. The chorus came in as a set of things that people say to help each other go when it’s hard to. Take it easy. Keep your head up. Walk the line, even if your fed up. It took a walk and a smile to get you what you’re standing on today. Brother it’ll let up. The lady that boards my girlfriends horse came up in conversation a fair amount for a while. She’s a wise old woman on a ranch in the mountains with horses out where there are bears and mountain lions. She has big Belgian dogs to make it safe. She is easy to idolize as a whole simple thing. She said once, “The fastest way is to take all the time it takes,” in reference to teaching an animal with a will of it’s own to do a thing with you, a person with a will of your own. Things wont be rushed. Pushing doesn’t make it go faster. All of that, which my mind remembered as, “It’s gonna take the whole time.” To which I added, “if you don’t mind,” and then the opposite is also true. Then it turns into a stereotypable old man in a cafe thing many midwesterners have seen a thousand times from the next table over. The cafe is the Public House of the god fearing and the soberholics. You can’t tell me nothin’ I don’t know. I wouldn’t pay them taxes if it wasn’t the law. Drive em up t’move me out. You don’t wanna see me go no lower. Long silence at the lunch counter. Refocus. Zoom out. They’re gonna pave the road to Downey, put up million dollar homes. It’s the best view in the county. I wish they’d leave our ass alone. Well, I got roughed up on my way in so I ain’t got all I had. But I made it so you owe me and it won’t be all tht bad. I ride my bike on gravel roads sometimes. They tend not to pave the ones that aren’t going somewhere with a grocery store or a gas station. Downey has neither. If it had great views it might get paved. There’s nothing wrong with Downey or the road there, but it’s not sought for development. I was seeing a fair amount of protest. The world of two or three years ago seemed so moderately dangerous. Getting roughed up seems tame. Chorus Uplifting refrain Chorus Maybe it’s about making friends with something you can’t talk to. I truly do not know. Sometimes it’s beautiful to accept the process unfolding, things slowly becoming better. Setbacks to progress are pretty disheartening. It’s hard to read when everything sounds like dog-whistle as the result of disastrous politicking, and all the time it takes is too long to wait. Post truth morality is a roller coaster that throws customers off it at deadly heights. Hold on to the the human being next to you. The roller coaster is an indifferent tosser. Uh.. Buy my record. https://samknutson.bandcamp.com/album/where-the-covers-deep Watch my video. https://youtu.be/2Pwr2USUQ5k?si=1FRMBwNqOUPjx7MP 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? 25.1

  2. Jul 14

    What? Music? 24.1

    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 years ago often there's some appalling, tried nature to the thing or an aspect that's over now that was pertinent for what seems like no reason at all today. But sometimes there's something perfect. Sometimes when you look back you see something that works as well now as it did then- your mom smiling as a young woman, a landscape, a thing that can be appreciated as it was in its time or more, stuff nobody saw or nobody liked that, once it got out, it clicked. People got it. Maybe it applies to something that wasn't even real yet when the shot was snapped. You make art, but you never know. Nerves of Steel I am awkward with reverence as a sign of praise. There's a gush and there's a white dam wall gonna come down one of these days. I'm gonna make myself a wishlist. I'm gonna put your number on it. Gonna pick up everything I left behind. I'm gonna go downtown and pawn it. Cuz I could really use a five dollar bill like I used to need a glass of shine. The room’s still empty cuz the jury’s still out and you're still mine. You must have nerves of steel to say the things you say. You take a stand in your incendiary words and you just wait for them to go away. Cuz you believe that mutual assured destruction’ll keep the oppositions points under it's breath. And you're holdin’ your last bullet in your teeth so you don't laugh yourself to death. And I could really use a five dollar bill like I used to need a glass of shine. The room’s still empty cuz the jury’s still out and your still mine. So here we are, someone like God and me. Stopping the end of the world seems like a good idea, but my advice is free. And being as we’re fighting for the liberty to spend free advice will likely go down in the fray. And I think I'm gonna cut myself off short cuz I don't have a thing to say. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9nxUGkXb3h0&list=RD9nxUGkXb3h0&start_radio=1&pp=ygUbU2FtIGsgaXRhb24gbmVydmVzIG9mIHN0ZWVsoAcB The day this video was shot I was a mess. I'd been out late the night before and the night before that and I was broke and I forgot a film crew was coming and I was high and hung over and painting the house I was renting on the back side. Darren came around the corner. He'd come to ask when was practice or something and I was up on a ladder. He said, “There's a TV crew in your front yard.” I remembered them saying they were coming. I was like, “Oh s**t!" I went in and washed my hands while they set up. Then I just played them some songs. I wasn't self conscious about what a mess I was at all. We did the shoot. They packed up and left. I don't think it went on TV. I was certain that I was well and fine. Certain. Close your eyes to the disaster of a human I was at the time. The song still works. I'm still certain I'm fine, but less so that I was when this video was shot. 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? 24.1

  3. Jul 7

    What? Music? 23.1

    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 hotel bar outside the beltway for the $300 check in the drawer and two drinks, you sing the songs and tell the jokes, but why? You can believe what you’re doing is true like an arrow flying or a straight wheel until the question makes you look and you decide to carry on or stop based on the assessment. Assessment. I think the playing on the record is a little fast. I was probably eating adderall I bought from a girl that worked at the deli in the corner store. There was a public service announcement about driver safety with Danika Patrick in it talking about loose hands on the wheel. I was regularly going to the church of hardly any bourbon all afternoon. My uncles had regaled me with stories of hitting every bar in a loop around lake Charlevoix, one of the finger lakes north of Traverse City. And I was finally in the kind of shape I needed to be in- to drink all day and still be in control enough to drive safely. My body coursed with the antivenom of persistent exposure and I was barely 40. I was strong and clear eyed and rail thin. The tenor guitar was my obsession. I recorded the version in the thing at the top this morning, but I wanted you to see this video is why I picked this one, because the show on Friday was great and I believe in the show again. The video is me closing my set, opening for Iris Dement at Wooly’s in Des Moines. The kid I’m talking about was an up and coming independent talent buyer, who got me the gig and advised me to play this one because he believed in my thing- that it could grow if it got in front of the right rooms. Lindberg. I mention him by name in another song, “ Why Simple Folks Don’t Seem to do Nothin’”, but that’s for a different day. Srsly..like, watch the vid-e-o.like, after the lyrics The Danika Patrick Rag Loose hands on the wheel. Both knees on the bottle. Take a quiet road home. Take it easy on the throttle. These are dangerous times. You’ve got to steer clear of dangerous men. Dangerous times tend to crush your ambition. Put your hand out the window. Make happiness your mission. If you start in to thinkin’ put your hand out the window again. Let loose of the wheel. Take a nip off the bottle. Look all around. Push down on the throttle. Put some road behind you, and have your motor moment of zen. Play the song on the radio loud. Never find yourself too proud to call out who’s right, and who’s wrong. In the end write me a song. Video: https://youtu.be/2-3dSBD19gM?si=c3ivbDb0W4FtavxC Link to album: https://samknutson.bandcamp.com/album/re-inventing-the-wheel Keep your stick on the ice. It ain't Nascar. *(you will know us by the trail of our dead, the path of destruction, the thing that the last two dipshits bent on global domination forgot before campaigns into Russia dragged into winter with the lights of Moscow somewhere over the horizon reflecting off the clouds at night in the snow). 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? 23.1

  4. Jun 30

    What? Music? 22.1

    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

  5. Jun 23

    What? Music? 21.1

    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

  6. Jun 17

    What? Music? 20.1

    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 used to day drink in this place where I occasionally worked as a door guy. Iowa City is kind of a famous writer town. One day I met this guy who, when I walked in the door was hanging his face over the juke box with a pitcher of beer in one hand, playing old country tunes and crying, and swaying. He eventually came and sat at the bar where I had posted up and told me who he was. He was a little older than me. He’d had a newspaper career and then published a book that had done pretty well. His literary agent had talked him into coming to the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop to make connections with people who were going to be the famous novelists of tomorrow. He hated it. Years before that I had worked at this restaurant/bar that tolerated the staff staying locked in all night to drink and listen to records. We listened to this record called Maxinquaye by this British dude who went by Tricky. Built into some of the beats was what I assumed was the scratchy middle of records. When the music is over on an LP if you have a player that doesn’t return the stylus to the start it stays in the middle of the record and spins and spins the same little set of dust bunnies and scratches over and over until you get to it and lift the needle. There were these scratchy bits buried in the beats on that record that I assumed came from that spinning phenomenon. Anything takes on a groove you can rock to after a high number of repetitions. The skips are the time. There was a revelation in there about the distinction we probably all make between music and noise and how it was arbitrary- the distinction was arbitrary. I bought records of bands I liked and played them and drunkenly scratched the ones I liked to play the most, because drunkenly. But I loved some of the less interuptive scratches. They became part of the music. I imagine a couple both putting their drunken heads into the window of the jukebox and seeing each others faces reflected from odd angles, picking something sweet to listen to and swaying there. And the thing they pick to listen to is a 45 that is a little beat from living in a jukebox in a bar where people bump around it dancing or heading to the pisser. In a perfect world all the scratches on a 45 like that are the result of pristine timing guided by nothing but the music itself, like a landscape scalloped with the evidentiary trails of dancing human traverse. A 45 with Every Skip in Time Are there things you wish you’d left to do? Are there things you’d left undone? ‘Cus my life begins and ends with you and I have just begun a 45 with every skip in time. Well it’s ring around we used to do til the lights of closing time. And the juke box mirror shows me you and we play it one more time- a 45 with every skip in time. I had at the time of recording this just started playing with Ryan Bernemann. He was out of college and starting to get things going for himself and he had this recording gear, nothing too fancy, but he had it, and I was writing so I asked if we could do some recording at his place. We recorded this one and then his girlfriend [now wife] and one of her friends were recruited to put on a string part that he wrote. Laura Goddard and Laura something else. I no longer have any copies of this record. I purchased the recording off the Internet this morning. I bought and downloaded the whole album. It was cheap for me because the money I spent on it mostly just deposited back in my account. It will be more expensive for you, but if you are touched by this recording, and I mean.. how couldn’t you be… you should go to the Bandcamp link on this page and buy yourself access to the whole thing. 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

    What? Music? 20.1

  7. Jun 16

    What? Music? 20

    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 used to day drink in this place where I occasionally worked as a door guy. Iowa City is kind of a famous writer town. One day I met this guy who, when I walked in the door was hanging his face over the juke box with a pitcher of beer in one hand, playing old country tunes and crying, and swaying. He eventually came and sat at the bar where I had posted up and told me who he was. He was a little older than me. He’d had a newspaper career and then published a book that had done pretty well. His literary agent had talked him into coming to the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop to make connections with people who were going to be the famous novelists of tomorrow. He hated it. Years before that I had worked at this restaurant/bar that tolerated the staff staying locked in all night to drink and listen to records. We listened to this record called Maxinquaye by this British dude who went by Tricky. Built into some of the beats was what I assumed was the scratchy middle of records. When the music is over on an LP if you have a player that doesn’t return the stylus to the start it stays in the middle of the record and spins and spins the same little set of dust bunnies and scratches over and over until you get to it and lift the needle. There were these scratchy bits buried in the beats on that record that I assumed came from that spinning phenomenon. Anything takes on a groove you can rock to after a high number of repetitions. The skips are the time. There was a revelation in there about the distinction we probably all make between music and noise and how it was arbitrary- the distinction was arbitrary. I bought records of bands I liked and played them and drunkenly scratched the ones I liked to play the most, because drunkenly. But I loved some of the less interuptive scratches. They became part of the music. I imagine a couple both putting their drunken heads into the window of the jukebox and seeing each others faces reflected from odd angles, picking something sweet to listen to and swaying there. And the thing they pick to listen to is a 45 that is a little beat from living in a jukebox in a bar where people bump around it dancing or heading to the pisser. In a perfect world all the scratches on a 45 like that are the result of pristine timing guided by nothing but the music itself, like a landscape scalloped with the evidentiary trails of dancing human traverse. A 45 with Every Skip in Time Are there things you wish you’d left to do? Are there things you’d left undone? ‘Cus my life begins and ends with you and I have just begun a 45 with every skip in time. Well it’s ring around we used to do til the lights of closing time. And the juke box mirror shows me you and we play it one more time- a 45 with every skip in time. I had at the time of recording this just started playing with Ryan Bernemann. He was out of college and starting to get things going for himself and he had this recording gear, nothing too fancy, but he had it, and I was writing so I asked if we could do some recording at his place. We recorded this one and then his girlfriend [now wife] and one of her friends were recruited to put on a string part that he wrote. Laura Goddard and Laura something else. I no longer have any copies of this record. I purchased the recording off the Internet this morning. I bought and downloaded the whole album. It was cheap for me because the money I spent on it mostly just deposited back in my account. It will be more expensive for you, but if you are touched by this recording, and I mean.. how couldn’t you be… you should go to the Bandcamp link on this page and buy yourself access to the whole thing. https://samknutson.bandcamp.com/album/splendor-3 The first one is always free kid. 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? 20

  8. May 5

    What? Music? 40

    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 languish in digital silence for a decade. There are a bunch of songs that didn't make the cut for one reason or another-feelings at the time, changes in the metaphorical wind that might blind one to goodness. I wrote some advicey and explainy songs and some funny ones. If Andrew Brockman had got to choose what songs were on that record. This one would have been on. There were a number of things that, given the lense that is the passage of time, although I disagreed then, Andrew was right about. When someone is fussy it's the absolutely wrong time to tell them to calm down. You may have noticed this as well. A thing you can do is step back and process and then write a catchy little song about it, as a friendly reminder a body can carrying their mind's ear. I wrote this for one person to hear, but it is for everyone really. Here, take it Ain't often enough said, but it's not he less true. It's the worry that get's you, not what's worrying you. So pull your hair back. Get the sun on your skin cuz the day's about over. The night's about to begin. 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? 40
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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
    49
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © sam knutson
  • Show Website
    What? Music? Weekly