The Weakerthans Recent News

THE WEAKERTHANS TOUR WEST COAST IN JULY, LIVE ITUNES SESSIONS AVAILABLE 6/30

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 00:06:00 -0700

Canada’s favorite indie poet laureates The Weakerthans have announced a string of tour dates that start at the Vancouver Folk Festival on July 17th and travel down the west coast of the US before ending in British Columbia on the 26th. Fresh off the Rolling Tundra Review, an exhaustive Canadian tour with the Constantines that spanned almost two months, The Weakerthans promise to be in fine form.

On June 30th, the band will be releasing a live iTunes session that was recorded at Metal Works in Mississauga Ontario and includes three tracks of their most recent release Night Windows and two off of 1999’s Fallow.

The Weakerthans on tour:

7/17 Vancouver, BC @ Vancouver Folk Festival

7/18 Seattle, WA @ Neumo's

7/20 Santa Cruz, CA @ The Crepe Place

7/21 San Louis Obispo, CA @ The Downtown Brew

7/22 Los Angeles, CA @ The Roxy

7/23 San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music Hall

7/24 Eugene, OR @ WOW

7/25 Portland, OR @ Aladdin Theatre

7/26 Nelson, BC @ Spirit Bar

The Weakerthans iTunes Session:

1. Night Windows

2. Anchorless

3. Civil Twilight

4. Fallow

5. Reunion Tour

THE WEAKERTHANS ANNOUNCE TOUR DATES & ITUNES SESSION

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 00:06:00 -0700

The Weakerthans will be performing throughout the US this summer and fall. Full tour dates are being announced as they are confirmed. While they're at it, they'll be playing a few Canadian dates as well.

The Weakerthans will be also releasing their recent iTunes recording session, tracked while on the Rolling Tundra Revue Canadian Tour at Metal Works in Mississauga, ON. Keep an eye on your iTunes home page for this June 30th release!

The Weakerthans Tour Dates

7/17 Vancouver, BC @ Vancouver Folk Festival

7/18 Seattle, WA @ Neumo's

7/20 Santa Cruz, CA @ The Crepe Place

7/21 San Louis Obispo @ The Downtown Brew

7/22 Los Angeles,CA @ The Roxy

7/23 Sanfrancisco @ Great American Music Hall

7/24 Eugene, OR @ WOW

7/25 Portland, OR @ Aladdin Theatre

7/26 Nelson, BC @ Spirit Bar

9/15 Hamilton, ON @ Casbah

9/16 Boston @ Paradise

9/17 Brooklyn, NY @ Williamsburg Music Hall

9/18 NYC, NY @ Bowery Ball Room

9/19 Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club

9/20 Philadelphia, PA @ World Café Live

9/23 Toronto, ON @ Mod Club

9/24 Detroit, MI @ Magic Stick

9/25 Chicago,IL @ Bottom Lounge

9/26 Minneapolis, MN @ Triple Rock

9/27 Madison, WS @ High Noon

9/28 Waterloo, ON @ Starlight Lounge

The Weakerthans Announce Rolling Tundra Review 2009 with Constantines

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 00:12:00 -0800

The Weakerthans are pleased to announce The Rolling Tundra Revue 2009 Canadian National Tour.

Featuring Toronto's Constantines the tour will seek to build on the work the two bands have done on the road together. This extensive tour will take them from St John's Newfoundland across the entire country to Victoria BC then North to end in the city of Whitehorse, Yukon. Over the course of the tour the bands will be performing almost 30 concerts in 21 different cities. Expanding on the highly successful Inaugural Rolling Tundra Revue Tour of 2005 they have included St John's and Whitehorse to give Canadian audiences this unprecedented occurrence, rarely do artists of their stature take on a tour of this scope focusing on Canada alone.

Constantines have just released their 4th album Kensington Heights in partnership with a new label, Arts and Crafts and are expanding their audiences and continue to refine their artistic version of working man's Rock'n Roll.

The two critically acclaimed recording artists have previously joined forces on several concert tours. On the shows each act tries to raise the level of their performance to match or better the others. Joining them nightly will be a vast array of local and regional Canadian talent.

So many bands look for success and validation in the US, but a tour of this scale shows that it can be found here, in Canada.

After ten years together the momentum only continues to build and The Weakerthans launch this tour on the heels of their highly successful fourth album Reunion Tour. The 2007 Anti release has garnered critical accolades and enjoyed a fruitful year of awards from the XM Satellite Radio Award, the WCMA's as well as the SOCAN Echo prize for songwriting. Reunion Tour also made the heralded short list for the 2008 Polaris Prize. With these awards, and their history of craft and dedication The Weakerthans have affirmed their place in the pantheon of Canadian rock bands and songwriters. Their songs and reputation as a band have brought them from the margins to stand with their peers in the Canadian music industry.

The Weakerthans are sincerely looking forward to the Rolling Tundra Revue 2009 tour as a continuation of this success.

DATES:
March 19 - St. Johns - Club One
March 20 - Halifax - The Palace
March 22 - Sackville - George's Roadhouse
March 23 - Fredericton - UNB Ballroom
March 25 - Quebec City - Le Cercle
March 26 - Montreal - Le National
March 28 - Ottawa - Bronson Centre
April 1 - Toronto - The Phoenix
April 3 - London - Music Hall
April 4 - Guelph - River Run Centre
April 17 - Winnipeg - Burton Cummings Theatre
April 21 - Regina - Riddell Centre
April 22 - Saskatoon - Odeon Events Centre
April 23 - Edmonton - Winspear Centre
April 25 - Calgary - MacEwan Hall
April 26 - Banff - Wild Bill's
April 27 - Kelowna - Kelowna Community Theatre
April 30 - Victoria - Element
May 1 - Vancouver - The Commodore
May 2 - Vancouver - The Commodore
May 4 - Whitehorse- Yukon Arts Centre

New Weakerthans Video!

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 00:06:00 -0700

The Weakerthans just launched their video for "Tournament of Hearts" paying homage to everyone's favorite sport, curling! Go to youtube.com to check it out.

Reunion Tour, in stores now!

The Weakerthans announce more summer dates, video, and European release single!

Thu, 08 May 2008 00:05:00 -0700

As previously reported, The Weakerthans head across the pond at the end of May. Check the concerts page for dates in the UK, Germany, The Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway. On various dates they'll be joined by pals Dawn Landes, Christine Fellows, and Felix Gebhard.

Then it's back to North America for a full slate of festivals all summer long. They'll hit the stages at the Ottawa Bluesfest, Winnipeg Folk Festival, Vancouver Island MusicFest, Lollapalooza, Osheaga Music and Arts Festival, Regina Folk Festival, and Toronto V Fest, with more festival appearances announced throughout May. Check the concerts section regularly to find out when they'll be hitting a stage near you.

In other news, we're getting excited for the June release of The Weakerthans' Tournament of Hearts video and a European single (including a live version of Relative Surplus Value).

Concerts Listings:

May
30 Fri: Neustrelitz, DE - Immergut Festival
31 Sat: Nijmegen, NL - Doornroosje

June
01 Sun: Birmingham , UK - Barfly
02 Mon: London, UK - Scala
03 Tue: Manchester , UK - Academy 3
04 Wed: Bristol, UK - Carling Academy 2
06 Fri: Utrecht, NL - Tivoli de Helling
07 Sat: Dasseldorf , DE - Zakk
08 Sun: Paris, F - Batofar
09 Mon: Frankfurt, DE - Batschkapp
10 Tue: Saarbracken , DE - Roxy
11 Wed: Narnberg, DE - Hirsch
13 Fri: Freiburg , DE - Jazzhaus
14 Sat: Interlaken, CH - Greenfield
15 Sun: Wien, A - Novarock
17 Tue: Stockholm, SE - Kagelbanan
18 Wed: Copenhagen , DK - Loppen
19 Thu: Osla, NO - Garage
20 Fri: Dresden , DE - Scheune
21 Sat: Scheeael , DE - Hurricane
22 Sun: Neuhaus Ob Eck, DE - Southside

July
06 Sun: Ottawa, ON - Cisco Ottawa Bluesfest
10 Thu: Winnipeg, MB - Winnipeg Folk Festival
12 Sat: Courtenay, BC - Vancouver Island MusicFest

August
04 Mon: Montreal, QC - Osheaga Music and Arts Festival
05 Tue: Burnaby, BC, Deer Lake Park - opening for Feist
08 Fri: Regina, SK - Regina Folk Festival

The Weakerthans announce more summer dates and video!

Thu, 08 May 2008 00:05:00 -0700

As previously reported, The Weakerthans head across the pond at the end of May. Check the concerts page for dates in the UK, Germany, The Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway. On various dates they'll be joined by pals Dawn Landes, Christine Fellows, and Felix Gebhard.

Then it's back to North America for a full slate of festivals all summer long. They'll hit the stages at the Ottawa Bluesfest, Winnipeg Folk Festival, Vancouver Island MusicFest, Lollapalooza, Osheaga Music and Arts Festival, Regina Folk Festival, and Toronto V Fest, with more festival appearances announced throughout May. Check the concerts section regularly to find out when they'll be hitting a stage near you.

Concerts Listings:

May
30 Fri: Neustrelitz, DE - Immergut Festival
31 Sat: Nijmegen, NL - Doornroosje

June
01 Sun: Birmingham , UK - Barfly
02 Mon: London, UK - Scala
03 Tue: Manchester , UK - Academy 3
04 Wed: Bristol, UK - Carling Academy 2
06 Fri: Utrecht, NL - Tivoli de Helling
07 Sat: Dasseldorf , DE - Zakk
08 Sun: Paris, F - Batofar
09 Mon: Frankfurt, DE - Batschkapp
10 Tue: Saarbracken , DE - Roxy
11 Wed: Narnberg, DE - Hirsch
13 Fri: Freiburg , DE - Jazzhaus
14 Sat: Interlaken, CH - Greenfield
15 Sun: Wien, A - Novarock
17 Tue: Stockholm, SE - Kagelbanan
18 Wed: Copenhagen , DK - Loppen
19 Thu: Osla, NO - Garage
20 Fri: Dresden , DE - Scheune
21 Sat: Scheel , DE - Hurricane
22 Sun: Neuhaus Ob Eck, DE - Southside

July
06 Sun: Ottawa, ON - Cisco Ottawa Bluesfest
10 Thu: Winnipeg, MB - Winnipeg Folk Festival
12 Sat: Courtenay, BC - Vancouver Island MusicFest

August
04 Mon: Montreal, QC - Osheaga Music and Arts Festival
05 Tue: Burnaby, BC, Deer Lake Park - opening for Feist
08 Fri: Regina, SK - Regina Folk Festival

The Weakerthans take to the Open Roads spring 2008

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:01:00 -0800

The Weakerthans - along with their hometown buddy Christine Fellows
as well as NZ's own most excellent Liam Finn - will be on tour through out the United States this coming spring. They will be touring their most recent album, Reunion Tour, while performing astonishing miracles and helpful cures right before your eyes.

Tickets for these spectacles are on sale now.
Click here for a list of dates.

In addition, The Weakerthans will performing at this years SXSW. See them there on March 13th at the ANTI records showcase.

The Weakerthans on NPR's World Cafe

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 00:11:00 -0800

The World Cafe will be broadcasting the session on Wednesday, December 5th, 2007.

National Public Radio's World Cafe with host David Dye can be heard on nearly 200 stations nationwide. You can find your local station by going to website: http://worldcafe.org

Or you can listen online to the WXPN/Philadelphia stream Monday to Friday 2pm to 4pm Eastern Standard Time by going to: http://xpn.org/listen_live/listen.php

Video Premiere: The Weakerthans, 'Civil Twilight'

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 00:10:00 -0700

Critical favorites The Weakerthans will debut their video for the song "Civil Twilight" on Spinner.com October 17th. The video captures the tale of a lonely bus driver, played by lead-singer John K Sampson, an improbably poignant figure in the cold Canadian winter who drives his route and passes the time thinking of golf and actresses and regret. Bassist Greg Smith describes the process of filming that lead to the inventive, artistic results. "The "Civil Twilight" video is one continuous shot filmed in the Winnipeg public transit terminal. I think Jason Tait lost weight carrying his drums from the back of the bus to the front repeatedly during our many practice runs. Then [director] Caelum and his co-workers shot five takes and I think we went with the last one." Go to spinner.com to watch the new video.

The Weakerthans: From the Margins

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 00:10:00 -0700

"I think people in small towns are taken advantage of by the culture in general, by the mainstream and used as props for jokes," fumes Weakerthans front man John K. Samson. "That really makes me kind of angry. They're taken advantage of in a lot of different ways. They're seen as not as aware or not as intelligent, when, in fact, they are. That's always been a theme; the unjustness of people living in a place where the culture thinks doesn't really exist. Where people are made to feel like their lives don't matter."

Samson knows all about living under cultural marginalization -- possibly a little too well. As a Canadian artist, he's a sitting target for that crass and all-too-common brand Yankee jingoist that treats Canada as a punch line more than a neighbor. His hometown, Winnipeg, a modest berg of a little more than half a million that sits on the eastern edge of the Great Plains, isn't the sort of hub of commerce and activity as any of the continent's big cities, so he's accustomed, if not exactly comfortable, with snobbish metropolitan attitudes toward his community. Winnipeg's geographic isolation -- it's a good several-hour truck to its nearest metro sprawl, Toronto -- only accentuates that. And, last, but certainly not least, coming up from the punk and do-it-yourself underground, Samson cut his musical teeth living on the pop-cultural fringe. Anyone who champions the intellectual and cultural superiority of the city and the mainstream over the towns and underground is going to write him off as a punk-rock hayseed, a rube from a second-tier city with nothing to tell us.

And he shows them all up within a few minutes of The Weakerthans' latest effort, Reunion Tour (Anti-). Joining longtime collaborators Stephen Carroll, bassist Greg Smith and drummer Jason Tait, Samson brings the band out of a four-year recording slump with a grand return to the act's concise, literate blend of folk, pop and punk spirit. Samson couples a poet's eye for imagery and ear for a great turn of phrase with offbeat subject matter and a generously sympathetic take on his subjects. He tackles a breadth of subjects, some drawn purely out of Samson's imagination (a disgruntled pet in "Virtue the Cat Explains Her Departure"), some idealized characters from his Winnipeg home town (a bus driver in "Civil Twilight"), other flesh-and-blood Winnipeggers ("Hymn for the Medical Oddity" gently gives a glimpse into the life of David Reimer, born male but raised female as an experiment, and "Bigfoot!" chronicles the life of Bobby Clarke, who became the whipping boy for the media's jokes after going public with a sasquatch sighting). Samson even coaxes a couple tunes out of those paintings by Edward Hopper where loneliness is an almost tangible presence on the canvas ("Sun in an Empty Room" and "Night Windows").

Loneliness is tantamount to The Weakerthans' music, as most scribes talking about the band seem compelled to point out, and loneliness once again permeates Reunion Tour. What most people miss is that Samson's brand of lonesome songwriting isn't your run-of-the-mill lonely-hearts-club pop. Instead of the "home alone on a Saturday night" flavor, the "confused about the world" flavor, the "my loved one doesn't even understand me" flavor or any one of a million other brands of winsome self-pity, Samson channels a type of lonesome you'll get reading in silence in a bustling library, pulled over on a small highway in the middle of the plains or, presumably, walking on the moon; there's the feeling of solitude and melancholy, but, strangely, The Weakerthans' loneliest moments are somehow comforting, trading hopelessness for a delicate contentment that, as a rule stands crumbling.

For the past decade, Samson stocked his world with characters of his own devising, whipping up first-person narratives about everyone from grassroots activists and street kids to corporate types tussled by market forces way out of their control. If the band's catalog of characters represents Samson's first-person fiction, Reunion Tour marks his first stab at creative nonfiction. Adopting a handful of subjects drawn from real-life tragedies, Samson lays out a tableau loosely based on their stories, be it an encounter with parazoology or the lasting affects of a crude psychological experiment, and, after all these years, lets the world of The Weakerthans intersect with the real world.

Tragedies such as Reimer's unwitting role in unethical gender-role experiments or Clarke's meltdown after watching himself turned into a living joke by the media lend themselves to a storyteller's pen. They are, after all, tragedies, the mightiest form of literature. For Samson, though, handling his real-life inspirations with the same dignity that he grants his characters was paramount. His songs are less about further exploiting those much-downtrodden folks than giving them a bit of much-deserved sympathy and dignity.

Weakerthans - From the Margins"I think that's the most dangerous aspect of the writing process for me, was writing about these people and trying not to take advantage of them," Samson explains. "All of them have these great narratives that really lent themselves to be written about. What I tried to do, I tried to take it down to the really smallest level I could think of. In all the songs, it's just a small snapshot of a small corner of their lives in a way. I was hoping that could be extrapolated somehow and it could still be respectful and they could still have their stories which are theirs that could be told outside of those songs."

To his credit, Samson handles his real-world inspirations with enough care to preserve their dignity, at least within the world of song. Of course, he's had a lot of practice wielding a lyricist's pen before he could arrive at that point. He cut his teeth as bass player for the rabble-rousing Propagandhi until he bowed out to focus on his literary efforts. After a stretch of downtime, the call of the stage proved too hard to resist, but the immersion in writing and a startup publishing company drastically altered Samson's output, as he traded in three-chord sloganeering in for a more reflective, folk-based sound. Hooking up with Tait and bassist John Sutton, he cut Fallow, whose self-aware and worldly songwriting quickly found a home on G7 Welcoming Committee, the same collective responsible for Propagandhi's Canadian releases. Carroll joined shortly after, and was on board for 2000's Reconstruction Site, where his skills with a six-string fleshed out The Weakerthans' sound, expanding the folk-pop hybrid to be a suitable counterpart to Samson's formidable lyricism. The band's rounded sound, as well as a touring ethic that kept it seemingly endlessly bopping between tiny clubs, built up enough of a following to attract the attention of Sub City. For 2003's Reconstruction Site, The Weakerthans graduated from the G7/Hopeless contracts to Epitaph's prestige imprint, Anti- Records.

Although The Weakerthans' studio output slowed to a trickle over recent years, Reunion Tour isn't the back-to-work release its title might have you believe. The band never really went away (a glance at its tour log of the past several years bears that out), but got locked into a cycle where craftsmanship trumped haste, where Samson's library research and the band's careful reworking of its arrangements was diligently ticking away in the background. If it looked as if The Weakerthans were taking it easy over the past four years, it's only because your outsider's perspective's skewed your view of band operations to depend on album-release milestones and not the sweat and effort of songwriting.

Truth be told, though, it wasn't all practice-room development and lyric writing -- The Weakerthans aren't about to let their songwriting personas overshadow their personal lives: Half the band lives in Toronto, a 20-hour drive from its base of operations in Winnipeg, and all of the band, like any well rounded thirtysomething, has a personal life to attend to. Lives can't be put into storage for marathon tours and weeks-long songwriting binges.

"I was actually really enjoying how long it was taking," Samson says. "We were taking a long time with the songs and walking around with them in our heads. I just enjoyed that. It did take a little longer than it should have, I guess. We had a lot going on in our lives. Our lives at home are always more important than our lives in the band. I think that's a good thing.

Weakerthans - From the Margins"I guess that anyone who travels for their work, it can be a real strain on your home life. You have to really work hard and make that balance level out. It's still really difficult to be on tour a lot. I think we've figured out how to do it. We're all in our mid-30s now. We all have really settled home lives. We've figured out how to do it."

After meticulously putting together the songs for Reunion Tour, The Weakerthans just needed to find a way to put them to tape perfectly. They didn't have to search too far to make it happen: Linking up with longtime sound man Cam Loeppky and producer Ian Blurton, the band entered a live room perched above a factory floor, and, during the plant's closed-down swing- and night-shifts, took to the shop floor to play, record and simply indulge in the massive, open spaces that a deserted factory provides.

Sure, it's trendy these days in the recording world to pack up recording gear, head off to a rented cathedral, a disused butcher's shop or a backwoods cabin, but The Weakerthans' factory-floor sessions were more than just a mobile-studio gimmick. The setting, with its line workers gone and the din of industrial noises shut down for the evening, was the embodiment of the themes of isolation and the lonely arrangements that's the band's calling card. It's hard to listen to Reunion Tour without picturing the band playing its songs in a sleeping factory in a tiny prairie town surrounded by miles of Manitoba's prairie -- a mood that's partially a product of the album's unusual genesis.

"It really affected the mood of the record," Samson says. "I was really happy with that. A lot of the songs lent themselves to that setting, a factory. It was cool to have people working during the day, and then we would come in and work during the night. It felt like a place where work was done. That's always helpful. I like that feeling of a place that contains people working. I wrote quite a bit of the lyrics in the Winnipeg library, actually. It's the same kind of place. It's the kind of place where you feel the energy of people working all around you and I think it's a really productive feeling."

It also mirrors the forlorn chronicles of anomie in The Weakerthans' songs. To say it's poetic isn't just a pun on the band's status as alpha dog of the literary-rock pack, either; There's something romantic about the notion of our four troubadours plucking their hearts out amid the half-constructed cases for musical instruments and computers their adoptive home churns out during the workday, weaving tales of lonesome figures and detestable goons through the frigid nights of a Manitoba winter. If a setting creates a vibe that bleeds through onto the record, The Weakerthans couldn't have found a better place to record Reunion Tour.

And Samson is the man to give voice to those stories of the marginalized and disaffected, primarily because he's of their ranks. A pop-cultural castaway, playing music too eccentric for the mainstream and, largely, too quirky for the scene-obsessed underground. He's a man that the cultural gatekeepers don't want you to think about, and instead turn your attention to the beautiful people in New York and Los Angeles. It's a creepy feeling once you realize your hometown's so far off the cultural radar you might as well be dead.

"I get that feeling everywhere," he admits. "I think Winnipeg for me stands in for every city and every community. I think it's true that you can find that sense of dislocation or the feeling that people don't have real self worth anywhere you go, because I think that our culture kind of encourages that. If you're not on T.V., your life is kind of meaningless. I think Winnipeg is especially like that."

There's an option, though, buried deep in The Weakerthans' songs. You probably don't live in Manhattan or Beverly Hills, but, as Reunion Tour's tiny slices of life outside mainstream culture's golden mean show, there's still a lot of life left to live -- even if it's done with the quiet dignity of the damned and downtrodden that line The Weakerthans' world.

by Matt Schild
Aversion.com