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What? Music? Weekly

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by sam knutson

48 episodes

Updated Daily

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Podcast Overview

An original piece of music weekly with a brief history. And maybe a video. <a href="https://samknu.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast">samknu.substack.com</a>

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Publishing Since

8/12/2025

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Recent Episodes

July 21, 2026

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.ChorusUplifting refrainChorus 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-deepWatch 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 <a href="https://samknu.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1">samknu.substack.com</a>

July 14, 2026

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=ygUbU2FtIGsgaXRhb24gbmVydmVzIG9mIHN0ZWVsoAcBThe 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 <a href="https://samknu.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1">samknu.substack.com</a>

July 7, 2026

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 lyricsThe Danika Patrick RagLoose 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=c3ivbDb0W4FtavxCLink to album: https://samknutson.bandcamp.com/album/re-inventing-the-wheelKeep 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 <a href="https://samknu.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1">samknu.substack.com</a>

48 total episodes available

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What is What? Music? Weekly?: An original piece of music weekly with a brief history. And maybe a video. <a href="https://samknu.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast">samknu.substack.com</a>
How often does this podcast release new episodes?: This podcast updates daily.
Where can I listen to this podcast?: This podcast is available on 4 platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more. You can also use the RSS feed directly.
Does this podcast accept guests?: No, this podcast does not typically feature guests.

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