What? Music? Weekly

About What? Music? Weekly

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

Publisher

sam knutson

Category

arts · music

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

12 Aug 2025

Latest episode

27 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

62 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   27 Oct 2026

   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 (https://samknu.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

2. 

   20 Oct 2026

   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 (https://samknu.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

3. 

   13 Oct 2026

   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 (https://samknu.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

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