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The Weakerthans are a Canadian indie rock band from Winnipeg. The band, led by John K. Samson, has released four studio albums and is currently inactive.
The band was formed in 1997 in Winnipeg, Manitoba by John K. Samson, after he left the punk band Propagandhi to start a publishing company. Samson joined bassist John P. Sutton and drummer Jason Tait of Red Fisher, another band from Winnipeg's punk scene,[1] and created The Weakerthans as a vehicle for a more melodic and introspective brand of songwriting than their previous projects.
The origin of the band's name was explained, in 2004 by Samson, as having come from "a few places." One was a line from the 1992 film The Lover: "Go ahead, I'm weaker than you can possibly imagine." Another was a line from Ralph Chaplin's union anthem "Solidarity Forever": "What force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one?" The band includes this line in the song "Pamphleteer" from the album Left and Leaving.[2]
The Weakerthans, with support from Jim Bryson, at a 2007 concert in Toronto
In 2003, the band moved to Epitaph Records and released Reconstruction Site. The album was met with positive reviews[4] from Canadian and international critics for its ambitious combination of punk, rock, folk, country and sonnets. It also became the band's best-selling record to date, and in September appeared on the !earshot National Top 50 Chart as a result of significant airplay on Canadian radio.[5] It was the second Weakerthans album to be produced by Ian Blurton.
Sutton, who played on the band's first three albums, left in August 2004 and was replaced by Greg Smith.
In 2005, Left and Leaving was named one of the ten best Canadian albums of all time in Chart magazine's reader poll.[6] In the same poll, Samson wrote the capsule review for another top ten finisher, The Lowest of the Low's Shakespeare My Butt, which he cited as a major influence on his own music.
Reunion Tour was released on September 25, 2007 in North America by Epitaph and ANTI-. The band released a video for "Civil Twilight", which consisted of a single, unbroken camera shot of the band on a Winnipeg Transit city bus.[7]
Epitaph also re-released the Weakerthans' first two albums, Fallow and Left and Leaving, in Canada on November 6, 2007.[8]
In February 2009, the band participated in Barenaked Ladies' annual Ships and Dip cruise.[9] In a subsequent interview with Canwest News Service, Samson clarified that the band would be taking some downtime over the summer of 2009 before deciding when to start working on their next album.[9] Shortly afterward, Samson announced a series of solo 7" releases about Manitoba roads, which he planned to release over the next 18 months. The first, City Route 85, was released on October 30, 2009 through Epitaph and ANTI-.[10] After a second EP, Provincial Road 222, in 2010, the project instead evolved into Samson's first official solo album, Provincial.
In January 2010, the band announced that they would release a live album, Live at the Burton Cummings Theatre, on March 23.[11] At the same time, they also announced that they were recording material with Jim Bryson for his album The Falcon Lake Incident, which was released on October 19, 2010.[12] In the same year, they were the subject of Caelum Vatnsdal's documentary film We're the Weakerthans, We're from Winnipeg.[13]
In July 2015, media began to report that Tait had announced the band's breakup on Twitter.[14] The band's social media accounts have been updated in accordance to the claims, defining themselves as "cryogenically frozen". Both Tait and Smith collaborated on Samson's 2016 solo album Winter Wheat, which Samson described as feeling in some respects like a new Weakerthans album.[15]
The Gimlet Media podcast Heavyweight, launched in 2016, brought fresh attention to the band by selecting "Sun In An Empty Room" from the album Reunion Tour as the show's theme and closing music.
Chart performance
Reunion Tour debuted at No.22 on the Nielsen SoundScan chart for Canada in its first week of release, and at No.4 on the alternative/modern rock chart. The album reached No.181 on the United States Billboard 200.
The Weakerthans became the first band in the history of CBC Radio 3's R3-30 charts to reach No.1 with two different songs. The band's cover of Rheostatics' "Bad Time to Be Poor" reached No.1 the week of June 21, 2007, and "Civil Twilight", the lead single from Reunion Tour, hit the top spot the week of November 15, 2007. As of 2009, "Civil Twilight" remains tied with Arcade Fire's "Black Mirror" as the longest-running No.1 in that chart's history. "Civil Twilight" was also the No.1 song in The R3-30's year-end Top 100 chart for 2007.
Rusty Matyas (general support) – performed with the band for the 2009 Rolling Tundra Revue[17]
MacKinnon and Poirier also have their own band, FemBots, and were previously associated with the bands Dig Circus and Hummer. Both Bryson and Fellows are solo artists in addition to touring with The Weakerthans; Fellows and Samson are married. Matyas is a member of the bands The Waking Eyes and Imaginary Cities.
Tait, Samson, and Fellows collaborated with poet and filmmaker Clive Holden on his multimedia project Trains of Winnipeg.
Carroll appeared on The Details' Draw a Distance. Draw a Border. and The Original Mark EP. He co-produced a couple of songs on The Original Mark EP as well as their upcoming full-length (2011).
In 2006, all of the Weakerthans except Samson performed on Bad Religion singer Greg Graffin's second solo album, Cold as the Clay. They also toured with Graffin on a tour supporting the album.
In 2000, the Winnipeg Free Press released a spoken word album by Catherine Hunter that included a bonus track featuring the Weakerthans doing backing instrumentation while Hunter read her poem "Rush Hour".
Awards
In Montreal, October 2004
Won
Outstanding Independent Album – Reconstruction Site – Western Canadian Music Awards (2004)[18]
Outstanding Songwriter – John K. Samson – Western Canadian Music Awards (2004)[18]
The Lowest of the Low is a Canadian alternative rock group formed in 1991 from Toronto, Ontario, Canada. They were one of the most influential bands on the Canadian alternative music scene in the early 1990s, garnering widespread critical acclaim and radio play. Their most successful album, Shakespeare My Butt, was later named one of the ten greatest albums in Canadian music history in three successive reader polls by the music magazine Chart, as well as being ranked as the 84th greatest Canadian album of all time in Bob Mersereau's book The Top 100 Canadian Albums.
John Kristjan Samson is a Canadian musician from Winnipeg, Manitoba. He is a singer-songwriter and best known as the frontman of the Canadian indie folk/rock band The Weakerthans. He also played bass in the punk band Propagandhi during the mid-1990s. Today, Samson is making music under his own name, John K. Samson. His latest solo album, Winter Wheat, was released in 2016.
Propagandhi is a Canadian punk rock band formed in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba in 1986 by guitarist Chris Hannah and drummer Jord Samolesky. The band is currently located in Winnipeg, Manitoba and completed by bassist Todd Kowalski and guitarist Sulynn Hago.
G7 Welcoming Committee Records was a Canadian independent record label based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The label mostly released material by artists and speakers with a radical left-wing point of view.
Left and Leaving is the second studio album by The Weakerthans, released July 25, 2000, on G7 Welcoming Committee Records.
Fallow is the debut studio album by The Weakerthans.
Christine Ann Fellows is a Canadian folk-pop singer-songwriter from Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Jason Tait is a Canadian musician from Winnipeg, Manitoba. He is the drummer for the Canadian indie rock band The Weakerthans. Tait has also been a contributing member of Broken Social Scene and The FemBots.
James “Jim” Paul Sean Bryson is a Canadian singer-songwriter. Briefly a founding member of the band Punchbuggy, he moved to a musical life under his own name with the release of his debut album, The Occasionals, in 2000.
Reunion Tour is the fourth studio album by The Weakerthans, released on September 25, 2007, in Canada and the U.S. The album was released on both compact disc and vinyl record.
The Paperbacks were a Canadian indie rock and pop music band based in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Painted Thin was a Canadian hardcore punk band, formed in Winnipeg, and active from 1993 to 1999. The core of the band consisted of vocalist and guitarist Stephen Carroll and bassist and vocalist Paul Furgale, with a variety of guest musicians, including James Ash, Dan McCafferty and Jason Tait, on individual recordings.
City Route 85 is a solo EP by John K. Samson of The Weakerthans, released October 30, 2009 on Grand Hotel van Cleef in Europe, and November 3, 2009 on ANTI-/Epitaph in North America. Samson's first solo release since the EP Little Pictures in 1995, it was the first in a planned series of three or four-song singles inspired by roads in his home province of Manitoba.
The following is a list of notable events and releases that occurred in 2010 Canadian music.
Live at the Burton Cummings Theatre is a live album and concert DVD by Canadian indie rock band The Weakerthans. The album was recorded during April 2009 at the Burton Cummings Theatre in the band's home town of Winnipeg, as they toured in support of their album Reunion Tour. It was released March 23, 2010 on ANTI-.
The discography of Canadian punk rock band Propagandhi, consists of seven studio albums, three extended plays, four splits, two live albums, three demo tapes, one compilation album and a handful of tracks released on various other compilations.
The discography of The Weakerthans, a Canadian indie rock band, consists of four studio albums, one live album and concert video, one EP, one single, and eight music videos.
Greg Smith is a Canadian musician and painter based in Toronto, Ontario. He is best known as the bassist of indie rock band The Weakerthans, which he joined in August 2004, replacing founding bassist John P. Sutton. As a member of The Weakerthans, he contributed to their latest studio album, Reunion Tour, and is featured on their live release Live at the Burton Cummings Theatre, to which he also contributed the album cover. Since 2018, Greg has been the bassist for the indie rock band The Lowest of the Low.
Winter Wheat is the second solo album by John K. Samson, released on October 21, 2016, via ANTI-. It is his first album of new material since The Weakerthans went on hiatus in 2015.
Jacob Brodovsky is a Canadian folk singer-songwriter from Winnipeg, Manitoba, most noted as the winner of the Canadian Folk Music Award for English Songwriter of the Year at the 19th Canadian Folk Music Awards in 2024.
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