#11 - John K. Samson - Winter Wheat

John K. Samson - Winter Wheat

Anti, 2016

This is going to sound corny, but the song “Postdoc Blues” is the reason I decided to fully commit to librarianship as a career. Winter Wheat was released in October of 2016 and I applied to Emporia State’s MLS program that month. There’s a line in that song in particular that struck me and continues to strike me every time I hear it:

So take that laminate out of your wallet and read it

And recommit yourself to the healing of the world

And to the welfare of all creatures upon it

Pursue of practice that will strengthen your heart

Samson noted that this is a paraphrase from a book called Active Hope, and this line is the closest I have ever felt to the universe speaking to me. John K Samson is my sage, and has been since I was 15 years old, and hopefully will continue to be in the coming decades. He’s someone whose chill and sensitive but politically engaged worldview I aspire to emulate (and fail miserably at most of the time). Winter Wheat is a much more cohesive record than his solo debut Provincial, and in a way it feels like the fifth Weakerthans LP (no doubt a byproduct of fellow Weakerthans Jason Tait and Greg Smith contributing to the record). This album was particularly helpful to me in the wake of the 2016 election. It was easy to feel hopeless, and this made me feel if not hopeful, that I could do the best I could not to give up. “We know the world is good enough because it has to be,” he sings on the title track. I kept that one with me, and have done my best to stay positive, which hasn’t always worked but at least the current impeachment hearings feel like some sort of payoff even if nothing will come of them. What’s wonderful about Samson/Weakerthans records is that they are built to sustain you in the invariable 4-5 years between releases.