I do get a little shy about contemporary language and events, but I also enjoy the idea of dating myself, somehow, anchoring a song in a specific tim…

- John K. Samson

I would only listen to certain things, like a lot of teenagers do. But the Tragically Hip is a ribbon that's been with me pretty much my entire music…

- John K. Samson

I've always viewed my career with some suspicion, like I don't want to count on it to be the only thing I do. Partly that has to do with feeling like…

- John K. Samson

John Berger once defined music by saying that it began as a howl, became a prayer, then a lament, and still contains the elements of all three. I thi…

- John K. Samson

I try to write lyrics that will be able to function on their own if they get separated from the music. But I wouldn't want to take anything away from…

- John K. Samson

I think of Gord Downie voice as Whitman-esque. He has a poetic voice that contains multitudes, both the suppleness of the instrument of his voice, an…

- John K. Samson

I think we all have a certain number of "coming of age" songs, and then a writer has to expand and grow into more varied and specific themes. And the…

- John K. Samson

One of the wonderful things about music these days is that it's less cliqueish.

- John K. Samson

I was listening to this interview with fiction writer George Saunders the other day, and he said something about how the role of a writer is to build…

- John K. Samson