Fans who have been moved by John Samson Fellows’s thoughtful, poetic lyricism snapped up tickets for a rare opportunity to hear his songs live.Moe Doiron/The Globe and Mail
John Samson Fellows hasn’t performed a full show in around six years. But earlier this summer, the Manitoba-based artist announced that tickets would go on sale through his website in late June for two self-organized shows at the end of September.
Feeling a bit blue about the fact that so many people who wanted to attend might miss out, Samson Fellows added a third date after all 266 tickets for the original two shows sold out in two minutes. The added tickets also sold out swiftly.
It’s not particularly surprising that the tickets were scooped up so fast – for many years, Samson Fellows, as John K. Samson, fronted the much-beloved Winnipeg rock band the Weakerthans (currently on indefinite hiatus). He’s since released a string of solo albums and EPs, and put out music under the moniker Vivat Virtute with his spouse, songwriter Christine Fellows, but has rarely appeared live on stage.
Fans who have long been moved by Samson’s thoughtful, poetic lyricism – especially those who don’t often have the chance to catch one of these (often surprise) appearances – were champing at the bit for an opportunity to hear his songs live in person.
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The most surprising part was the e-mail that ticket buyers received in the days after their purchase. Usually, one gets a digital ticket and that’s that. But because Samson Fellows and his wife are organizing the shows from top to bottom, they’re able to create the type of event they’d want to attend.
“Christine was really encouraging and said she would co-produce it with me,” Samson Fellows says. “We’re just trying to make an event we would want to go to. So there’s going to be some crafts, there’s going to be cookies and tea, there’s going to be crokinole. It’s going to be all ages. There’s going to be no alcohol. In a lot of ways, this is a show I wouldn’t want to go to 15 years ago, but it’s the kind of show I want to go to now.”
The e-mail provided a lot of these details and also included “a list of the songs I’ve written, and could theoretically perform” for e-mailed requests; the venue address (a “semi-secret”); and an appeal to attendees to refrain from audio or visual recording.
John Samson Fellows in 2011.JASON HALSTEAD
“My performances changed after phones with video cameras were introduced,” Samson Fellows says. “It was detrimental to my enjoyment of a show, because I was thinking about the fact someone could watch it later and I would start doubting myself and not performing in a free and open manner.”
The current state of the music industrial complex is not in good shape – not that it hasn’t always kind of been for artists, anyway. The goliath streaming service Spotify, a company whose founder Daniel Ek is an investor in AI military defence weapons to the tune of €600-million (nearly a billion Canadian dollars), continues to pay artists next to nothing. The other popular streaming services are only slightly better.
Touring is not getting easier either, cutting many musicians off from one of their few other historically significant income streams. Mind-boggling application fees for U.S. visas, steadily rising prices for accommodations in major cities, and gas and vehicle costs – an ever-present headache for artists playing across a country with long drives between venues – mean that they’re rarely profiting at all from taking their show on the road. This bleak economic landscape has led musicians the world over to ask a difficult question: Why participate in the machine at all?
“I still have feelings about the all-ages punk shows of my youth that were done outside of, really, any industry,” Samson Fellows says. “They were done kind of within a scene instead of an industry. And there are a lot of things wrong with those shows, but I think there’s a beautiful impulse behind them to make things together and to deprofessionalize music.”
The issue of removing the industry from music, to whatever extent one is comfortable, seems necessary to the survival of musicians. If artists are in the game completely for the money, and they’re not making any money, why stick around?
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Broad disillusionment with the music industry and ennui surrounding the state of the live music machine are just a couple of the factors inspiring artists to seek alternative avenues for live music or to return to their roots. But Samson Fellows and a growing number of Canadian artists seek to foreground togetherness, buoyed by environments or gestures that encourage sustained attention.
Recording is outlawed during the Window Inn shows Joel Plaskett helps organize in Dartmouth, N.S.Essery Waller/Supplied
Nova Scotia artist Joel Plaskett still generally enjoys being on the road, but like Samson Fellows, craved a performance and gathering space free of cellphones. In 2022, he created Window Inn Wednesdays, a now-sporadically occurring event that has never been marketed online.
Entrance requires a physical ticket bought at Morley’s coffee shop in Dartmouth, where the shows happen. Performers – whose identities remain secret until they hit the floor – have included magicians, radio hosts, writers (including this one) and of course, musicians. The result is a low-stakes evening of sharing art where artists are able to be off-the-cuff and experimental because there’s no threat of social-media leakage, as recording is outlawed during Window Inn shows.
“When you demand somebody’s attention or you give someone your attention, there’s something to that,” Plaskett says. “I find the audience is engaging and enjoying, and when you create a space, you’re saying, ‘here’s the focus.’ The focus isn’t what you see through your phone, so there’s an expectation that people will listen, and they do. As a result, the artists really felt like they were given attention.”
In Guelph, Ont., Steph Yates (also known as Cots) and her partner Bry Webb (who plays solo and is the vocalist of indie rock band Constantines) have been hosting a concert series in their garden under the name What Now since 2024. What Now shows are sparsely marketed intimate affairs, and one of Yates’s hosting gestures is to cook for and eat dinner with the visiting artists, highlighting the sharing part of performing.
“When I’m trying to imagine how to help somebody and how to give care, nourishing food is one of the most basic things that we need,” Yates says. “To make a beautiful meal, and to share a beautiful meal, maybe will help a little bit. So, in the same way as wanting weird and wonderful things to happen in the place where we live, it’s also about wanting a culture of gathering and sharing and eating together.”
While there’s a certain level of capacity, funding and support to be acknowledged in the success of these examples, it’s worth noting that they each look to low-key, tried-and-tested models for concerts that simply prioritize both artist and audience needs. It’s a reminder that, to cultivate generative live music experiences, the starting point should be considering community needs.
“We can build those things together and make something better, right? Something that works,” Samson Fellows says. “And I think to do so, we have to experiment. We have to step outside of the industry and see what we can do to both fulfill people artistically and try to make it financially viable. Because it’s not right now, it’s just not.”
