John Samson looks tired.

Though the rail-thin Winnipeg singer/songwriter could never be called robust, he seems smaller than usual on this day, huddled in his coat in a chilly downtown coffee shop.

He has good reason to seem a little drawn, however.

Since Samson and his bandmates in The Weaker-thans released their second album of Prairie pop/punk poetry, Left and Leaving, last summer, the quartet has played more than a hundred shows, capped by a 27-gigs-in-28-days whirlwind trip of Europe which ended just a couple of weeks ago.

Though he and drummer Jason Tait, guitarist Stephen Carroll and bassist John Sutton have all toured extensively, Samson says they agreed this past trip was their most arduous yet.

"It was tough," he says. "We reached a certain point where it was really hard to get up and play the same songs in a different city every night."

Still, the singer says 2000 has been a very good year for The Weakerthans. Perhaps the band's best year.

"Left and Leaving came out and sold very well (more than 20,000 copies, an excellent figure for an independent act).

"Initially I was terrified that people wouldn't like it, but some people seemed to like it and going on tour has been mostly healthy for us, in that meeting people who are interested in your music is quite rewarding.

"Still, it can be hard."

The difficulty, Samson says, is that playing and singing his songs night after night takes its toll emotionally and intellectually. When creating Weakerthans music, the singer labours over his lyrics until everything is just so. He and the group are also very exacting and deliberate about recording. So once an album has been released, the ritual of getting onstage every night and performing the same set list is unsettling, he says.

"The metaphor I've been using lately is that the songs are like really old clocks and every time we bring them up on stage some delicate pieces of metal keep falling off them," he says.

"Writing and recording the music is the real focus and joy of what we do. Performing is supposed to be the gravy but when it becomes the main course it gets a little difficult."

Samson frowns, as if wondering whether this last metaphor is apt. Then he grins and shrugs.

"The thing of it is, touring is where the money is for bands like us. We don't get rich but we are able to sell our albums and our T-shirts and pay ourselves," he says. "It's a weird Catch-22."

If Samson sounds weary, it's probably battle fatigue. For just as he questions the nature of touring, he is also quick to say the band will be travelling a lot in 2001. Another European jaunt is on tap as well as more shows in the States and possibly more in Canada, too.

"Then we'll begin working on a new record. We've got one complete new song and about half-a-dozen others that are unfinished," he reports.

"We aren't, however, going to fall into the trap of trying to make a record in a year. We've always worked a certain way, done whatever the hell we wanted, in order to serve the songs, and I don't see any drastic changes to the way we work," he says.

"It took us a little over three years to make the last record," he points out.

Following tonight's homecoming show at the Pyramid, The Weakerthans perform Saturday in Toronto then plan to take at least a couple of months off.

"It's time to give the songs a rest," Samson grins.