"Probably the numbers don't quite do it for Reggie, for the Hall," Samson said in a phone interview Thursday. "For various reasons, his career was cut short. So I wanted to talk about the intangible things that make someone like that worthy of an honor."
Samson's stellar new solo record, Provincial, is sort of a concept album about his native Manitoba. That might sound off-putting, but Samson's strength as a writer is finding beauty and humor and grace in everyday life and ordinary people. For these songs, he did research and traveled around the province. Those travels took him to Riverton, about 70 miles north of the 'Peg.
"When you're in Riverton," Samson said, "Reggie is hard to miss. There's a street named after him, and there's a mural, and the local arena is named after him. So I thought about the town of Riverton and how much pride they feel in Reggie coming from there, and I thought it would be kind of nice if he were inducted in the Hall of Fame."
Leach's singular story is part of that. Samson sings of the "native kid on borrowed skates" - Leach famously didn't own a pair of skates until he was 12. He was raised by his Cree grandmother in a house without running water. He was one of the great First Nation (we'd say Native American south of the border) players ever. For a few years in the 1970s, he was one of the most feared scorers in the game.
