It’s almost a guarantee that a background in the punk world who now plays anything but typical three-chord rock will undoubtedly earn the tag of "emo" from some group of poorly informed listeners or another. In fact, for every emo act who ridiculously tries to weasel its way out of such a label, there’s almost certainly a pop band or an experimental act that gets inexplicably typecast as an emo act in a Xeroxed-and-stapled fanzine somewhere.

If someone kept track of all the bands who’ve garnered questionable comparisons to emo, the Weakerthans would probably be somewhere near the top of that list, if they aren’t the champions of misunderstood pop. Led by singer/guitarist John K. Sampson, a former member of the anarcho-punk outfit Propagandhi, Sampson and company (guitarist Stephen Carroll, bassist John P. Sutton and drummer Jason Tait), certainly have the necessary background to earn a misplaced emo title. Throw in the fact that the band’s pop/folk sound is worlds away from the loud rock bands the Weakerthans usually share a bill with, and it’s almost inevitable there’s a few kids in every town who see the band in the same light as Rites of Spring.

"It’s always been funny to me. I always thought it was kind of a joke to call us emo," Carroll says. "I’ve tried to explain to people what exactly emo was. They would start laughing and say ‘What are you talking about?’ Talking about it, it does seem like an antiquated term, and for us, it seems a little misplaced. We’ve never shied away from it. People can call us anything they want, because it’s probably fair to say that in some ways."

While it’s probably a losing battle to try to educate the masses about the lineage and stylistic subtleties of emo, the Weakerthans’ second album, Left and Leaving (1999, Sub City) makes it pretty clear to anyone in the know where the band comes from. From the folky title track to the near power pop of "Aside" to the oppressive "Without Mythologies," which features a trumped-up drum track, there’s nothing but a mix of low-key folk and pure pop in the band’s sound. In fact, Carroll makes no bones about embracing the pop idiom.

"That’s easiest," he replies when asked if he calls his band’s music pop. "I would think that. I certainly love pop music and I think we would be fooling ourselves if we called it anything else."

Since the band formed, it’s battled against public-image misconceptions. While it now struggles to make the term "pop" replace the emo misnomer it’s frequently saddled with, on its earliest tours, the band fought people’s expectations. Frequently billed as "Weakerthans (ex-Propagandhi)," the foursome spent much of its early days shocking fans who expected something similar to Samson’s former outfit.

"For a while there, I think people were just guessing at what we were like," Carroll says. "They’d have an idea, and hear our name and go ‘Oh yeah, John was in this band, and we listened to that, so they probably sound like this.’ Somebody else would come at it and just have heard us through whatever means, a magazine, poetry, positive rock’n’roll, and that would be their entry point. Now, what’s happening is we have a pretty diverse audience. All those people have come for whatever reason, without really knowing what we were about, and half of those people have stayed. Half of the hardcore kids who came out went ‘Oh gross. Sappy slow songs! I’m out of here,’ half of them went ‘You know, this is not so bad.’"

In fact, the Weakerthans’ members were acutely aware of the expectations their sound was sure not to meet. Though there was never a thought of spicing up any of the band’s songs with a bit of punk rock grit to make them go over more easily, there were traces of anxiety during the act’s first few times out.

"We were on tender hooks there wondering exactly how we were going to be received for a little while," Carroll says. "Eventually we just got hardened to it and got used to playing ballads at punk rock shows. Once we overcame that, there was no problem. I think generally we add something to bills if we’re billed on a big rock’n’roll night, people are always happy to have us there."

Though the band’s first tours earned a mix of revulsion and delight from fans surprised by its style, Carroll says with each successive visit to a town the Weakerthans’ following gets larger. It’s both a matter of establishing the band’s name as well as finding an audience who can appreciate the band’s style when building its fan base Though it frequently plays punk bills, the act also attracts fans with little to no punk rock background, as fans of the singer/songwriter tradition as well as indie pop and folk enthusiasts have found common ground in the Weakerthans’ material.

Such success, despite the band’s disregard for genre expectations, had to be vindicating, especially after it took flack from narrow-minded punks who would have preferred blazing guitars to mellow pop. It’s also proven that the Weakerthans can go ahead making the music its members want to make, without having to concern themselves with meeting expectations.

"It’s a big relief," Carroll admits. "A big sigh of relief comes out when you get to that point where you don’t have to worry about it and can just do whatever the hell you want. I think everybody tries to reach that point."

Though the Weakerthans may have left the tightly wound rock of punk in the past, they haven’t abandoned many of its more idealistic tenets. The band chooses to stick with small labels, and continues to manage itself, despite increasingly frequent offers from management companies. It’s a choice that puts its members in more direct control of their musical destiny, though it also means they have to do a lot more work than just playing music.

Many musicians would bristle at the thought of dirtying their hands with menial tasks, but the Weakerthans view their commitment to the do-it-yourself ethos not only as a holdover from their punk roots, but as a means to keep themselves from spinning off into the world of rock-star excess.

"We’re clinging to that notion that we’re still grounded," Carroll says with a chuckle. "I think the way that we approach things, we make it hard on ourselves. We also kind of like the hard work too, because it keeps us grounded, it keeps us centered. We don’t get inflated egos, we don’t have a sense of rock’n’roll glory. It’s glory achieved through sweat and folding T-shirts or something.

"It kind of makes touring and playing music less abstract," he continues. "It feels more concrete when you have to do some menial tasks every day for three or four hours, whatever it is, besides the work that you put into the band itself music. I like the balance and I think we all need it and appreciate it."

Behind-the-scenes activities aren’t the only place the Weakerthans have put in their share of elbow grease. With its latest record released by several different labels around the globe, the band has had to put in a sizable chunk of time on the road simply to meet the commitments needed to promote its record in different regions. It’s also found the time to shoot a video for "Watermark," in hopes of getting some video rotation in the band’s homeland of Canada. Though a video from the band’s debut, Fallow (1999 G-7 Welcoming Committee), earned respectable air play on Canadian music television, recent shakeups in the system have left the Weakerthans in a stylistic no man’s land left uncovered by television.

"Canadian music television is very genre-oriented," Carroll says dismally. "The genres they support are adult contemporary rock and booty videos and little kiddy pop. We used to fit, they used to play us, and they played our video quite a lot. They’ve split the station into two stations, one for contemporary and one for kiddy pop, and we don’t fit into either of those categories."

The band isn’t about to let the video for "Watermark" sit around and gather dust, either for its native audiences or for those in Europe or the States, where bad taste has a virtual stranglehold on music television. With the increasingly slick multimedia options available to bands, the Weakerthans will release a Watermark EP this spring, a CD that will include not only the album cut of "Watermark" and a couple live tracks, but the complete "Watermark" video encoded for viewing on fans’ home computers.

For a band that went counter to so many expectations from day one, the Weakerthans’ success is tribute to the band’s strong songwriting. With ballads able to win over hardcore fans and power-pop tunes simple and honest enough to connect with folk and singer/songwriter crowds, the band continues to gain momentum. It’s enough to make the band keep up its history of pleasing itself first and foremost, especially now that it’s armed with the knowledge there’s an audience with the same tastes. Beyond that, the band isn’t going to overanalyze its success.

"I think what is happening for us, we’re finding our audience. We’re going out and touring and finding those people who are in that place where they want to listen to us," Carroll says. "I don’t know how long that will last. I don’t know what their previous background is, but I know they are coming out to see us."