FLY, BE FREE? HELL NO, SAYS RON SEXSMITH ON SOLID GROUND part 1
- Bernard Zuel
- 1 hour ago
- 5 min read
WE DON’T SEE Ron Sexsmith around these parts all that often. It’s not that he has a problem with Australia and New Zealand – we’re nice people, he’ll tell you, and while he’s not exactly Bryan Adams or Drake or Grimes level sales-wise, he’s got fans here in decent numbers for a Canadian singer/songwriter whose style is classicist pop, whose influences are Ray Davies, Paul McCartney and Gordon Lightfoot, whose beats are rhythmic but not tectonic.
And they’re bloody good songs too. Take last year’s bright-eyed Hangover Terrace for example. Or 2020’s mod-ish Hermitage, the bolder tones of 2011’s Long Player Late Bloomer, 1995’s rich-sounding, close-fitting, Elvis Costello-endorsed self-titled record that broke his career open, or the soft bruises of 2001’s Blue Boy. For a start.
But it is a bit of a hike from Toronto to be fair, and making money on the road is no one’s idea of comfortable and risk-free numbers for a Canadian singer/songwriter whose style is classicist pop etc etc, so April’s tour in the Antipodes is unexpected, albeit welcomed. But it’s also true that the man is not exactly built for this long haul business.
“I’m a terrible traveller. A really nervous traveller. I’m not good with flying, and airports especially. But I like when I’m there,” says Sexsmith. “My wife [Colleen Hixenbaugh, also a musician] is really good: she’s been my road manager for the past number of years, and I don’t have a cell phone and you need a cell phone these days for almost everything. So I just follow her around the airport because you have to scan this and scan that and I probably wouldn’t trouble at all if she wasn’t in the picture.”
Dude, it’s 2025, it’s the only way to capture federal government street thugs killing people, recipes on the go, and finding the right Ron Sexsmith song when you’re driving up the coast in a stupid modern car built without a CD player or cassette player or 8-track player. What is this objection to cell phones?
“I’m not a phone person really. I have a landline, and I’ll talk on the landline sometimes, but I just don’t like the idea of being reached everywhere. Or being accessible everywhere,” he says. “I see people sometimes having a romantic dinner but under the table they are looking at their phones. And I don’t want to be that person. I don’t have a problem with cell phones: I’m glad my wife has one. But I’m not good with change really of any kind. I like to listen to vinyl, I don’t drive a car, I’m very set in my ways I guess.”
Two people sitting at a table for a romantic dinner, but texting under the table, sounds like a Ron Sexsmith song in the making: poignant, minor details meaning major themes, tenderness masking sadness.
“Well,” he laughs. “I like to observe people and sometimes that makes it into a song. I don’t think I’ve ever had a song that mentions a cell phone in it but I did have a song once called Words We Never Use that I wrote after observing a couple on the subway [sample lyric: Yes I know you've been hurt by words I've said/But more by the times I turned my head.”]
“I didn’t know anything about them but they just seemed like they were worlds apart, not connected in any way. They probably were, just tired after a long day at work, but I do like to people watch and imagine.”
Has he ever been caught people watching?
“Not really. One time, back in grade seven or eight there was a girl I had a crush on and sometimes I’d find myself sort of staring off and she caught me one time and called me a zombie. She got really cruel about it and it kind of scared me off women for a long time,” he laughs, “because I was like a lot of nerdy guys, I was shy around women and stuff like this. It became a thing where you’d be walking down the hall and she would be there with her friends calling me whatever, just because she happened to catch me looking at her one day from across the cafeteria or something.”
(For those playing at home, cue Strawberry Blonde, a beautiful early Sexsmith song about a man remembering Amanda, a girl he knew in grade 4 with her own tragic story – “Still, I see her face framed in blue sky/At the top of a slide coming down/And when the sirens wailed her mother had failed to rise/All the neighbours stood outside as Amanda just stared at the ground” – when he sees her, now an adult with her own daughter getting off his streetcar, “And they were gone, two strawberry blondes”.)
As a more withdrawn teenager and young man and an observational songwriter – which is not the only string to his bow of course given his strong way with a personal examination – did he find himself learning how people worked from watching more than engaging with them, from songs more than conversation?
“I think so, yeah. I was paying attention all the time, to the songs on the radio, the lyrics, I was always fascinated by what they were saying. Sometimes it would completely go over my head, or if I was at some kind of occasion with a lot of adults, I was always curious about the adult conversations: what they were laughing about and this and that. If it was dirty [he chuckles], you never knew as a kid. So I think I did learn how to be from that and watching movies too.”
(For those playing at home, cue Cigarette And Cocktail, an utterly charming new Sexsmith song about 1970s parties as parents and their friends partied “with a cigarette in one hand and a cocktail in the other/When it came to lungs and livers well, they just could not be bothered”, and how there was something in that attitude because “What comes for us, we can’t outrun/We can gather dust or we can have some fun”.)
“But I was taking it from everywhere: music, the books I was reading, they’ll all point you in a direction. People seem to stumble on the music they need to hear and the books they need to read by accident, I found that fascinating too.”
If the personal interactions still remained tricky, this immersion did have a long-term impact.
“I sorta found this thing that I can do well, on a good day, and I don’t know where I’d be if I hadn’t found that talent or something, because I didn’t do well at school, my prospects weren’t very good I don’t think,” says Sexsmith, who was never going to be a long-distance airline pilot, but whose prospects have improved.
TOMORROW: In part two of this interview, Ron Sexsmith finds unexpected anger animating his writing, a forgiving god balancing his behaviour, and lessons learned about trust. “I think I have arrived at a place now where I’m kinda accepting of everything: I’ve got a good relationship with my kids, I know who my real friends are and who they ain’t. Stuff I learned the hard way.”
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Ron Sexsmith plays:
City Recital Hall, Sydney, April 18
BCEC Plaza Auditorium, Brisbane, April 19
Recital Centre, Melbourne, April 23
Theatre Royal, Castlemaine, April 24
Rosemount Hotel, Perth, April 26
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