GOOD AGAIN? MAYBE IT’S TIME FOR RON SEXSMITH TO FAIL part 3
- Apr 14
- 7 min read
IF YOU LOOK THIS WAY or sound this way or get labelled this way, sometimes you’re stuck forever, even if part of you is screaming, “but wait, there’s more”.
Ron Sexsmith, whose face naturally falls into a downcast mode, whose voice has a lilt but within a gently maudlin manner no matter the subject matter, is known as a balladeer. And fans love his ballads, they probably define him in most people’s eyes and certainly do define him in the crosshatched boxes of editors and programmer, even if he’s ripping into soulless pieces of stone and ticky-tacky constructions of modern estates we’re supposed to accept for low-income earners in a song like Camelot Towers.
But across all his albums upto and including last year’s Hangover Terrace, the breakout songs that swing up, that bounce with joy, like When Will The Morning Comes, or rock out a bit like Burgoyne Woods, can be as important because they are the light to the shade, a reminder that there is always more in his – emotional as much as musical – kit bag.
“I sound like Joan Jett [saying this] but I love rock ‘n’ roll,” he chuckles, not long before his Australian tour which begins in Sydney on Saturday. “I like The Kinks as well as [Canadian folk/rock legend Gordon] Lightfoot and all the other stuff. On the early records I got sort of labelled the balladeer, mostly because [producer] Mitchell Froom felt those were my best songs and he felt my voice wasn’t really suited for soul type of songs or bluesy things.
“And at the time I didn’t know, I trusted him and went along with it. There would be at least one song on each record that would rock out a little bit, but I had to get the confidence, and that didn’t really start happening until Cobblestone Runway.”
On that 2002 album, Sexsmith’s sixth, Swedish producer Martin Terefe surprised the Canadian by declaring he thought of him as something of a soul singer - “Mitchell had never said that before, Steve Earle had never said that” – and Sexsmith got an upgrade and accompanying confidence. Now those earthier, sometimes rockier moments get regular airings “but I don’t think I could have sung those songs as effectively on my earlier albums because I don’t think I started singing any good until Cobblestone or [2004’s] Retriever.”
“I thought I could write any kind of song and there were things that didn’t make it onto my first album there were more kind of bluesy but Mitchell would say he thought I sounded like jive turkey, or something like that.”
Setting aside the questionable judgement about his early singing – let’s face it, artists are often the worst judges of their shows, their work or their voices – to his own surprise, Sexsmith says he is pretty happy with the vocals on this new record and agrees his apparent facility with soul may be down to a greater ease with his upper register.
“I’ve got a pretty good falsetto sometimes. I think I have more range now than I did when I started, partly down to doing vocal warm-ups and things are never used to do, and understanding breath control.”
Doing some prep can help? Who knew Ronald Eldon! Well, at least the knowledge did come in time.
“I’m 61 now and hoping that I can sing this well for the next decade or so. I’m going to see [Paul] McCartney tomorrow and he is 83 now, and a bit inconsistent with his voice, especially in the mid range. All the high screamy stuffy is still there, he can do all that, but the middle part where most of your voice is it becomes harder to sustain if you’ve been singing three hours shows 20 years or 40 years or something.”
As he is advancing into, shall we say, late middle age, Sexsmith admits he finds it fascinating watching how singers deal with ageing, whether it be lowering the key or reworking their way around the high notes. Though for now, that’s not his worry. Instead maybe he should talk to his people to talk to Ray Davies’ people about the Kinks man, who still performs occasionally in his 80s, covering while he can Sexsmith’s Cigarette And Cocktails, which is easily the best Ray Davies song spotted in the wild in a long time.
“Cigarette And Cocktails is definitely in the Kinks vein, or McCartney perhaps too, so I would love that. Not that he needs my help,” says Sexsmith. “He wrote the book in my opinion. Not just him obviously, I love [Harry] Nilsson and Randy Newman too, and they all had that observational thing that I’ve learned. And the thing that Ray Davies doesn’t have, that I have, is the Gordon Lightfoot element: the balladeer, the folky thing. If I have a sound at all, it’s the intersection of British Invasion and my troubadour folky thing, especially Leonard [Cohen] and Gordon. They wrote the Bible for me.”
It doesn’t take much to see a pattern in Sexsmith’s choices: writers who not only know how to write a melody, but know how to use it.
“I could go on all day about that,” he smiles. “I hear so many good ideas but they don’t know how to follow through with it. I don’t like melody for melody’s sake; I like when melody works hand-in-hand with the lyrics to create something. Some pop people write all these catchy songs but it doesn’t resonate in any way. Doesn’t connect with me anyway. Or the same thing with some lyricists who throw a lot of stream-of-consciousness stuff around that doesn’t add up and it’s hard for me to engage with it or connect to it.”
Is he the kind of fan, collector of information about his favourite writers and artists who would devour, say, the new Beatles Anthology series looking for any extra insight in the unlikeliest corner. Like certain other people in this conversation like to do?
“I didn’t know about [the new Anthology series] but for Christmas the year before I got the DVD for the Get Back documentary and for me that was revolutionary, watching that. I couldn’t believe it existed. We’ve all seen the Let It Be movie, and that was a drag, and I couldn’t believe that Peter Jackson could take the same footage and make such an inspirational film. I felt like someone had said, hey we found footage of the Last Supper, a miraculous occurrence.”
For fellow nerds he recommends a Beatles book, given to him by Nick Lowe, called 150 Glimpses Of The Beatles, by Craig Brown, a book that comes at this most often told story in popular music from oblique, unexpected and sometimes plain strange angles, such as the driver who was involved in the accident that killed John Lennon’s mother.
What are the chances of a Sexsmith Anthology series, especially as those of us outside Canada missed the Sexsmith At 60 career retrospective show he did at Canada’s premier room, Massey Hall, and in Manchester? This opens up old wounds from part two of this interview.
“In Canada I feel like my contribution is not valued here, by the industry. It’s more valued overseas. So I would love it if it was a different story, if there was interest to do an Anthology,” Sexsmith says. “Even that concert, ideally it would have been great if the record label had said we should do Ron At 60, but I had to do it all myself. Maybe some day.”
Hopefully they don’t wait until he's dead.
“They probably will,” he says with a semi-bitter laugh. “They probably will.”
Maybe we’re back to those expectations and categorisations that can’t be shifted. When reviewing a relatively recent Sexsmith album I said that the consistency that has not yet seen him make a bad album – some were better, some were brilliant, some not quite at the same heights, but nothing that wouldn’t make a career high for many lesser writers – was the kind of thing that not only used up the ready superlatives of the critics but might induce complacency in radio or labels or even some casual fans.
If that is a problem, maybe what he needed to do was make a couple of dud albums or get into some scandal and then “come back” with all the appeal of the redemptive arc. Sexsmith doesn’t reject the idea out of hand.
“You’re right. There is an expression that it’s better to fail excitingly than to succeed boringly,” he says. “It’s not a game for me and I’ve only ever try to be consistent. I don’t want to make a record that has bad songs on it and that can be boring to somebody. I don’t think I have the luxury to do [the fail then redeem yourself arc]. If you’re a big selling out as you can do that, but if you’re someone who with every record is trying to show that you’re not a flash in the pan, or some fluke, you will always put pressure on yourself to be consistent. I want to make great records.”
There are worse things to say than Ron Sexsmith has made a handful of absolutely great albums and everything else is really good. If that’s what we’re left to say about him, well he could live with that legacy.
“Sometimes people say to me ‘I don’t understand why you are not bigger’; I don’t understand why they think I should be bigger. I’m a 61 year old guy from Canada, it’s not sexy or anything, it’s not gonna set anyone’s world on fire.
"But I have a body of work and if you like songs and you’re not looking for some flashy person …”
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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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