Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Ron Sexsmith — a songwriter in his prime

PREVIEW What: Ron Sexsmith with Jessica Mitchell When: Wednesday, 7 p.m. Where: Alix Goolden Performance Hall, 907 Pandora Ave. Tickets: $29.50 at Lyle’s Place (770 Yates St.) and Ticketfly.
sexsmith.jpg
Singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith will perform at Alix Goolden Performance Hall in Victoria on Wednesday. SUBMITTED

PREVIEW

What: Ron Sexsmith with Jessica Mitchell
When: Wednesday, 7 p.m.
Where: Alix Goolden Performance Hall, 907 Pandora Ave.
Tickets: $29.50 at Lyle’s Place (770 Yates St.) and Ticketfly.com

 

If you’re going to ask a performer about the hows and whys of songwriting, Rox Sexsmith is probably a good source of intel.

Or is he?

“I never feel like I know what I’m doing,” Sexsmith said with a laugh, during a recent tour stop in Edmonton. “There’s obviously a formula to it, but that’s a side of music that has never appealed to me. You get an idea for a song, and that’s the inspiration, but sometimes it’s so small. Maybe it’s a verse, or a melody. And then you’re left with this thing that you have to finish. And that’s when whatever knowledge you have, or know-how, or craftsmanship, comes into play.”

Sexsmith, 53, has earned eight Juno Award nominations for songwriter of the year, and his work regularly draws praise from some of the biggest names in rock music. But that’s cold comfort for Sexsmith. He lives in fear that one day, this unteachable skill will no longer answer the door when he rings the bell.

“There are songwriters I know who’ve had this period of 10 or 20 years where they were writing really great songs, and then they either stop writing altogether or the stuff they were writing wasn’t as good,” he said. “That’s frightening.”

Sexsmith’s gift is in spectacular form on The Last Rider, album No. 13 from the Stratford, Ont., performer. There is no common touchstone to the songs, from a genre standpoint: Breakfast Ethereal is Sexsmith’s most Beatles-esque song to date, full of lightly psychedelic swirls and strings, while Worried Song is a nod to the more thoughtful material of Ray Davies and The Kinks.

Sexsmith produced the album with his longtime drummer, Don Kerr of the Rheostatics. He has recorded with a raft of veteran producers during his career, including a number of studio wizards (Daniel Lanois, Mitchell Froom, Tchad Blake, Bob Rock) with A-level experience. With The Last Rider, it felt like the right time to take over the controls, Sexsmith said.

“I never really wanted the responsibility before,” he said. “So I had to put on my big-boy pants and try to make decisions about things.”

He recently moved out of Toronto with his wife, Colleen, to the quiet of Stratford. It was a huge shift for the St. Catharines, Ont., native, who had spent the better part of his adult life in the shadow of the CN Tower. He found the slower pace to be a perfect fit; Sexsmith, always thoughtful, never in a rush, said his demeanor better aligns with smaller cities.

Victoria was home for a time, he said, during the early 1980s. He wasn’t the Ron Sexsmith at this point, just a 19-year-old trying to find his feet in his early stages as a songwriter. He lived on Gorge Road and played whenever he could, often busking on Government Street and in Bastion Square. “It was a very exciting time. I was sort of trying to write songs, but mostly I was just playing cover tunes. I had never left home before, so everything was new.”

He eventually landed a paid gig at a fish and chips shop on Pandora Avenue, which felt like a financial windfall at the time.

“I played inside, but they had a horn that blew my music out onto the street, trying to get people to come in. It was a really nice couple that ran this restaurant. They’d give me $50 and fish and chips.”

A few years later, when he was back living in Ontario, his career officially got underway. His work ethic in the years since has been admirable. Sexsmith has released an album every two or three years since 1995. It could be argued that he’s found a new gear as a songwriter, given that The Last Rider — which he recorded at the Tragically Hip’s Bathhouse Recording studio — is his fourth full-length in the past six years. But Sexsmith said he always writes, even when a new album isn’t imminent.

He’s been fortunate to have a reputation that precedes him, and the record labels he works with have always given him the freedom to create.

“I think a lot of artists make the mistake of desperately trying to sell out. I was 30 when I got signed [to Interscope Records], so I was already set in my ways, musically. But if you’re a young artist who’s 18 or 19, the label may come in and have some changes to make a rock star out of you. They couldn’t really do that with me. That was always the problem. ‘What do we do with this guy?’ ”

His career is now at a point where he plays consistently comfortable rooms, and sells a prescribed amount of records; basically, he knows what to expect each time out.

There’s the occasional financial uptick — such as when k.d. lang, Emmylou Harris, Michael Bublé and Rod Stewart, among others, record his songs — but he hasn’t given up on raising his profile. He still wants to be a part of the music industry and make the charts, even though he often feels “out of his element” when it comes to making videos or doing photo shoots. “It’s kind of amazing to me that I’ve been able to survive and hang in there,” he said.

“I’ve always felt a little bit unfashionable. In the beginning, what I was doing didn’t seem to line up with what radio was playing.

“But at the same time, [my music] wasn’t really based on whatever the current trends were. You can’t be out of style if you were never in style to begin with.”

mdevlin@timescolonist.com