Ron Sexsmith keeps it real
Eighth album is all about approaching life from the right perspective
John Kendle

About six hours after the 2005 Juno Awards show ended at the MTS Centre, Ron Sexsmith was celebrating his first win as best songwriter by playing chair guitar to an AC/DC song along with The Waking Eyes’ Rusty Matyas.

The pair were literally carrying around bar stools at the Pyramid, strumming along, banging their heads and doing their best Angus Youngs.

Obviously, neither musician was feeling any pain that night but Sexsmith claims to remember it well.

Though he won’t say it himself, that Juno award must have felt like vindication to a guy whose music had been hailed by Paul McCartney, Elvis Costello and John Hiatt yet who had never really been recognized for his work.

Sexsmith prefers to talk about how good it felt to have fun that evening.

“Something a lot of people don’t know about me is that I really love hard rock,” the Toronto musician says, laughing. “And I love hanging out with Rusty and the Waking Eyes guys. We have a lot of fun.”

Both onstage and on record, Sexsmith isn’t really a hard rock guy, of course. His oeuvre runs to the sensitive singer/songwriter side of things, and he’s not exactly Jon Bon Jovi — even if music biz types try to flatter him.

“I knew that even before my first album came out,” Sexsmith says of his place in the music world.

“There was always all these people worrying and saying, ‘I can’t understand why you’re not a big star,’ but I never really understood why they thought I should be, because the kind of music I was making was always a bit more intimate. Also, on my earlier records especially, I wasn’t that great a singer.”

Now, eight albums into a recording career that began in 1995, the 42-year-old feels as if he’s found himself a comfortable niche. His current cross-Canada tour was preceded by a European jaunt in which he was able to play 1,000-seaters in London and Stockholm, and 350-to-500-person venues just about everywhere else. In Canada and elsewhere, his drawing power is quite similar — not bad for a guy with neither a huge radio smash nor a million-selling album to his credit.

What has always appealed about Sexsmith is his disarming lyrical honesty, his doe-eyed, pageboy look and his deceptively simple melodies.

On his most recent album, Time Being, the songwriter seems to be in a contemplative place, wrapped up in the sense of wonder that befalls people in their early 40s who are truly coming to grips with the march of time.

Two of the songs, Hands of Time and Cold-Hearted Wind, were written for high school friends who recently died. Other tunes also seem to reflect a sense of wonder at life’s fragility and struggles.

“Going to funerals of guys who were the same age as me, it’s not like I felt old but… it makes you hold on to things a little tighter, I think,” Sexsmith says.

“That was where my head was at when I wrote those songs. I wasn’t feeling maudlin or anything, I was simply pointing out that you have to appreciate the people you have around you.

“It’s been said a million times before. I guess it was just my turn.”

Just like it was that night in 2005.