Despite being championed by the likes of Elton John and Elvis Costello, Ron Sexsmith has never quite broken into the big time. Now his latest album could change all that. Jon Perks spoke to him.
Twenty years on from his debut album, Grand Opera Lane, and Ron Sexsmith’s hoping it’s lucky number 12.
The 47-year-old from Ontario has a back catalogue of songs many musicians would give their right arm to have written – several, including Rod Stewart, Tom Jones and Michael Bublé, have covered them.
Other celebrity admirers include Paul McCartney, Sheryl Crow, Elton John and Elvis Costello – and yet few of his albums have made a big mark on the charts.
His last, Exit Strategy of the Soul was, in Ron’s own words, “a free-for-all”, leading to something of a crisis of confidence and a desire to make his next a far more focused affair.
“After my last bunch of records, I was feeling a bit kind of wounded and I didn’t want to just keep showing up and striking out all the time,” says Ron, who enlisted the skills of famed producer Bob Rock for his latest and 12th album, Long Player Late Bloomer.
To pair an often poignant and erudite singer songwriter with a man best known for producing the likes of Metallica does, on first glance, seem an odd choice – but it was an inspired suggestion from one of Sexsmith’s fellow countrymen: “It was actually Michael Bublé who told me I should work with him,” says Ron.
“I was at a party at the Canadian music awards and I was asking everybody who I should work with; I asked kd lang, Bryan Adams... and Michael told me I should work with Bob; he’s great and I’d met Bob that evening so there was some fate involved maybe, and so I just thought of Bob, like most people, as just a heavy metal producer.
“I sent a kind of message in a bottle over to Bob’s people to see if there was any interest and they got right back to me.”
With a crack session band, including drummer Josh Freese and Travis Good on guitar, Ron and Rock have made a polished, catchy album with Sexsmith trademarks of poignancy and wit, including the radio-friendly songs Believe It When I See It, Love Shines and Get In Line.
“When you look at some of the stuff he’s done, they’re very big sounding records,” says Ron.
“Every producer has their own ‘thing’, like Daniel Lanois (who produced Ron’s eponymous second album), he does his thing – they’re like movie directors; I thought Bob would be able to make a focused record; the last one, Exit Strategy, it felt like a free-for-all – anyone who walked into the studio ended up playing on my record – and I wanted to try and do something where people who never ‘got me’ before would get me.
“I knew Bob was a great vocal producer as well, and I always knew I could sing, but sometimes the evidence wasn’t on the record,” he adds.
“I just wanted to do something that was really focused, really polished, so radio wouldn’t have any excuse not to play it. I also felt the songs I had were really strong and I didn’t want to just give them to just anybody, I wanted to find someone help me make sense of these things.”
The album even came with its own documentary – Love Shines – which followed the singer both on tour and in the studio.
Radio – in particular Radio 2 – has picked up on Long Player Late Bloomer – and Ron is set to visit the UK this month on his first tour for three years, including an appearance at Ray Davies’ Meltdown at the Royal Festival Hall, plus two West Midlands dates in Leamington Spa and Bilston.
“There’s probably been more interest in this record than any other, perhaps apart from my first two,“ says Ron.
“I think a lot of it has to do with the movie coming out at the same time as the record; there were a lot of people who had sort of lost track of me, who were following me at the beginning but moved onto somebody else.
“I also I think that maybe it was my turn, for a change – I’ve been putting out records for a long time and a lot of them go under the radar, so there’s a whole bunch of mysterious things coming together, I think.”
If the film Love Shines is your first Sexsmith encounter, it’s easy to paint him as a slightly maudlin character, but, as he points out: “The film is very downbeat, but it isn’t my movie, I’m just in it – I think that’s the angle they wanted to pursue but it’s only one part of the story.”
Long Player Late Bloomer is not, he points out, ‘all doom and gloom’ – the first half a blend of funny lyrics and ‘slapstick tragedy’ – “but then the record does get happier, more optimistic,” Ron insists.
It may have taken him two decades, but the future is bright for Ron – although in typical Sexsmith fashion, he’s not getting carried away: “England was the first country that really noticed me and it’s always been good to me, I’ve had a cult following but until this record there hasn’t been this kind of excitement,” he says.
“I don’t know what it is, but it’s nice to feel there’s some sort of momentum. I like touring when it goes well; we’ve had some disastrous tours – you swear there’s a hex on the whole thing because you have so much bad luck – but the last tour went so well it was almost kind of scary.
“It’s like that movie Field of Dreams – “build it and they will come...” – I just feel things are going eerily well.”
* Ron Sexsmith plays Leamington Spa Assembly on June 17 and the Robin 2, in Bilston, on June 21. The Leamington date is sold out, but tickets for Bilston are available at the Robin 2 website.
