Ahead of his two ‘Sexsmith At Sixty’ UK shows, in Manchester and London, Ron Sexsmith contemplates getting older and looks back at his 30-year career.
Canadian singer-songwriter, Ron Sexsmith, turned 60 earlier this year. As part of his birthday celebrations, he’s playing two special retrospective ‘Sexsmith At Sixty’ shows in November, at Manchester RNCM Theatre and the London Palladium. Last year, Sexsmith, who is often referred to as ‘the songwriters’ songwriter’, released his 17th album, ‘The Vivian Line‘, and, as he tells Sean Hannam over Zoom from his home in Stratford, southwest Ontario, Canada, he’ll be recording the follow up to it in London this year.
He also reflects on hitting 60, looks back at his career, which started with his self-titled, major label debut album in 1995 – a record that was championed by Elvis Costello – picks out some favourite albums from his back catalogue and shares some insights into how he writes his songs.
Belated happy birthday…
It’s the birthday that never ends. I thought the 60 thing was a milestone… I was supposed to do one concert [at Massey Hall, in Toronto] but then I’ve ended up doing shows out west in Canada, and now I’m doing the Palladium… It’s good to have a theme, I guess.
How are you coping with being 60?
Oh, it’s fine. I don’t enjoy getting older – like everyone, my knee hurts and all that stuff – but there’s not a lot I can do about it. I think I’m singing better than I was when I was younger, which is one good thing… and I’m still writing as much as I ever did.
You share your birthday with Elvis Presley and David Bowie…
Yeah – that was always one of the things that kept me going when I didn’t think I was going to make it: ‘Surely I’m going to make it if I share a birthday with those guys…’ Today is also John Lennon’s birthday, and he was a pretty big influence on me.
There’s something going on up there in the cosmos…
There must be…
There’s a song on your last album, ‘The Vivian Line’, called ‘Outdated and Antiquated’, in which you sing: “I belong in the past – they don’t make them like me anymore.” The song is tongue-in-cheek, but do you feel that way – especially now you’re 60…
I think I felt that way even in the ‘90s. I always felt an old soul – a bit out of place with the music that was happening [in America]. I think that’s why I happened in the UK first, because the kind of music I was making was very old school in a certain kind of way – I loved all the British Invasion writers. The music over there [in the UK] never really gave up on melody, but in North America it became grunge or more R & B or hip-hop. My whole world is melody. I’ve always felt not ‘with it’ – I still listen to vinyl, I don’t have a cell phone, I don’t drive a car… I’m like a Stegosaurus walking around…
So, the two UK concerts will be retrospective shows…
Yeah – I’ll have my band, Don Kerr and Jason Mercer, with me. We just did some shows out west, and they sounded great. I’ve been playing with Don since ’87. We’re trying to do a pretty broad sweep of my career – I’m playing at least one song from each record. This year, my ‘Retriever’ album is 20 years old, so I want to do a few from that, and quite a few from my first couple of records. In a weird way, I’ve always kind of done that in my shows, because you never know which album people like. They come all that way to see you, and you don’t play something from the one they really like…
Were you not tempted to put a box set or a Best Of album out to celebrate your sixtieth?
I’d always hoped that would happen, but because I’ve never been a big-selling artist, there’s never been an incentive from the industry to do it. Maybe they will someday. When I turned 50, I remember saying to my manager, ‘maybe the label could do something – two CDs, 25 songs, or even a playlist…’ I feel like I have to be the instigator, but you think that would be something the industry would get behind. I think there was a time when they would have, but now it’s just the threads of an industry… I don’t even know what it is anymore. Even the Sexsmith At Sixty show at Massey Hall was all my idea… I’m just so lucky that I got in the door, and I have a body of work and a career. I still complain – I try not to complain as much, but there’s always something to moan about. It’s incredible that I’ve survived the rollercoaster of the industry. I would hate to be starting out now – I wouldn’t know how to do it.
You’re a prolific songwriter – you tend to release albums every two or three years…
It’s like breathing, in a weird way… I don’t really know how to do anything else… it’s just one muscle…I’m going to be making a new album when I’m over in the UK. Before I do the shows, I’m going to be recording in London for a few weeks. It’s a bit of an illusion… By the time an album comes out, I’ve been waiting for it for over a year, so I have almost a whole new album written by then. When I was really pumping them out in the ‘90s, it was because of that period when I was waiting… I was trying to stay ahead, because I didn’t want to be in a position where it was time to make a record, and I didn’t have anything, so I was stockpiling songs. That’s what all my heroes did – you think about Dylan, Elton John, and those guys… They were doing two albums a year – I can do that, but not everybody can. So, I have a new album of songs ready to go, but I don’t know when it’s going to come out.
Have some of your best songs been written quickly?
Some of them have… I wrote ‘Secret Heart’ on the job, when I was a courier, but I had to wait until I got home to figure it out on the guitar – I had the whole song written in my head. A song like ‘Strawberry Blonde’ took me almost two years to write, but ‘Get In Line’ took me less than an hour because I was upset about something. It’s a bit of both – in the past, it would take me longer because I would get stuck on something, whereas now I’m good at troubleshooting. If I have a verse I can’t finish, I think, ‘maybe I can make this into a bridge…’ It’s from experience – I have all these little tools I can use to finish a song, but still it usually takes me half a year to have 15 completed songs, and they all get finished around the same time. Even now, as I’m going into the studio, I’m still tweaking them and trying them out in a different key. I pull my hair out over a lot of these songs because that’s what I’m supposed to be good at – I don’t want to be a slouch when it comes to the time to make a record.
How do you write songs? On piano and guitar?
I call it the Winnie-the-Pooh method – I write when I walk. I think Walt Whitman and John Prine used to do that too. I sing to myself while I’m walking around – I get a song happening, and I get a few verses, and then I come home, and whatever instrument is closest to me… I’ll sit down at the piano or I’ll pick up the guitar. I do write a lot at the piano. I’m not very good on it, but it brings something different out in my songs. I know the guitar pretty well and you can get a little bored with it, but with the piano, all of a sudden, I’m stumbling on things that maybe I wouldn’t have tried on the guitar. It’s a bit of both, but mostly I write it in my head, and when there’s something to play, that’s when I’ll pick up an instrument.
I interviewed Richard Hawley earlier this year. He sings or hums ideas for songs into the recorder on his phone while he’s out walking his dog, but you don’t have a mobile phone… Do you ever worry that you might forget some of the songs you’ve come up with while you’re walking?
Yeah – before cell phones, a lot of people would carry a Dictaphone, like Brian Eno. I can sing a song over and over in head, and sometimes I will forget it, but then I think, ‘Well – maybe it wasn’t that good…’ Generally, I commit it to memory and, even if I forget it, if it’s good, it comes back a few days later. Part of me is superstitious – if I had a Dictaphone with me, maybe I wouldn’t come up with any ideas. It’s like a watched pot never boils… I’ve got a really good memory for songs – not just mine, but other people’s. It’s like my superpower, so it’s never really been an issue.
You were born in 1964, and you first got into music from hearing songs on the radio and in your mum’s record collection, didn’t you?
Yeah – I heard the radio from when I was three years old, or something. The radio was always on – the stations were playing the latest hits, but they were also playing stuff from the ‘50s and this and that. There wasn’t that thing like there is now, where one station plays one kind of music… My mum wasn’t playing her records, but I was. There was a box of 45s that I found fascinating. When you were a kid, you’d get into those little round objects which all had a different label – the A-side and the B-side. I was curious to know more, and I loved how everyone had their unique voice – that turned me on at an early age. There was a lot of ‘50s doo-wop stuff, like The Penguins, The Orioles, and Little Anthony and the Imperials. Buddy Holly was my favourite – my mum had ‘It Doesn’t Matter Anymore’, which was one of the last singles before he died, and ‘Ring of Fire’ by Johnny Cash, which used to terrify me. When you’re a kid, you take it literally. Every time you put the needle down, it was like a magical world.
You started writing songs as a teenager, but it wasn’t until you had your first child at 21 that you felt that the songs you were writing were any good. Why was that the case?
When I started writing at 14 or 15, I’d started a band, and, like a lot of people at that age, we didn’t know how to play. We didn’t really have anything to sing about, so it was all these stupid lyrics… When I was 21, and my first kid was born, all the upheaval of that and the changes… I didn’t expect to be a dad so young… At the same time as that was happening, I was getting into Leonard Cohen for the first time – it was weird because his music was so powerful for me that I was worried I couldn’t listen to The Beatles or The Kinks anymore… It just seemed more substantial. I became obsessed and it showed me what kind of songwriter I wanted to be. I wanted to write music that wasn’t about jumping around on stage, so that’s what I focused on. The first song I ever wrote was ‘Speaking With The Angel’, from my first album. If you hear it, it’s very Leonard Cohen influenced. At the time, I didn’t think very much of it. A little while later I realised that The Kinks and all that are just as great as Leonard Cohen, but it’s just a different thing. So, my sound is a hybrid of Canadian folk – [Gordon] Lightfoot, Leonard and Joni Mitchell, but with the melodic stuff of Lennon and McCartney – somewhere in there, I found what I could do, and I’ve been doing that ever since, basically.
You’ve worked with several producers during your career, including Mitchell Froom, Daniel Lanois, Steve Earle, Jim Scott and Bob Rock. How has it been working with all those guys? What different approaches have they tried and have they taken you out of your comfort zone? I know when you used Bob Rock on ‘Long Player Late Bloomer’, you were going for a more commercial sound, which some people didn’t like, although I think it’s a great album…
I loved working with Bob – all the producers I’ve worked with I’ve got on well with. The thing about Bob was that I was at a point in my career where I’d made three albums in a row that died right away – I think that was happening to a lot of people. I ran into Bob on the sidewalk after an awards show in Vancouver – I’d just seen him in a documentary with Metallica… It was this weird, fateful thing, and, at that point, I was just fed up and I thought, ‘here’s a guy who has made so many successful albums, I wonder what would happen if we worked together?’ That album totally resurrected my career – especially in the UK. A lot of that was because the production was so muscular – it was this big thing. I wasn’t crazy about the auto-tune, but if you’re going to make a Bob Rock album, that’s what he does. The songs were strong enough on that album that they could withstand that kind of thing, so I’m glad I made that album. It wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but it got a buzz going and I was back on people’s radar – even in America. Every show on that tour was sold out. I’m not talking big places, but there was a buzz.
Are there any producers that you’d like to work with?
I had an album called ‘Carousel One’ – originally, I was going to do that one with Bob, but we couldn’t agree on stuff. So, then I was talking with Tony Visconti, but that didn’t work out, and then I was talking with Don Was, and he got too busy… Those are producers that I’ve always admired. I think I even sent a letter to Jeff Lynne one time… I remember I really wanted to work with Gus Dudgeon, but he passed away. I would still very much love to make an album with Daniel Lanois one day, because we never got to do a full album, but I don’t know that he really produces anymore. I’m about to work with Martin Terefe again – he’s made three of my personal favourite albums that I’ve ever done, so I’m curious to see what we end up doing.
You’ve had your songs covered by lots of different people: k.d. lang, Katie Melua, Nick Lowe, Feist, Michael Bublé, Elvis Costello, Emmylou Harris…Have you got a favourite version?
I’ve always loved Leslie Feist’s version of ‘Secret Heart’ because it’s kind of Europop – I thought it was fun and interesting. Most people who’ve done that song have done it pretty faithfully, which is nice too. k.d. lang did an interesting version of ‘Fallen’ – she straightened it out. My version is in 3 / 4 – it’s a waltz – but she did it in 4 / 4. It’s really cool, but I’ve always wondered who made that decision and why. I hear people on YouTube doing my songs and some of those versions are really good, but nobody knows them.
Nick Lowe, who, like Costello, was a big influence on you, covered one of your songs…
Nick was the first person I ever heard sing one of my songs – I heard him on the radio.
Costello championed your first album…
Elvis is someone I’ve always admired, but I found it hard to cover one of his songs because I didn’t have the right voice for it – that staccato kind of thing. I don’t think I would be talking to you if it wasn’t for Elvis. Nick and I had a lot more common ground in terms of the stuff we were writing. I finished a tour with him a few months ago – it was really fun.
You often get called ‘the songwriters’ songwriter?’ How does that make you feel? It tends to be a term used to describe artists who are obscure and only liked by other musicians…
It’s a bit of a backhanded compliment in a weird way, but I’ve kind of got used to it. For me, it’s funny because I’m only a good songwriter if you happen to like my songs – it’s not this universal thing where everyone loves what you’re doing. I’m not a household name – I have a career and people in the know seem to know what I’m up to… They have to say something, so that’s just what they’ve said… I think I’m really good at writing Ron Sexsmith songs, but if you don’t like those type of songs, then I’m not a good songwriter.
You’ve had a 30-year career – does it feel that long?
It’s just so crazy… It’s a cliché, but I feel that time is just going by so fast – more so in the last 10 years. It feels like it’s really snowballing. I just don’t know where it’s going. I look back in disbelief that I got in the door, and I was able to write these songs and make these records. Every single record I’ve ever made was really hard to make – it’s been hard to get them off the ground. Every time a new album came out, I was just so relieved because I was bouncing around from label to label, and sometimes wondering who was going to pay for that album and which producer was going to work with me. I’m mostly grateful and proud that I’ve hung in there. Lately my shows have been very well-attended – I feel it’s from hanging around so long… People say, ‘Oh, I’ve heard of Ron…’ Pretty much every show I did last year on my tour of Europe was sold out, and that hasn’t always been the case with my career. I’d love to keep going – you see McCartney out there, and he’s 82. I’m only 60, so I’d like to think I could keep going for a couple more decades if possible – as long as I’m still singing good. My son is going to be 40 this year – it’s crazy: he’s older than I was when I started out. I’m just trying to put the brakes on and enjoy it.
If I was a non-Ron Sexsmith fan and wanted to get into your music, which albums would you recommend I listen to?
‘Retriever’ has always been one of my favourites – it’s a very accessible album for people who maybe didn’t like the earlier ones. I think I finally started singing good around that time. I would also say my latest one, ‘The Vivian Line’ – I’m so proud of how it came out. I’m singing good and Brad Jones’s production is amazing on that record. If I were to go back earlier, I might say ‘Other Songs.’ I’m really proud of the debut album because it put me on the map, but ‘Other Songs’ was a bit more fully-realised – the production by Mitchell [Froom] and Tchad [ Blake] on that record is fantastic. My only issue with it is I hadn’t quite found my voice yet, but I think I’m singing good enough on it that I was able to attract a bit of a following. There’s another one I like called ‘The Last Rider’ that didn’t do anything, but it’s the one album I’ve done with my band, and everyone played really well, and I think the songs are good.
So, you’re making the new album and doing the UK shows – any plans for next year?
I’m just getting through that and then getting home for Christmas. There’s talk that the album could come out as early as next spring, but who knows? It will probably be later than that, like in the fall. Depending on when it comes out, that will affect what happens next year. Whenever I’m working on a new album, I can’t wait for it to come out – I’m always excited.
What’s been inspiring your new songs?
It’s hard for me to analyse it, but the songs are very different from ‘The Vivian Line’, which was a contented, ‘life in the country’ kind of thing. It was the same with ‘Hermitage’ – they’re almost companion pieces. The new one is a little more naked lyrically and rawer. Maybe that’s from getting older – the world seems darker and a little scarier. I think that’s reflected in this record. There’s humour on it, though – there’s a song from it I’ve been playing a lot live called ‘Cigarette and Cocktail.’ It’s about when I was a kid – you’d be at a party, all the grown-ups were smoking and everyone had a drink in their hand, and you’d be listening to the adult conversations. Some of it is looking back humorously at a different age.
So, on that note, what would the 60-year-old Ron Sexsmith say to the younger you who was just starting out as a songwriter?
I would just say, ‘Hang in there – it’s going to work out.’
Ron Sexsmith is playing two UK shows in November:
8th November – Manchester RNCM Theatre – Tickets
10th November – London Palladium – Tickets
