Last year Ron Sexsmith felt a lump in his throat — and not because the musician, who specializes in a certain brand of mope rock, had just written another sad, sad song. The other kind of lump, the one that makes a person ponder the big questions.
For three months, the Toronto-based singer-songwriter was getting tested and waiting for the news while trying to record his newly released album, Forever Endeavour.
“I feel weird talking about it because it turned out OK, you know,” says Sexsmith, over coffee at the Thompson Toronto near his Trinity Bellwoods area home. “A lot of people don’t get the good news.”
While he was worrying and waiting, Sexsmith wrote some of the most touching and introspective songs on his album, including the beautiful “Morning Light” — one of many drop-dead gorgeous songs he’ll be performing tonight at Toronto’s Randolph Theatre.
But a little lump trouble is just one of the many ups and downs Sexsmith has had to endure dating back to the recording of his previous album, Long Player Late Bloomer. Two years ago, the crooner teamed up with producer Bob Rock to turn out the most mainstream and accessible album of his long and storied career.
As news trickled out from the studio, interest from south of the border was swift and intense — until they heard the finished product. For the first time, Sexsmith was told his music was too commercial.
“I couldn’t believe it,” says Sexsmith. “I thought if any record, this was the slickest thing I’d ever done. They said it was too commercial. I’d never heard that before. For years it had been the opposite, so I just sort of … all enthusiasm I had just got knocked out of me. I went into this, you know, stupor, where I was just, like, feeling whatever I’m doing nobody is interested. But what happens, when you feel that way and you’re a songwriter, you end up writing a song about it. And you start to feel a little better about it.”
The aforementioned stupor fixer-upper, “Nowhere to Go,” kicks off the new album. This is a record that marks a return to his, well, non-commercial thing.
“This is what I do best, this kind of stuff,” he says in a tone even more modest than it reads for a musician who has turned out 13 albums, won a Juno Award for Record of the Year and has long been considered one of the finest songwriters the Great White North has ever turned out.
And the stuff in question is a dozen songs that speak to the big issues and universal themes that touch us all in a characteristically straightforward and mature way. He makes it all seem so easy. But it didn’t start out that way at all.
When he moved to Toronto from St. Catharines, he started playing open stages and caught the ear of Bob Wiseman, who at the time was playing keyboards in Blue Rodeo. At Wiseman’s suggestion, Sexsmith went to play the open stage at a little basement juke joint called Fat Albert’s, where he started playing alongside some of the city’s finest songwriters, including Kyp Harness, Stan Larkin, Bob Snider and, of course, Wiseman himself, who offered to produce a demo for the young musician.
Sexsmith released his debut album, Grand Opera Lane, and signed a record deal with Interscope, putting out his major label release in 1995. Eleven albums, reams of critical praise and a large-enough fan base have followed Sexsmith ever since.
Though he’s never had commercial success, he’s endured, and that’s just fine by him.
“The music I’ve been making, since the first album, has always been unfashionable,” says Sexsmith. “I don’t look like the people on the radio either. These days you gotta have washboard abs and perfect teeth. So I don’t understand why people think I should be more famous.… I got the career I was meant to have just based on the kind of music I’m doing.”
Ron Sexsmith plays at Randolph Theatre on March 22
