Ron Sexsmith is comfortable with the path he’s carved ‘on the service road of the music industry’

One doesn’t need to know the circumstances of Ron Sexsmith’s personal life to feel a genuine sense of contentment and comfort with himself and his place in the world emanating from his new album, “The Vivian Line.”

“I could never see the relevance or the intelligence / Of preaching doom and gloom,” sings the St. Catharines-born singer/songwriter on the jaunty “What I Had in Mind.” On the whole, “The Vivian Line” — named for a rural route leading out of his recently adopted home of Stratford — oozes positive vibes and pleasure in domesticity, longtime romance, and his own perpetual status as an outsider and an underappreciated “cult” icon.

“Outdated and antiquated / I belong in the past,” he shrugs on “Outdated and Antiquated.” “Can’t seem to go with the flow / It just don’t make sense / I don’t fit in.”

Even when “The Vivian Line” — recorded between COVID-19 lockdowns in 2021 in Nashville with Matthew Sweet/Josh Rouse producer Brad Jones — confronts the death of a loved one in “Flower Boxes,” the vibe is reassuringly upbeat. And judging by the many references to sudden summer storms, glistening morning dew and city slickers botching barn renovations to the delight of giggling farmers, not to mention the Vivian Line itself, a lot of Sexsmith’s current happiness would seem to stem from his new semirural situation beyond the streets of Toronto, upon which he was a fond fixture for decades until he packed up for Stratford a few years ago.

The Star caught up with Sexsmith a few days before release of his 17th album this Friday and a week before he was to embark on his first U.S. tour since 2015. What follows is a slightly condensed version of a long and engaging conversation with one of the finest songwriters and humblest human beings in the country.

I walked down here in the sunshine to the beach at Ontario Place listening to the new record and it’s just a lovely piece of work, Ron. That’s the only word for it.

Well, thank you. I’ve been sort of afraid to listen to it because I finished it so long ago and they make you wait forever for it to come out. I just got my first advance copy of it, which I am hopefully going to listen to either today or tomorrow.

I think I’d get a “country life is good” vibe off it even without knowing what the Vivian Line is. It feels very comfortable and content.

We’re not even really in the country. We’re in Stratford and I don’t drive, so I really need to be in this village where I can walk and get a coffee and everything, but we’re sort of on the edge of the town and it’s an old farmhouse — it used to be a farm at one point — so we’re surrounded by the country, that’s for sure. We got out just in time. I was dragging my feet because I thought I didn’t really wanna move, but we couldn’t afford a house in Toronto so we got here right before the housing market went berserk like everywhere else. I never thought I’d own a house, you know? I feel like I’ve put my big-boy pants on or something.

It just seems like a really honest statement of where you are as a human being now.

Every record you do, you’re sort of in the headspace you’re in and the songs usually reflect that. And I feel like this album’s a bit of an extension of the last one (2020’s “Hermitage”), even though the last one was a little more romantic and this one has a kind of wistful thing about it. I don’t think I could have worn a feather boa on the cover of this record, you know, whereas the last one felt — not silly or anything, but the songs were a little more quirky. You don’t really analyze it while you’re doing it, but I’ve been reading certain reviews and I’m sort of learning stuff about the album just from reading other people’s reviews. That’s the art of the journalist: they’re able to articulate things about the songs or the vibe or whatever that I’m too close to, or artists in general are too close to.

This was written right in the middle of COVID, right?

I wasn’t expecting to have any new songs and then this avalanche of songs started coming, and I didn’t even know if Warner Music wanted another record so there were all these factors and also, because of all the lockdowns, we weren’t sure if we’d be able to travel to America. So it sort of worked out in this amazing way where it became possible we could actually go down there and when we came back everything shut down again, so it was like this weird portal that we went through and made the record and came home. It almost made it “meant to be” or something. The whole pandemic was so strange. I feel a bit weird now that I’m leaving on tour tomorrow. The world doesn’t feel very inviting. And I’ve really become a homebody. I was always on the go before and now I just really like being home and I need my routine. So with this whole tour, that all goes out the window and I’m trying to get my head around it, trying to get back in shape and remember “Oh, this is what I do, right? This is what I do for a living.”

I can’t imagine having my livelihood and my identity ripped away from me like that.

During the pandemic, right in the heart of it, I was playing twice a month here in Stratford at a church, kind of like a residency. We were allowed to have 50 people inside. I’d been feeling so useless when the one thing I’m supposed to be good at, I wasn’t able to do, right? And it gave people this semi-normal night out where they could have dinner and see a show. That really helped me get through it. It was so surreal. Normally, when there’s tragedy, you can be with people you love, you know? You can huddle with your friends. And this was denying you even that. And I knew it was very serious; I was supposed to go on tour with John Prine a few months after he passed away, actually, so that was the one that really hit home for me. I knew they weren’t playing around with this pandemic. Although I never got it the whole time. I think I’m too dumb to get it or something

I love the arrangements on this record.

That’s all Brad Jones. Brad Jones blew my mind. I worked with him years ago, just as a bass player — he played bass on a bunch of my records — but I had no idea the guy had such a serious mind in terms of arrangements and stuff. I went down there with how I was going to sing this or that, and I had all these harmonies and I would show him, and he’d be, like, “That’s really good, but why don’t you try this instead?” And he was always right. His ideas were always better than mine. It was almost annoying.

The ideal producer makes you a better version of yourself.

I’ve worked with so many producers and they’ve all been sort of good in their own way, but I never felt any one of them knew how to get a good vocal from me. I think Brad was the first guy, really. I think I’m singing technically better than I used to, but I was also just really pleased how everything was sounding coming through the speakers. If I go to listen to an old album of mine, I have to really psych myself up because on the early records my voice was vibrating too much, or sometimes the production was too weird or not right. But with Brad it’s like, I don’t know why it took me so long to make a record with this guy.

Did you ever think when you started doing this you’d be making 17 albums and touring on two different continents years down the road?

I don’t know what I thought. I was already old when I got signed. I was 30 when I got signed and 31 when my first album came out. I wanted to have a body of work and, thankfully, I was prolific, you know? But it is weird to look back now. Mostly I feel like a survivor because I’m not someone who’s ever sold a lot of records, but I’ve been able to somehow kind of stay in the game. I feel like I’m on the service road of the music industry, where I’m making records and people are interested and into it but, in general, my music doesn’t resonate at all with the culture or anything. And that’s fine. You know, it’s been almost 10 years since I was nominated for, like, a Juno or anything and I could never figure out how to make a record that would get on the radio like some of my contemporaries were doing. And now all that stuff is out the window. I don’t even think about it anymore.

Knowing that you’ve got a good gaggle of people all over the world excited at the prospect of a new Ron Sexsmith album must be its own reward at a certain point.

It’s crazy. My wife and I were just talking about it. I’ve never done that well in America, but I know that some of the shows are sold out and I’m hoping for the best. And then, you know, a few years ago we headlined the Royal Albert Hall and that blew my mind. That was not even on my list of possibilities. I always dreamed of playing Massey Hall and I finally did that in 2006 and then I did it a couple of other times, but the Royal Albert Hall — I mean, I’d opened for people there, but to headline it? I even flew my parents over for that one.

“See, Mom and Dad, I didn’t waste my life.”

It was a “pinch yourself” thing and I’m very grateful that I’ve been able to have these little pockets of interest all over the place. On my upcoming U.K. tour, if I’m playing London I’ll play, like, a bigger venue, but all the other venues I’m playing are mostly clubs and small theatres. But they’re always full of people who are into my stuff. There’s so many levels that you can exist in the music industry. You can be like The Weeknd, way up there, or you can have this sort of career that I have and everything in between. So it’s maybe not what I dreamed about when I was a teenager and being Elton John or something, but in the same way I’m kind of doing what he’s doing. I’m making records and doing interviews and all that, and I’ve got to meet a lot of my heroes so I feel like, for a kid from St. Catharines, it’s worked out. I did pretty well.

Ben Rayner is a Toronto-based journalist and a frequent contributor to the Star’s Culture section. Follow him on Twitter: @ihatebenrayner

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