"Forever Endeavour" by #RonSexsmith. Well-crafted and produced acoustic pop with 3-minute songs. Many songs have strings backing and there's some #Beatles-vibe. Quality stuff as always from him.
#Music #CD #RecordCollecting #FolkRock #Pop #SingerSongwriter
The Mountain Goats and Ron Sexsmith coming to the west coast in the same month!
Randomly decided to listen to Ron Sexsmith's major label debut from 1995, knew basically nothing about him, but I've really enjoyed him. A mellow, introspective folk with little flashes of rock here and there. I would listen to more.
#ronsexsmith #folk #folkrock #altfolk #90s #canadiana #americana
MusikBlog präsentiert Ron Sexsmith. Wer da?
Ron Sexsmith, ein kanadischer Singer/Songwriter aus Stratford, Ontario (ursprünglich St. ......
#RonSexsmith#ArtPop #IndiePop #News #SingerSongwriter
https://www.musikblog.de/2025/11/musikblog-praesentiert-ron-sexsmith/
Ted Tocks Covers - Year 8 - Day 35
May 9 - A Busy Day in Music History
Good Golly It’s Busy
#HankSnow #therollingstones #SonnyCurtis #theeverlybrothers #billyjoel #melissaetheridge #louisarmstrong #barbrastreisand #bobdylan #billybragg #thedoors #theguesswho #buttholesurfers #brucespringsteen #theboomtownrats #BobGeldof #bonjovi #ronsexsmith #starship #graceslick #AlbertHammond #BonnieTyler #jimmypage #littlerichard
Fasten your seatbelts! Today we are going back over a century and then we will wander along the musical timeline and visit a baker’s dozen of moments that occurred on May 9 over the years. Ted Tock…
"The Vivian Line" by #RonSexsmith.
Well-crafted singer/songwriter pop songs as usual from him. The production is really good here, some nice rich acoustic instrumentation. There's 12 tunes in 30 mins - while I often prefer longer stuff, this works just perfectly.
Ron Sexsmith Sings “Spring of the Following Year”
Listen to this track by celebrated singer-songwriter and rural Ontarian country gentleman Ron Sexsmith. It’s “Spring of the Following Year”, the opening cut to Sexsmith’s 2020 release, Hermitage. That album, his fifteenth since his self-titled 1995 debut, marked a new era for the songwriter who’d made the move from Toronto’s urban metropolis to the leafy environs of Stratford, Ontario.
Sexsmith found that life in his newly adopted hometown had a curious effect on him. The stress of living in Toronto that once unknowingly weighed him down began to dissipate. Surrounded by trees and birds and with daily walks along the river into town to get coffee and run errands, Ron Sexsmith found that ideas for new songs were bursting forth from his songwriter’s brain. A “writing frenzy” ensued. In the middle of a project to turn his book Deer Life into a musical, Sexsmith realized that he had a new record brewing in his imagination as well. It seemed that leaving Toronto, which he initially resisted, turned out to be a pretty good idea after all.
All these new ideas for tunes springing up like daisies seemed directly related to his change of scenery and new chapter in his life. With a general tone and point of view between the songs understood, he wanted to imbue the new record with the same spirit of contentment he was feeling himself as inspired by his new surroundings. With that in mind, Sexsmith considered a new approach to making his new album.
His long-time collaborator and friend Don Kerr suggested that he make a homemade album in the style of Paul McCartney’s early solo career. So, the two of them miked up Sexsmith’s new house and turned it into a temporary studio space. At Kerr’s prompting, Sexsmith sings and plays all the instruments himself, except the drums. Kerr fills the gap behind the drum kit while also serving as producer.
Ron Sexsmith on stage with his band (also on the very big video screens!) at Harbourfront in Toronto, August 2015. image: A & JBy the time the new album came out, the title Hermitage took on new meaning beyond the move to (literally) greener pastures in a new town far from the madding crowd. The album’s release corresponded with a call for a necessary hermitage for everyone in light of Covid-19 lockdowns. With that, “Spring of the Following Year”, a song about looking forward to what the future brings, took on an additional layer of meaning for listeners. It also reflects one of Sexsmith’s trademark acknowledgements evident in many of his other songs: that even when things haven’t come to their full fruition in the present, there’s always the hope that they will in the near future after love has grown that much stronger.
The other songs on the new album find Sexsmith drawing from his seemingly bottomless well of inspiration from the golden age of AM radio. Yet, “Spring of the Following Year” seems to go back even further still as a sterling example of Sexsmith’s ability to write a song that could have been written yesterday or a century ago. This one reflects a Hoagy Carmichael-style traditional pop tune from the American songbook, reflective of Sexsmith’s fascination with crooners like Bing Crosby and their ability to communicate subtle emotions through vocal phrasing.
The feel and atmosphere of this song in that stylistic vein is perfect for the song’s subject matter. This is a love song about the joy of being with the right person and looking forward to what love will look like as it grows even deeper. It’s about feeling safe and secure in the knowledge that two people have built something wonderful together, content in the present while marveling at what the possibilities are for the next year and the year after that.
What birds will sing
In the spring of the following year?
Will there be new birds with words from above?
Guess no one really knows for sure
But I will love you even more
Even more, even more
~ “Spring of the Following Year” by Ron Sexsmith
In the middle of what turned out to be a very trying and even tragic year for the whole world by then, this song was a balm arriving seemingly just in time. The idea of not knowing what the future will bring but being sure that love will be stronger no matter what was such an important concept for so many people at the time. Sexsmith’s song is illuminated by old fashioned sentimentality. At the same time, he turns it into a statement of bold optimism in answer to its times. Somewhere in there, his own happiness shines through to make the music and its sentiment even more affecting.
The whole of Hermitage coalesces around radical gratitude and personal contentment. It celebrates the act and experience of finding joy in the small things, appreciating one’s surroundings and circumstances when one can, and generally being present for ourselves and for each other while we do so. In this, Sexsmith’s work on this song and the rest of the album puts the whole idea that an artist must suffer to create great art to bed for good. Sometimes and even often when artists are happy, they make art that makes everyone happy just when it’s needed most.
Ron Sexsmith is an active artist today. You can learn more about him and stay up to date on music releases, tours, news, and other stuff at ronsexsmith.com.
You can follow Ron on Bluesky. So, you probably should.
Check out this interview with Ron Sexsmith on American Songwriter about how his change of scene affected his songwriting, and how he made the Hermitage record, too.
If you’re a fan of top ten best songs lists, here’s one that lists 10 of Ron Sexsmith’s best on Toppermost.co.uk (Writer’s note: I wrote this one, too!).
Enjoy!
#2020sMusic #chamberPop #FolkPop #RonSexsmith #singerSongwriters
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