Ron Sexsmith

Ron Sexsmith is a three time, Juno award winning singer songwriter from St Catharines, Ontario. Sexsmith’s songwriting style evolved into a unique and timeless blend of classic pop, contemporary folk, and roots-rock idioms. He has built a steadfast reputation with critics and with some of his own songwriting hero’s (Elton John, Ray Davies, John Prine, Gordon Lightfoot, Leonard Cohen and Paul McCartney) for his characteristically honest, sensitive, and enduring approach to the songwriting craft.

Ron has been releasing albums for 3 decades and has recorded with noted producers Mitchell Froom, Daniel Lanois, Steve Earle, Jim Scott, Don Kerr, Brad Jones, Bob Rock, and Martin Terefe. His extensive song and album catalog has garnered Sexsmith a substantive following and an international touring career. His early years of touring included opening for established artists such as, John Hiatt, Elvis Costello, Sarah McLaughlin, Squeeze, Aimee Mann, Coldplay, Nick Lowe, John Prine, Lucinda Williams and many others. His songs as well, have been covered by the likes of Rod Stewart, Nick Lowe, Emmy Lou Harris, Feist, Michael Buble, and Stevie Nicks to name a few. In the past few decades as a headlining artist, Ron has performed at some of the most prestigious venues in the world, such as Massey Hall, Royal Albert Hall, Carnegie Hall, and The London Palladium—now he returns home to share his timeless songs with Niagara.

A one of Canada's most renowned crooners; Ron made an unexpected discovery: domestic bliss. All it took, it turns out, was leaving the city he adored. After 30 years as a symbol of Toronto's west end, Ron Sexsmith reluctantly relocated to the tranquil hamlet of Stratford, Ontario, and the melodic, playful, theatrically vivacious Hermitage poured forth.

"Almost immediately after arriving here I just felt this kind of enormous stress cloud evaporate and all these songs started coming," recalls Sexsmith. "I'd walk along the river every day into town and feel like Huckleberry Finn or something. It had a really great effect on my overall state of being."

This new zen can be heard from the first moments of the album's opener, "Spring of the Following Year," as the soothing sound of birds immerses the listener in Sexsmith's state of grace.

"We'd moved in the winter time and I was imagining how pretty it was going to be in the spring," he explains. "We have this sort of idyllic kind of existence -- we have bunnies in the yard and are surrounded by trees on all sides, so we get tons of birds. Every morning I hear these Cardinals and we had a duck in the yard I'd never really noticed birds in Toronto."

It's not like he was planning to write his 16th long player as soon as he arrived, he adds. After all, Sexsmith was already quite busy turning his first novel, Deer Life, into a perspective musical. But when melodies as infectious as the Chi-Lights-inspired "You Don't Want to Hear It" or the ear-worm inducing "Lo and Behold" entered his mind, he had to get them on record. Adding his signature mischievously astute worldplay (in "Dig Nation," for example) to ground the album firmly in the Sexsmith oeuvre. Even the album's title is a coy subversion of the 15 time Juno nominee's own expectations upon arriving in Justin Bieber's hometown. "I felt I'd reached the age where I could be a hermit finally, but it didn't really work out that way," he laughs.