From the article in the July/August edition of Performing Songwriter magazine:

Ron Sexsmith: The singer-songwriter's lush melodies transform into a gospel groove

With his ninth studio album, Exit Strategy of the Soul, Ron Sexsmith reaffirms the claim he's one of pop's most gifted composers. Reunited with producer Martin Terefe - who helmed two of Sexsmith's earlier efforts - the Toronto-based musician expands his reach, adding Cuban horns and a co-write with Feist to his latest batch of rich and wistful melodies.

In conversation, Sexsmith's self-effacing demeanor yields and unexpected modesty, especially for an artist who's been hailed by Paul McCartney, Elvis Costello and John Hiatt. Then again, here's a guy who once played in a band called Uncool. "I'm sort of like an old furniture maker," he says of his songwriting skills.

You're fairly prolific, what with nine albums in 13 years.
When my first record came out I was already 31. I wanted to get down to business and have a body of work. I don't really do anything else. I'm not good at anything else (laughs). The illusion is that I'm in this writing frenzy all the time, but the reality is it takes me quite awhile to write even one song.

Do you worry about repeating yourself?
Sometimes. There are probably certain things I've sung about before. But it just seems to happen naturally that every new crop of songs takes you through a certain phase. Life is always coming at you from a different place. I have some albums that are very personal and other records where everything was pretty good in my life, and the songs are more outward-looking. You don't even notice this stuff until afterwards, anyway. With this new record, I felt in a weird way I was almost writing a gospel album. The lyrics seemed different in a way I can't put my finger on.

You describe this album as "shadow gospel."
That's a term I read on the Internet. Sometimes - and this is how sad my life is - I'll type in my name and do a search to see what comes up. I saw this Christian website and some guy was talking about my music, and he was recommending it to people as an alternative to mostly bad Christian rock. But he used that term to describe my music - "shadow gospel." And for this album, I was writing songs of a spiritual nature.

Why haven't you co-written your albums until now?
It's not my favorite thing to do. Oftentimes you're in a room with someone you just met, and it's like a blind date. There's this awkwardness, you're afraid of saying something stupid or suggesting an unusual chord. I've been doing it a bit more because my publisher's been on me. I have friends who have written with big recording artists, and now they're millionaires (chuckles), so I'm trying to do more for all the wrong reasons. If I get lucky once or twice, I won't have to do it again.

What do you say when people ask, "Why isn't Ron more famous?"
When we recorded a song called "Average Joe" for my second album with Mitchell Froom, I remember hearing it through the speakers and thinking, "Wow, that sounds like a hit record!" And Mitchell goes, "Yeah, but what year is it?" And I went, "Oh yeah." I've always found that being in the studio is like you're in a submarine, and the outside world almost doesn't exist. Everything sounds good when you're in the studio, and everything I write sounds like a hit, but then when you hold it up to that stuff that's on the radio, I don't quite get there. I don't really like a lot of the stuff I hear on the radio, so if I did have a hit record, I'd worry if it was any good.

The original article can be found in this month's edition of Performing Songwriter magazine.

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