
Ron will not start a riot
The Canadian singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith appeared frequently at the first few Fuji Rock Festivals in Naeba, and at perhaps the first one a female member of the web team who didn’t know who he was met him by accident at the World Food Court one night and they talked. Later, a few of us noticed and told her who her interlocutor was. She was surprised. “We talked for about fifteen minutes and he never mentioned once that he was a musician.”
Sexsmith’s unassuming personality is central to his high reputation as a songwriter’s songwriter, though it doesn’t do much to his reputation as a performer. Probably the most exciting thing about his show at the Field of Heaen was his boldly striped jacket. Backed by a tasteful three-piece group, he ran through almost two dozen of his three-and-a-half-minute songs, almost all of which use common cliches as titles: “Hands of Time,” “Get in Line,” “Thinking Out Loud,” “Hard Bargain.” It might be too much to expect Japanese audiences to “get” Sexsmith’s clever word play and sad sense of the world, but they definitely get his way with a melody, and there were a lot more people fixed intently on his show than you might expect. The guy definitely has fans here (Smash, the Fuji organizer, once released one of his albums on its short-lived boutique label), and in the late 90s he used to tour Japan almost yearly. For some reason, he doesn’t any more, though he’s continued to release albums fairly regularly. In a way, his professionalism got the best of him during the gig. He clearly wanted to communicate with the audience but had to fall back on other cliches. (”It’s great to be here,” “I hope you like it…”)
The need for a connection was so acute that during one song, he sang the line, “heavy clouds hanging around/the sun refuses to shine,” and pointed his guitar at the grey sky, and though the audience reacted, it seemed it was not an acknowledgement of the dodgy weather but rather a performance tic. He did the guitar-point thing several times afterward.
But he was definitely affected by the reaction. He dedicated his last song to Japan, which he said “has had a tough year. Please know we’re pulling for you.” The song is “Former Glory,” as in “your eyes will return to their former glory.” Being able to overcome adversity is something Ron Sexsmith knows about.
photo: Julen Esteban-Pretel