Supplied

Strategic Spiritualism | Is it possible that this sort of belief might not bring Ron Sexsmith any closer to happiness? Buck up, man!

Ron Sexsmith
w/ Meaghan Smith. Oct. 3 (7pm). Myer Horowitz Theatre (SUB, U of A campus). Tickets: $27.50, available through Ticketmaster (451-8000/ticketmaster.ca).

Even spiritualists run into hotel troubles, as SEE found out last week while trying to get hold of Ron Sexsmith. Our interview was scheduled for 9:20 a.m., but when the phone rang, the tired voice on the line could only manage a vague mumble about the insane hotel employees running through the halls banging pots and pans and hollering like banshees for the sleeping guests to get the hell out.

It was checkout time: time to change the sheets and scrub that godawful ring out of the tub to make room for guests with fresh money.

“They were a terrible, just awful hotel,” Sexsmith groggily mumbled an hour later into the receiver of a borrowed cell phone. “We didn’t even get in until 3:30 a.m., then they were saying we had to get out of our rooms by 11:00 a.m. Then I said, ‘What about the interview?’”

The band decided to leave immediately after their Boston gig the night before to put some miles behind them on their way to Vienna, Virginia. Despite the upset at the hotel, Sexsmith and his crew managed to find a Tim Hortons in the wilds of America and his caffeine buzz had him interested in talking religion.

Sexsmith’s latest album, Exit Strategy of the Soul, has heavy spiritual overtones that the 44-year-old singer/songwriter refers to as “shadow gospel” — a term he picked up after reading an online review of one of his previous albums. At the time Sexsmith had been writing Exit Strategy almost entirely on the piano, a habit that had him feeling like a Sunday School teacher.

The songs on the album are thoughts, prayers, and expressions of writer’s guilt he says, and as a result the sound is very gospel-like. “I felt like I was taking diction,” he says. “[The lyrics] were kind of just flowing through me as opposed to me pulling my hair out over them. You can have music that is sort of spiritual or that has an element of it without having all of the guilt and stuff that goes with religion. Because I’m not really a religious person, but I am a God-conscious person.”

The idea of a higher power was inculcated into Sexsmith during his childhood, growing up in a “watered-down Protestant” household in St. Catherine’s, Ont. He attended Sunday School “religiously.” He still has the Bible they gave him for maintaining a perfect attendance record three years in a row.

However, as he grew older, his perspective of the world widened with the help of heroes like Buddy Holly, Charlie Rich, and The Kinks and young Sexsmith began to question his blind faith. His realization that organized religion doesn’t support forward thinking rubbed him the wrong way. “I think there’s a reason why they use words like ‘flock,’” he says. “I’ve never seen God as some kind of judgmental, angry thing that lives in the sky. I think a lot of people have a concept of heaven as some sort of exclusive club where only people who think like they do fit in. I just try to think for myself.”

But don’t label Sexsmith as New Age — he sure doesn’t. Instead, his spirituality rests in the belief that there is a higher power that we can’t help but notice. “You can hear it in music, see it in art and people, and you know when it’s not there,” he says. “When we die, our bodies are sitting there lifeless because something has left it.”

To Sexsmith, spirituality doesn’t always translate smoothly. Sometimes it appears rough and full of truth in its imperfections — his example being the piano on Exit Strategy. He admits that his keyboard skills are less than technically sound and concedes, “The good piano playing on the record is done by someone else.” (That would be Kevin Hearn of Barenaked Ladies.)

Sexsmith figured his latest album would be more interesting with something rough at the centre of it all. An even further departure from his traditional repertoire was the Cuban brass section added to “Brighter Still,” a song he wrote on a flight to Cuba where he spent five days sipping drinks on Raúl Castro’s home turf. He was skeptical of the plan at first, but once he heard the Cuban musicians the brass on the disc became a point of pride for Sexsmith.

Being open and able to notice when there’s potential for a song is a writer’s job, he explains. As long as an artist is trying to speak the truth, they will find themselves on the right path. “I’m playing with all the best intentions,” he says.