RS These days, it’s like some kind of badge: “We can’t really play. We’re drunk on stage.” Then sometimes music is just winkin’ at you. It’s not the coolest stuff, but there’s no pretense, like the Carpenters. They weren’t putting on airs or attitude and all this stuff.

CN I think people forget that about some of those bands. There really was nothing cheesy about them.

RS No!

CN It really was quite beautiful.

RS Good musicianship, good songs and just a real eye on structure. There’s the Burt Bacharach school of compact little songs that you can strip right down to the piano and the vocal, and it still sounds great. Randy Newman writes that way too.

CN I hung out with you one time in Texas, and we were talking about Ray Davies.

RS I was always terrified to meet him. I was doing a radio interview that day, and the DJ asked me to stay because Ray Davies was coming, and I just flipped out and I had to run out of the radio station.

CN But haven’t you actually sat down with, like, Paul McCartney?

RS Well, Paul McCartney… I went to his house back in 1996 for breakfast, which was just as surreal as it sounds.

CN Didn’t Elvis Costello win some award and they flew you into England to present it to him because he respected you so much?

RS Well, he didn’t actually know I was presenting it to him – I was the surprise presenter. And that was real nerve-wracking because this was the Ivor Novello Awards, and you look to your left and there’s Led Zeppelin, and there’s Queen sitting at the next table… I had to go up there and say all those things about Elvis, and I was just shakin’.

CN How did you meet Chris Martin from Coldplay?

RS He had seen me on an English TV show and went out and got my record, and while I was on tour, people kept saying that Chris Martin was raving about my record. They contacted us and asked if we wanted to open for them, and we’ve done two tours with them since.

CN It’s not often that one of the biggest bands in the world is actually really good. They can write songs that make you want to cry.

RS Everybody’s rooting for them – finally, another great English band! Radiohead’s great too, but it’s almost like they make things so difficult for everybody, where Coldplay plays a type of music that’s for the people.

CN You started to get radio play in Canada in the last year or two, haven’t you?

RS With the last record, amazingly, we got into the top five, and then the second single didn’t do too bad either. And that’s after years and years of just being kind of shut out.

CN Is that something you’ve strived for?

RS It was something that I’d kind of given up on, actually. I remember feeling kind of bummed out at the time of my debut album because I was getting no radio at all. By the third record, I started thinking that radio’s just not interested in what I’m handin’ out here.

CN Who in Canadian music do you really like right now?

RS Well, I like A.C. Newman.

CN Oh, that’s me!

RS I like Sam Roberts a lot. Pete Elkas. By Divine Right. I don’t think the scene has ever been stronger. There are so many great songwriters and bands.

CN I feel exactly the same way. When I hear about bands like Arcade Fire just getting huge, I think, “Go team!”

RS When I’m on tour, people always ask what it’s like comin’ from the same country as Joni Mitchell and Neil Young – and they’re obviously amazing – but I also come from the land of Rufus Wainwright and Sarah Harmer and…

CN Well, people are saying that this is a great time for Canadian music, but I actually think it’s true. God bless us!

RS God bless us, every one. It’s a great country!

In 1997, A.C. (Carl) Newman formed The New Pornographers, a Vancouver “supergroup” of wildly talented musicians. Their third recording is Twin Cinema, released this August on Mint Records.

Ron Sexsmith ’s CD Retriever features “Whatever It Takes,” a top-5 single and 2005 Juno winner. He has just released a duet record, Destination Unknown, with Don Kerr and will release a new CD in early 2006.

Photographed by Frances Juriansz on
June 4, 2005 at Cameron House in Toronto.