Hard Bargain

Ron Sexsmith turns the ordinary into art.

Ron Sexsmith knows where you live.

Sorry folks, I’ve not been able to record a voiceover for this letter as I’m currently recovering (or trying to recover) from Covid. My voice is not yet fit for public consumption.

A song is a crafted thing, and every songwriter approaches that craft differently. There are an infinite number of ways to fasten words to music, to take silence – the musical blank page – and to fill it with something wonderful.

By the time most listeners encounter a song, it has taken on an encompassing skin of polish. The awkward, often frustrating work of its creation has been smoothed over. Once finished, a song should feel something like inevitable, as if its writer had simply found it somewhere and dusted it off. But evidence of its construction – the craft and the graft that went into it – remain. Sometimes in plain sight.

This song is by Ron Sexsmith, a writer of rare skill. For almost three decades he has produced album after album of melodic and memorable work. He’s also extraordinarily consistent – if he’s written a bad song I’ve never heard it. This, from his 2004 album Retriever, is one of my favourites.

“I’m a bit run down, but I’m okay.” That’s how the song begins, and it’s pretty much how Sexsmith sounds, here as always. His voice has a sweet but melancholy lilt that I love. It’s as if he’s just had some disappointing news, but is willing to look on the bright side, if you insist.

The music suits the mood. It’s restrained, with all edges softened. There’s something comforting about the warmth of that electric guitar – reassuring even. And reassurance is where we’re headed here. But not directly.

Each of the first two verses works, lyrically, on pretty much the same formula. Things for me are meh, they say, but ‘you drive a hard bargain’. And it sounds great, of course, since one of Sexsmith’s real gifts is melody. You only have to hear that plaintive repeated line a couple of times and it’s stuck in your head for good.

But what does it mean?

You start to get it by context. And by the time the chorus (or is it a bridge?) comes around, the meaning clicks into place:

How's a guy supposed to fail
With someone like you around?
I've tried and tried to no avail
You just can't seem to let me down
You drive a hard bargain.

So that’s it. This is a song about a man who doesn’t feel great, who anticipates his own failure – perhaps even seeks it at times – but who is held back from it by a supportive ‘you’. A ‘you’ who refuses to let him down. That support is framed as ‘a hard bargain’, which I suppose makes sense, just about. I can imagine satisfying interpretations for it, anyway. Interpretations that expand my previous understanding of that phrase. Which is a good thing.

But what interests me most is not the slight oddness – or freshness – of what the phrase means here. It’s the fact the phrase, and the way it’s employed as a refrain, feels so characteristic of Ron Sexsmith. Many songwriters have particular signatures that recur in their work, and this is one of his.

Of course, it’s hardly unusual to take a common phrase and put it in a song, but Sexsmith does it all the time. On this album alone, there are songs called ‘Imaginary Friends’, ‘From Now On’, ‘Whatever It Takes’, ‘How on Earth’, and ‘I Know it Well’. And a similarly lengthy list could be compiled from most (though not all) of his albums. In each of these songs, the title phrase appears repeatedly in the lyrics; indeed, the title acts as a kind of anchor or centre, around which the song turns.

I can’t prove this, naturally, but I have a hunch that Sexsmith often uses phrases like these as a starting point in his writing, a way to break the silence. He takes a familiar scrap of language – sometimes a cliche, sometimes just a common expression – and he finds the music in it. ‘Hard bargain’ is a perfect example. It’s sonically pleasing: the long vowels chime with each other, and both words can be stretched out as long as you like. Take a couple of words like that and try to sing them instead of saying them; all of a sudden you have the first building block, the cornerstone, of a song. I think that’s what he does.

What this technique creates is songs that sound vaguely familiar even the first time you hear them. There’s a feeling of recognition, triggered by the language. Sometimes, as in this song, Sexsmith does something new with whatever phrase he’s chosen. He takes a cliche and uses it in an unconventional way. Often though, the words mean exactly what you’d expect them to mean. And why not?

I mentioned above that evidence of a songwriter’s craft, their unique ways of working, can sometimes be left in plain sight. And now that I think of it, that would make a great Ron Sexsmith song: ‘In Plain Sight’. It’s exactly the kind of phrase he likes to sing. There’s an inherent rhythm to it. A nice short vowel to start with, then two more, either of which can be extended or contracted as required.

I can almost hear it now . . .