ALBUMS THAT SHOULD EXIST : RON SEXSMITH ‘REASONS TO BELIEVE’ Vols 1-5 | The Fifth!

Ron Sexsmith - Reasons to Believe, Volume 5: 2009-2012

Paul says: Once again, here's another in a long series of stray tracks albums for Canadian singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith.

If you like the previous volumes, you should like this one too. I don't have much else to say, other than to explain where the songs come from.

All but the last two songs have been officially released. Those two are from concert bootlegs. The other songs are generally from tribute albums, appearances on albums by other musicians, and bonus tracks. Tracks 7 through 9 are bonus tracks from the 2011 album "Long Player Late Bloomer."

There are more originals on this one than the previous volumes, I think. The three bonus tracks mentioned above are originals. So are the two songs with Carlos Fregtman (tracks 4 and 5). "Love Shines" is another original, from the "Long Player Late Bloomer" album, but track 12 is a solo acoustic version done in concert.

"Day Is Done," originally by Nick Drake, is the sole bonus track. It's a lovely version, but unfortunately it's from an audience concert bootleg, and the sound quality isn't as good as the rest.

Thanks again to Pete BBBB for help in putting this together and figuring out the original artists for each song, as he's done for the whole "Reason to Believe" series. 

This album is 45 minutes long, not including the bonus track.

Here's a list of the original artists for each song: 

01 Crayon Angels - Judee Sill
02 Broken in Two - Krista Hartman
03 When I Need You - Leo Sayer
04 Ghost of a Chance - Carlos Fregtman & Ron Sexsmith
05 Thoughts and Prayers - Carlos Fregtman & Ron Sexsmith
06 Broken Hearted People - Guy Clark
07 Next Time - Ron Sexsmith
08 Wooden Toys - Ron Sexsmith
09 Chambermaid - Ron Sexsmith
10 I Surrender Dear - Bing Crosby
11 Give Me Love [Give Me Peace on Earth] - George Harrison 
12 Love Shines - Ron Sexsmith
13 Good Old Desk - Harry Nilsson
Day Is Done - Nick Drake

ALBUMS THAT SHOULD EXIST | More Ron (who you calling a mor. . . . nah leave it!) | Ron Sexsmith Reasons To Believe Vol IV 2006 - 2009 |

Ron Sexsmith - Reasons to Believe, Volume 4: 2006-2009

Paul Says: Here's another album of Ron Sexsmith's non-album tracks, with the vast majority of them covers. I hope you're enjoying this series, because there are a bunch more volumes to come.

All but one song here has been officially released. That one song is the last one, "Ring Them Bells," which comes from a concert bootleg.

Four songs are extras for his 2008 album "Exit Strategy of the Soul." Tracks 6 and 7 are bonus tracks available only on the Japanese release (and boy were they hard to get!), while tracks 8 and 9 are more conventional bonus tracks. The other songs are a typical mix of appearances on other artists' albums, various artists collections, and movie soundtracks.

I think the song "Fall at Your Feet" deserves special mention. This was done for a live album by a flamenco guitar virtuoso named Jesse Cook. With Sexsmith on vocals and Cook on guitar, I dare say they actually outdid the excellent Crowded House original. 

Note that I'd be stretching things to call this a covers album, because six of the songs were written by Sexsmith, more than on any of the previous volumes in this series.

Once again, thanks to Pete the Greek for his help putting these albums together.

This album is 48 minutes long. 

Here's a list of the original artists for each song: 

01 Love Henry - traditional
02 Dumptruck - Ron Sexsmith
03 Philadelphia - Neil Young
04 Moonlight Becomes You - Bing Crosby
05 Fall at Your Feet - Crowded House
06 Here Comes My Baby - Cat Stevens
07 Rain on the Roof - Ron Sexsmith
08 Seems to Me - Ron Sexsmith
09 Too Good to Be True - Ron Sexsmith
10 Devoted to You - Everly Brothers
11 Something to Hold On To [At Christmas] - Ron Sexsmith
12 Simple Grace - Chris Warren
13 Whatever It Takes - Ron Sexsmith
14 Ring Them Bells - Bob Dylan

Albums That Should Exist : Ron Sexsmith covers Vol III 2002 -2005

 

Ron Sexsmith - Reasons to Believe, Volume 3: 2002-2005

This is Volume 3 of my Rox Sexsmith stray tracks collection. It mostly consists of cover versions, but there are a few originals in there.

All but two of the songs are officially release. Those two are "Guess Things Happen That Way" and "Wrecking Ball." They're from concert bootlegs. But they're probably from soundboards, because their sound quality is excellent.

Regarding the officially released songs, six of them come from the 2004 album "Has-Been and Wives:" tracks 5, 8, 9, 11, 13, and 15. Technically, this album was credited to "the Kelele Brothers," but that's just another name for Sexsmith and his backing band. They did another album in 2001, and I included some songs from that on the last album in this series. As with that volume, I've only included the songs where Sexsmith is the lead vocalist. I've scattered them between some other songs because the sound is ukelele-centric, and I wanted to spread that out.

Regarding the other songs, they're generally from various artists collections and appearances on other artists' albums. For instance, there are songs from tribute albums to Stephen Foster, NRBQ, and Gordon Lightfoot. There's also one song, "All Too Much," that's a bonus track.

Note that the first song, "Wastin' Time," appears on his debut studio album "Ron Sexsmith." But this is a piano-centric version that I figured was different enough to merit inclusion.

As with the rest of this series, thanks to Pete BBBB for help finding the songs and organizing the information about them.

This album is 50 minutes long.

Here's a list of the original artists for each song: 

01 Wastin' Time [Piano Version] - Ron Sexsmith
02 Maybe This Christmas - Ron Sexsmith
03 Guess Things Happen That Way - Johnny Cash
04 Drifters - Gordon Lightfoot
05 Chick Habit - Serge Gainsbourg / April March
06 All Too Much - Ron Sexsmith
07 Wrecking Ball - Neil Young
08 Father Christmas - Kinks
09 Boredom and Loneliness - Ron Sexsmith
10 Comrades Fill No Glass for Me - Stephen Foster
11 I Don't Want to Hear It Anymore - Randy Newman / Dusty Springfield
12 My Girlfriend's Pretty - NRBQ
13 Blue, Red and Grey - Who
14 Los Mismo Que Yo [If Only] - Alex Cuba & Ron Sexsmith 
15 One Brown Mouse - Jethro Tull  

16 Song No. 6 - Ane Bruno. 

ALBUMS THAT SHOULD EXIST : Reasons To Believe Vol 2 - RON SEXSMITH + Some extra Ron Sexsmith cover songs

 . . . . . . and we’ll wrap up todays blast from Albums That Should Exist with volume two of Ron Sexsmith’s Cover songs

Vol II from ATSE who says:

"I recently started posting a big series of albums containing all the songs by Ron Sexsmith I could find that aren't on any of his studio albums, including his rarities collection simply called "Rarities." Here's a second volume. 
As with the first volume, the vast majority of the songs are cover versions, but not all of them are. Two songs here, tracks one and three, were written by Sexsmith.
All but four of the songs were officially released. As usual with all the albums I post at this blog, check out the mp3 tags for details. It's the typical mix of songs from singles, various artists collections, appearances on other artist's albums, and the like.
One special case here is that tracks 11, 12, and 13 are from a 2001 album by the Kelele Brothers called "Escape from Bover County." In fact, this band was made up of Sexsmith and members of his backing band, with an emphasis on prominently using the ukelele. They recorded some songs just for fun while in hotel rooms during a concert tour. The album gave the backing band members a chance to shine and sing lead vocals. I selected just the songs I liked with Sexsmith as the lead vocalist.

As for the four unreleased songs, those are tracks five through eight. They all come from different 1999 concerts. The sound quality is very good on those, and I removed the crowd noise as best I could (using the MVSEP program) to help those songs fit in with all the studio tracks."

This album is 48 minutes long. 

Here's the list of the original artists for each song: 

01 You Alone - Ron Sexsmith
02 Ships Go Out - Tom T. Hall
03 Camelot Towers - Ron Sexsmith
04 Reason to Believe - Tim Hardin
05 Everyday I Write the Book - Elvis Costello
06 Snowbird - Anne Murray
07 Factory - Bruce Springsteen
08 Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye - Leonard Cohen
09 Lucid Dreams - Captain Funk
10 Always - Shea Seger
11 The Girl Can't Help It - Bobby Troup / Little Richard
12 Philadelphia Baby - Charlie Rich
13 The Joker [That's What They Call Me] - Billy Myles
14 An Elephant Insect - Shonen Knife
15 This Is Where I Belong - Kinks

here . . . .  

Ron Sexsmith - Reasons To Believe (by Tim Hardin)

Ron Sexsmith - The Long and Winding Road (The Beatles)

Justin looks at Ron Sexsmith . . . . . . . . . .

Justin Hawkins Rides Again

nicely said Justin . . . . . .(if you don’t know it subscribe to Justin’s Webcast! its on You Tube!)

Song of the Day : Ron Sexsmith - To Ramona (with Dawn Kinnard)

Ron Sexsmith - To Ramona (with Dawn Kinnard) 

after the Albums that Should exist special I went hunting ( like ya do) and found this . . . 

love some Ron and the accompaniment is intriguing huh? Dawn had just learnt it! Awesome lass

I like him, I like her, I LIKE ‘em!

RON SEXSMITH - Reasons To Believe Vol 1 - Albums That Should Exist

RON SEXSMITH- Reasons To Believe Vol 1 - Albums That Should Exist

This is just excellent and a wonderful project from 'Albums That Should Exist' and he is so good at this I hesitate (briefly) to say this is one of his best (it is!) but it is well chosen and highly listenable. I can’t wait to see if he does a volume two. Bet he does. If you don’t have any Ron Sexsmith go out and buy some today! Bravo Stratford: The Spirit of Community

ATSE says :

"A few months ago, a follower of this blog named Pete the Greek contacted me with an idea. He's a huge fan of singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith, and he suggested I made some albums of all of Sexsmith's non-album tracks. Now, I'm a fan of Sexsmith's music, but not a huge fan. I don't even have all of his studio albums. But Pete the Greek sent me a collection of non-album tracks, and I thought they were very good. I actually liked them more than a lot of his studio albums. It helps that a lot of them are cover songs, and Sexsmith has excellent taste in covers. 

So I began working with Pete the Greek on this, and things kind of snowballed. I think we originally started with four albums of material, but ended up with eight! That's a lot for a singer-songwriter who isn't even that well known. But it's all good stuff, in my opinion. Actually, I consider this very similar to the series of Marshall Crenshaw covers albums I've been posting, with a similar number of albums. Both of them are musician's musicians with deep, deep record collections. But this is somewhat different in that it includes all of Sexsmith's non-album tracks. Most are covers, but there are a fair number of originals. The only thing I didn't include was songs from his 2003 compilation album "Rarities." That's mostly a collection of B-sides from the earlier part of his music career.  

I'm calling this series "Reasons to Believe." I was looking over the song titles on the different albums I made, and I noticed he did the Tim Hardin classic "Reason to Believe." That made me think of "Reasons to Believe," as in, hopefully these albums will give you additional reasons to believe that Sexsmith is a very talented musician and songwriter, if you weren't aware of that already.

Note that Sexsmith has also posted hundreds of cover versions and alternate versions of his originals to his YouTube channel over the years. I'm not including ANY of that here, because that's an entirely different can of worms. I have posted two albums of Kinks covers mostly drawing from that. Perhaps I'll make other albums from that in the future, we'll see.

Thanks again to Pete the Greek. Without his help every step of the way, this series of albums wouldn't have happened.

If you want to know the sourcing for all the songs, check the mp3 tags for details (which is the case for ALL the albums I post here, by the way). But, in brief, tracks 2 and 11 through 13 are the officially released ones, from B-sides and other artists' albums. The rest come from a demo (track 10), in-person radio sessions (tracks 1, 4, and 5) or concert bootlegs (the rest). When it comes to concert recordings, I've used the new MVSEP audio editing program to wipe out the crowd noise as much as possible, so hopefully they all sound like studio versions.

This album is 50 minutes long.

And here's the track list:

01 You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go
02 You're Learning 
03 New Pony 
04 Ribbon of Darkness 
05 Caroline, No
06 To Ramona 
07 Windows of the World (Ron Sexsmith & Elvis Costello)
08 Everyday I Write the Book
09 Love Minus Zero-No Limit
10 Dirty Windows [Demo]
11 We'll Manage
12 It's All Over but the Smoke (Jules Shears & Ron Sexsmith)
13 Overcast (Mitchell Froom & Ron Sexsmith)
14 Listen to What the Man Said 
15 Sundown 
16 You Still Believe in Me 

 ‘If Not For You’ Ron at home - because his wife told him to!

This is not included on the compilation above

The acclaimed Stratford-based singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith performs "If Not for You" by Bob Dylan, presented as part of Bravo Stratford: The Spirit of Community, an on-line community special broadcast live during COVID-19. To watch the entire special please visit: bravostratford.ca. For more information on Ron Sexsmith, please visit: ronsexsmith.com

Check out the poster on the back wall when he introduces this fine impromptu version . . . . .

Ron - To Ramona

but this one is included!