Harvey Sawler - One Man Grand Band: The Lyric Life of Ron Hynes

FOR CHARLOTTE STEWART

The music business is a cruel
and shallow money trench,

a long plastic hallway where
thieves and pimps run free,

and good men die like dogs.
Theres also a negative side.

HUNTER THOMPSON

CONTENTS

It is those we live with and should know who elude us, but we can still love them. We can love completely without complete understanding.

NORMAN MCLEAN

(the signature line at the end of Rons e-mails throughout 2015)

IF THERE IS ANYTHING I LEARNED through my time with Ron Hynes, it was this: expect the unexpected.

Like the odd fact that he was a student at the Arthur Murray School of Dance in Victoria, British Columbia, when he was twenty-three and, according to Ron, that actor and fellow Newfoundlander Gordon Pinsent did the very same thing, but in Montreal. Or that he absolutely loved shopping for hats and boots and scarves and jackets. Or that his girlfriend was a doctor in far flung Toronto. Or that he loved old westerns. Or that he wore salon-applied acrylic fingernails in order to play guitar. Or that he relished the idea, like American country legend Hank Williams, of having an alter ego. Or that he handed around his prized instruments with great regularity and then usually regretted doing so. Or that during his worst infestations involving crack cocaine, he could seem like Jack Nicholsons horrifying character, Jack Torrance, in The Shining. Or that, like great photographers who see images the rest of us dont see, Ron could find the value and romance and tragedy and beauty of stories where most of us might see no story whatsoeverstories which he translated into lyrics and melody.

Or how about the crazy fact that on the verge of dying, on November 12, 2015, he asked me to join him on LinkedIn. Six days later, on November 19, he died at around 6 p.m.

With so many dimensions, it was easy in the beginning to become hooked on the narcotic of Ron Hynes. Then at other moments, it became just as easy to consider abandoning this biography project altogether. Until his closing months in 2015, as he became more and more responsive to my questions and absorbed in the fact the biography was happening, I never really knew whether Ron might simply walk away from the project himself.

In his final days, his sense of humour remained intact. On November 6, he e-mailed to see how the book was coming along.

Winter slowly creeping in here. Any news from your way re a first draft of a finish of the Ron saga? Wouldnt have your life for love or money putting word to paper concerning a ragged assed contender like me.

Although I knew through the grapevine what state he was in, that he was basically on his last legs, I laughed out loud when I read the note. And more so when he wrote later that day to say his next album would be titled The Ragged Ass Contender.

Earlier, on November 4, after Ron had gone public through Newfoundland mainstream and all forms of social media about his cancer having reappeared, he wrote to me in the middle of the night.

The Facebook post I wrote yesterday afternoon now has a response close to 500 and counting. Its close to three a.m. and Im wide awake with gut wrenching pain. For someone whos attempting to alleviate the anxiety of his audience, this isnt the way I should be feeling.

After a long and winding road, involved as I was on the fringe of his life, I suddenly felt very close to him.

The initial idea to write Rons biography sprang from a discussion with his agent and manager, Charles MacPhail, a central Canadian having absolutely no real connection to Newfoundland other than his coincidental relationship with Ron. Commissioned in 2013 to write a fiftieth anniversary book for the Confederation Centre of the Arts in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, I met MacPhail during a phone call while seeking Rons inclusion in a section of that book which was themed to focus on fifty remarkable or well-known Canadians whod had a connection to the Centre. Ron, of course, was one of these individuals and he does appear in that book alongside forty-nine other artists: singers, dancers, comedians, actors, authors, and visual artists.

MacPhail, a bearded, balding, gray-haired guy who loved Ron, cursed and complained incessantly about trying to manage Rons music career and his personal life and finances. He grumbled and groaned to me more than just a few times that he really didnt need the endless complications associated with Ron Hynes in his life. Hed rather just maneuver his ride-on lawn mower and grow hostas in his Perth, Ontario, backyard. But MacPhails problem was he loved Ron Hynes. He really had no choice. He could not abstain from Ron Hynes. As it became for me, Ron was MacPhails DOC or drug of choice. And we both knew there was no twelve-step program for our uncontrollable compulsion.

Ron was a remarkable Canadian for all kinds of reasonssome personal, but most having to do with his very public success in the music business; some highly appealing and some not so appealing. He was, after all, a six-time East Coast Music Award winner, a Genie Award winner, and a past JUNO, Canadian County Music Association, and Canadian Folk Music Awards nominee. He was recipient of the 2008 SOCAN National Achievement Award for songwriting career success, and holds an honorary PhD from Memorial University for his contributions to the cultural life of his beloved Newfoundland and Labrador. He has also been a recipient of both Artist of The Year and the prestigious Arts Achievement Award from the Newfoundland & Labrador Arts Council, as well as a Lifetime Achievement Award from the St. Johns Folk Arts Council. From1974 to1976, Ron was the in-house composer for the Mummers Troupeit was while touring with the Mummers in 1976 that he imagined and composed his signature song, Sonnys Dream, an inspiration from God, he felt, that happened in just ten minutes with a pencil and scribbler in hand on a highway in Saskatchewan. Hed spent an interminable amount of hours worried that hed heard the tune someplace before, the way Paul McCartney is said to have agonized over whether the song Yesterday had come from some place other than his own ingenious mind.