Ron Leary Folk Trois

A big weekend’s coming up for “southern Canadian” musician Ron Leary

Friday evening, 1 December 2023, finds him —with Dean Drouillard (electric guitar; backup vocals) and Adrian Lawryshyn (upright bass)— on Toronto’s College Street, the Ron Leary Folk Trois making themselves at home amidst the timeless tomes of Sellers & Newel Secondhand Books.¹ And on Saturday, 2 December he and his Sextet (featuring James Anthony [on guitar and other stringed things], Adrian Lawryshyn [on upright], and Derek Impens [on drums]) play Meteor in hometown Windsor.

I’ll be crossing the Detroit River and the border for Saturday’s show.

Can’t wait to see all those people again, Ron’s many fans, singing every word.

Truth is that I’ve had my head buried in my historical research of late and I could use a break, a little Canada, a little rock and roll. And this little bit of back-to-the ‘stack.

I’m also looking for this excuse to share a few photographs of Ron and his talented friends, to offer you a few links to his music, and to set up a painting of the “Ron Leary Folk Trois” that I’ve been saving for this moment. My watercolour appears as a final image in this piece (I’ll be giving it to Ron on Saturday night).

Ron Leary. Lamp Post Inn (now the University Inn), Ann Arbor, MI, USA

Sometimes on his own, sometimes with one or more Detroit-based artists, Ron Leary is a regular contributor to my first-year seminar on “Journeys & Stories” at the University of Michigan, enlivening a segment on music and song.

Musicians take over the Alley Bar after class. Ann Arbor, MI, USA. Right to left: Ron Leary, Jay Clark Reid, the author, John Freeman, Mike Galbraith, Matt Fredericks

Seeing a room full of students entranced not just by his voice and guitar-playing is treat enough. But there’s also Ron’s talent for the kinds of storytelling that gets to the bottom of people growing together and falling apart. Of life and longing, of hunger and what it means to eat, of the fleeting and the forever.

Ron doesn’t set it down it easy.

I’ll never forget the afternoon he proposed to my class of eighteen-to-twenty-one year olds that “folk music has been rather reticent about a number of things that it mightn’t be so quiet about. Not least the power of sexual attraction,” he said, before leaning into “Tattooed Lady.”

Ron Leary (as Covid health precautions slowly lifted). Phog Lounge, Windsor, ON, Canada

Ron Leary, one of three. Phog Lounge, Windsor, ON, Canada

Ron Leary, Phog, two of three.

Ron Leary. Phog, three of three.

Tara Watts (guest backing vocals) joins Ron Leary and Dean Drouillard. Phog Lounge, Windsor, ON, Canada

Ron Leary and Dean Drouillard. Phog Lounge, Windsor, ON, Canada

a majestic Adrian Lawryshyn on upright bass. Windsor Beer Exchange, Windsor, ON, Canada

Ron’s many other admirers will dispute my few choices here from across his impressive ouevre, but why don’t you: check out a gorgeous video of him performing “Communist Café” (with Dean, and Adrian); have a listen to the love-brilliance of “Your Eyes” ;

and listen in on/watch “I was born,” the lead-off track from his 2017 record Tobacco Fields.

Heidi Victoria Scott. Birdwatching on Lake St Clair in a Ron Leary Sextet t-shirt.

Ron Leary Sextet. Windsor Beer Exchange, Windsor, ON, Canada

* Watercolour of the “Ron Leary Folk Trois” and Photographs (with the exception of the group shot in the Alley Bar) by Kenneth Mills

1. This is a small venue that sells out. Tickets at the bookstore or via sellers@sellersandnewel.com