From The Fishwrapper october 24 https://www.thefishwrapper.ca/
Ron James: Not Nearly Done Yet
There’s a hilarious 2010 Air Farce New Year’s Eve sketch where comedian and cast regular Alan Park does a send up of Ron James. Park impersonates Ron’s famous linguistic style, a combination of verbal pyrotechnics and east coast lilt, complete with subtitles for those unable to follow. It’s an affectionate poke, maybe a little inside baseball, but Ron’s singular stage presence is one not easily parodied. Twelve years after that Air Farce sketch, my friend Alan Park succumbed to cancer and passed away at age 60. Ron James, now 65, doesn’t take his longevity for granted. “What motivates me? I like being alive,” he says over the phone from his home in Toronto.
Ron hits stages across Ontario this fall with his Not Nearly Done Yet comedy tour. One of Canada’s most successful comedians, he consistently sells out venues to a loyal fan base. Before his upcoming date at the Brockville Arts Centre, he reflects on what keeps him going.
“In the years that I could run, I brought my sneakers and my running gear everywhere. I ran all the time on the road. Now I row and cycle. It clears out the pistons. There’s a lot to be said for staying healthy. I get a lot of great ideas with the endorphin buzz. You can’t drink or smoke and dope your way to genius. I wish I could tell every young comedian that.”
Ron credits his time with Second City when he was younger for a fundamental education in the structure of comedy, and for giving him a vision for his future. “It was like having the Sword of Damocles hung over everybody there, because you never knew if you were going to get fired. I loved the touring company. But everybody wanted to be on the main stage, and it was politically poisonous with everybody fighting to get their scenes in the show. It wasn’t for me.”
He made the well worn trek to Los Angeles in the early 1990s to forge a stateside career, but after three tumultuous years, Ron knew something had to change, “I have to give credit to my ex-wife. She said ‘when we go back to Canada you have to do something different.’ I was reading Joseph Campbell at the time, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, and the advice was to follow your bliss. That stayed with me.” Back on terra Timmie firma, Ron created a personal manifesto for himself. “I wanted to be a standup, I wanted to do it without an agent and I wanted my own TV series.”
Nine one-hour CBC comedy specials, two television series (Blackfly and The Ron James Show), many appearances at Just for Laughs, CBC’s Halifax and Winnipeg comedy festivals, several awards, and a national bestselling book All Over the Map: Rambles and Ruminations from the Canadian Road later, Ron looks back with gratitude. “I believe I’ve been put here for a reason – to make people laugh. That’s why I keep going, because I knew that when I began blazing trail across the frozen tip of Lake Superior booking myself back in the day, that there was something right about this road I chose.”
It’s not all kismet that turned Ron’s vision into reality. Dedication to his craft has everything to do with it. “You have to enjoy the work,” he emphasizes. “It’s everything, man. It’s a high wire act. Look at Seinfeld, the razor sharp precision of his work is truly remarkable. And oh, would that we could all be Billy Connolly and not write anything down, but Billy’s made the way he’s made, and we’re all made differently.”
Ron’s comedy can be described as “big tent”, meaning it’s inclusive and appealing to a wide range of people. That doesn’t mean he panders. “It’s a comedian’s job to speak truth to power. If I have opinions about fascism or if I have opinions about the convoy, Canada’s cheap January 6 cover band, look, I get my flak on Facebook, but if you’re not losing some of the room from time to time you’re not honouring the dictates of your craft If you’re a comedian living off corporate gigs making $20,000 an hour, at the end of the day you’re not a comedian – you’re Maurice Chevalier singing for the Vichy French. You’re selling out. Hey, [corporate people] aren’t mean people, they’re not bad people, but the first thing they tell you is what you can’t say. I’ve always been able to take the barometric pressure of the country on the road, and I still think people like to laugh at power.”
We chat about the vicissitudes of network television and his frustrations taking notes from TV executives. What really eludes him is Tik Tok videos that can catapult unknown lip synchers and one minute pranksters to Internet fame. “I don't know the first thing about that … I may be old school, but you still have to do your 90 minutes. People will say – oh, Ron’s audiences are older, Ron has to start his show at 7:30pm because his audience has to be in bed by 10pm. So what! As people get older, they say that they become more conservative. Not everybody does. They don’t take themselves so seriously anymore. You know why? Because they’re losing people. They know the fragility of life.”
What can audiences expect when Ron comes to a theatre near you? An eclectic buffet of bon mots on aging, food, mid-life crisis dating, and growing up to name a few. Unless a tsunami hits the St, Lawrence Seaway, nothing is going to stop this force of nature. “When the only direction a network wants to see a 65 year old dude with white eyebrows take is walking out the door, to see people walking in to my shows means the world to me. I’m very thankful for this life that I’ve had, and I’m grateful for every kilometre travelled and for every gig performed.”
Ron James: Not Nearly Done Yet
Kingston, Saturday, October 19, Grand Theatre
Brockville, Friday, October 25, Brockville Arts Centre
Cornwall, Sunday, October 27, Aultsville Theatre