One evening at a party, in a circle of cigarette smoke, a crowd decided to name which musician they would lipsync if given a professional platform. I jokingly said I would silently belt Ron Hynes as an homage to Newfoundland.
A musician amongst the group poked his head up and said he worked with Ron Hynes once in some past recorded compilations. In fact Ron had invited him to play live with him after their musical project had been completed, but when said musician arrived at the show, Ron had no idea who he was. The musician was saddened by what seemed to be memory loss. He started to doubt himself, maybe his past performances were not enough for Ron. Maybe Ron invited him, hoping he wouldn’t actually show up. Nonetheless, the musician headed to the crowd, and decided he would still hear Ron perform. He was still a fan, even amidst the confusion. When Ron got on the stage, he took the mic in his hand and he dedicated the entire show to the musician he had just forgotten.
The musician was proud but befuddled, until someone explained to him that Ron had struggled with addiction and was likely mixed up due to some heavy partying the night before.
When Ron Hynes passed in 2015, his family and friends hoped his passing would draw attention to drug addiction. While some hard nights of partying could be conveyed in a hilarious story on a porch filled with cigarette smoke, the reality was Ron had left a musical legacy that he created while fighting some demons.
“Cancer was a seemingly inevitable symptom of the much darker, much more aggressive, hungrier ‘disease’ of addiction,” wrote his nephew in a Facebook post, novelist Joel Thomas Hynes after news of his uncle’s passing. “Ron has no property to call his own, had sold all his priceless, historic guitars for a pittance to feed his demons and line the pockets of drug dealers.”
Born in St. John’s, raised in Ferryland, Ron was a founding member of The Wonderful Grand Band – a popular trad-band in the 1980s conceived in 1977 for the Root Seller, a six-part mini-series produced by CBC St. John’s. Afterwards, Ron returned to musical theatre, he acted in television series and continued to write albums and by 1992 he had written over 100 songs.
Ron released seven solo albums, won seven ECMAs and had a career that spanned over three decades .
Known as the “man of a thousand songs,” his first album titled Discovery was the first one in history to be made of original content by a Newfoundland artist.
Ron Hynes is a Newfoundland legend, a songwriter of the province. His song Sonny’s Dream continues to be covered by musicians today, and you can often hear it in the background of George Street—a landmark anchor with a statue of Rob himself.
If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, you can find resources in Newfoundland here.
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