It's a story that'll sound familiar to anyone who's ever Googled their own name.

Critically acclaimed (and criminally underrated) singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith was perusing the stacks of a bookstore recently, when he decided to tempt fate by seeing just how far his musical reach extended.

Picking up an encyclopedia of rock music, he turned to the S section, where he was relieved to find his name listed right after the Sex Pistols.

"On that day I was feeling kind of bummed out ... so I was afraid to even look," says the soft-spoken Sexsmith from his home in Toronto. "It's kind of stupid that something that little would make my day, but it did."

Though he still falls short of being a household name, Sexsmith has little to be bummed about these days.

His 11th album, Exit Strategy of the Soul, was released over the summer to the usual raves, and the production of said disc entailed an impromptu trip to Havana, where producer Martin Terefe enlisted a Cuban horn section to provide appropriately soulful backup.

"I was a bit worried that it wouldn't work, because there's nothing Cuban about my music," says Sexsmith. "And then when we went to Cuba and actually added the horns, I was surprised that they sounded more like Memphis horns. So that was a happy accident."

Though his press bumpf claims Exit Strategy was "informed but not entrapped" by soul and gospel, Sexsmith denies having a strategy when he set down to write it.

"The word 'soul' is in the title, but I wasn't really referring to the musical genre," he explains. "There are a few things on it that have a Stax kind of sound, but I'm not that kind of a singer. Besides, I always thought the word 'soul' was kind of hijacked by the R&B scene. I've always thought Leonard Cohen had just as much soul as Aretha Franklin. I love them both, but the term has come to mean something I don't recognize anymore, like vocal acrobatics."

One thing Sexsmith did plan on was writing the bulk of the album on piano, which he's been gravitating toward over the last decade.

Though characteristically modest about his keyboard skills, he feels his unrefined playing gives albums "a whole other character" that's absent in his early work.

"In the studio, there's always someone around who can play better than me, so often I would just let them do it," he says. "But I don't like that whole slacker approach that some people have, where they're proud of not being able to play their instrument. I do work at it and I do try.

"And I would much rather hear myself playing than David Foster, for example. Obviously he can play, but it's a matter of taste. Like I love hearing Bob Dylan play piano. He's not a technically great player but he has a lot of soul when he plays. Neil Young and Joni Mitchell too. Same with singing. There are some technically great singers who I admire and there are some limited singers I admire just as much. It's all in what you do with your instrument."

Among the singers admired by Sexsmith is Canuck indie-queen Leslie Feist, with whom he co-wrote the track Brandy Alexander (which appears on both Exit Strategy and her 2007 disc The Reminder).

"I'm a big fan of Harry Nilsson, and that's his favourite drink," he says of the song's title. "I was at a party in Ottawa and Feist was there, and I told her the story of how this was what John Lennon and Harry Nilsson were drinking when they got kicked out of the Troubadour in 1974. A few days later, she e-mailed me the lyrics."