It's in the space between the public mask and the private face where we often get a more personal picture of someone known to us from a distance.
Such glimpses are often rare, especially when the public persona is legendary and sustained by the individual at issue.
So it is with Ronnie Hawkins. "Rompin’" - the adjective that has long preceded his name - is one that he himself has promoted to project his penchant for play.
His husky Arkansas-bred drawl, trademark white mane and beard and sunglasses framing a stocky build and even larger personality, have combined to give "The Hawk" the reputation of never turning down a chance to be at – or more accurately, create – a party.
His musical legacy – now at the half-century mark – is a testament to an underappreciated sober and disciplined side of the man who introduced a new sound to his new home in Canada and who fostered the careers of a lengthy and impressive list of some of the best talent this country has ever produced.
But within the dynamism lies a gentle man, enamoured of the natural beauty that surrounds him.
Laughter comes easily to him, as do quick quips. The big heart, for which he is much admired, is on display along with a gentle soul – less obvious, perhaps, when overshadowed by bravado and one-liners.
On this crisp February day, Hawkins is at home counting deer.
"Already, I've seen eight, nine, 10 deer walk across the front of my yard. Two are coming across right now – and a third is waiting to come across."
Do some landscaping, leave something for them to eat during the winter, and you have, he explains in his familiar drawl, "Mutual of Omaha."
In Hawkins's case, it's 200 acres (about 77 hectares) of paradise along about 2 kilometres of lakefront near Peterborough, Ont. that he's owned and lived on at Stoney Lake for nearly 40 years.
"This is a valuable piece of property, so I can sell it and retire," he says, before quickly adding: "But I'm going to hang onto it. You gotta live somewhere."
Were he to eventually move, the 73-year-old music pioneer jokes that he's approaching the age "where you better move into a condominium close to a hospital. That's what us old-timers do," he says, breaking into a hearty smoker's laugh.
"I'm still chasing the girls – I caught a couple last week. They were on them walkers." (No he didn’t – he’s happily married.)
More laughter.
In terms of his health, Hawkins seems better than he has been in recent years.
He's shed some pounds – down from the 240-260-range to around 220, or 10 pounds more than he weighed while studying physical education at the University of Arkansas. Back then Hawkins was a gymnast, which explained the back and front flips he did on stage during his early performances.
Though he didn't smoke until he was 42, he says he went through about a seven-to-eight-year period where he was "drinking and smoking everything."
"I kept trying to make it and stay in shape and do all the stuff you need to do to try to hit the big time, but I wore out going through so many musicians and practising so much," says Hawkins.
Today? "I'm a joker, I'm a smoker, I'm a midnight toker."
On a serious note, Hawkins has defied the odds.
Almost six years ago, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. The tumour, attached to an artery, could not be removed.
Hawkins was given three months to live.
He refused to undergo chemotherapy.
Instead, he pursued alternative treatment, including native healers, as recommended by long-time friend and former Hawks bandmate, Robbie Robertson.
The solution, which Hawkins believed saved his life, came from the West Coast. A teenager from British Columbia named Adam is said to have focused on a photograph of Hawkins and using a mystical theory, purportedly killed the cancer cells.
A CAT scan subsequently revealed no tumour in Hawkins's pancreas. He was cured.
"Nobody had ever beat pancreatic cancer in Canada – that's what the doctors told me. That is a miracle, no matter how you look at it," says Hawkins, who was raised in a typical Southern Baptist family but has since relinquished ties to that denomination.
"I believe in the 'Big Rocker.' I'm a little leery of the ground crew."
Hawkins laughs, which he often does throughout our conversation.
Sometimes, it's a way to lighten things up. Other times, he uses it as self-deprecation, matched with phrases he often uses.
"I'm waiting for stardom," he likes to say.
"The big time is just around the corner."
It's meant in jest, but the remarks bear a bittersweet element.
Fifty years ago, Hawkins brought his band, The Hawks, from Fayetteville, Arkansas to Hamilton, Ont. to play a club called The Golden Rail.
He never left.
Canada became his new home and Canadians were introduced to a new sound: rockabilly, a fusion of rock, blues and country. A distinctive sound, Hawkins explains, that began with an upright bass keeping rhythm.
Elvis Presley, born two days before Hawkins on Jan. 8, 1935, later added drums – as did Carl Perkins and Hawkins himself, with drummer Levon Helm in The Hawks.
As energetic a showman as the music he played, Hawkins released two singles, Hey, Bo Diddley, in 1958, and Mary Lou, the following year.
Both became hits - along with 40 Days - and made him a teen idol and landed the band on Dick Clark's American Bandstand.
But it was his role in mentoring other talent that truly established Hawkins on Canada's musical map. The Hawks kept Helm and brought in Canadians Robertson, Richard Manuel, Garth Hudson and Rick Danko. After those five left The Hawks they went on to form The Band, tour with Bob Dylan and finally earn acclaim as one of Canada’s greatest rock bands ever. Other protégés included Grammy Award-winning producer David Foster, Guess Who front man Burton Cummings, David Clayton Thomas of Blood Sweat and Tears, singer Lawrence Gowan and actor Beverly D'Angelo, who appeared in the 1980 film, Coal Miner's Daughter, as Patsy Cline, with Helm.
Hawkins family friend and guitarist Karl Lawson, who serves as his publicist and driver, estimates that 200 musical artists went through The Hawk's "boot camp" over the years.
And Sylvia Tyson once said: "There isn't a Canadian musician or performer anywhere who doesn't owe a debt of gratitude to Ronnie Hawkins, because without him being who he was at the time, without his talent and effort and dedication to the cause of developing Canadians for stardom on their own, we probably wouldn't be where we are today."
Says Hawkins: "I was taught from the old-timers. You try to pick a band that's really good musically."
Hawkins ran a tight ship. "I had rules," he says. "I didn't allow drinking or smoking. Nobody had even heard of dope yet."
In the early days, band members even had to wear tuxedos.
At his own website, fellow Arkansan Levon Helm recalls rehearsing until 4 a.m.
But "eventually, the students surpassed the teacher," says Helm’s biography. "Weary of Ronnie's strict regulations, and eager to expand their own musical interests, the five decided to break from Hawkins. They called themselves Levon and the Hawks."
However, at RonnieHawkins.com, Helm credits his "good friend" and a "great leader" with having "an uncanny ability to pick the best musicians and build them into first-rate bands."
Hawkins has not viewed either site and in fact has no use for computers. But he doesn't dispute Helm's claim that his students overtook him.
"I couldn't keep up, so I hired Garth Hudson, a musical genius of the highest order," says Hawkins, who introduced the Twist to the famed Concord Tavern on Toronto's Bloor Street and go-go dancers to Le Coq D'Or on Yonge Street.
In Robbie Robertson's case, Hawkins put him on bass and then on rhythm guitar "behind two of the greatest rhythm guitar players at the time," Fred Carter Jr. and later, Roy Buchanan, before Robertson took over lead guitar.
Then there's pianist David Foster, who went on to become a wildly successful producer and songwriter, and whom Hawkins discovered and hired in Edmonton while Foster was playing in Tommy Banks’s orchestra.
"I never dreamed he would become as big," Hawkins says of Foster's multimillion-dollar career.
In September, Hawkins will be in Edmonton for an event to raise money for Foster's charitable foundation that provides financial support to families with children requiring life-saving organ transplants.
"He's paying me good and treating me like I'm somebody," says Hawkins.
Before that, on May 1, he will attend a "party" in Toronto for long-time pal and former U.S. president Bill Clinton, another fellow Arkansan.
In general, though, staying in contact with old chums isn't always easy.
Hawkins says that he hasn't heard from Robertson or Helm in over a year.
And Dylan won't return his calls.
"All of a sudden, he got mysterious again," says Hawkins.
Still, Hawkins is not a man of regret. He was offered chances to return to the U.S. to attempt to make it really big, but decided to stay in Canada where the work was steady and he had a growing family. The timing was never right – and the monetary incentives not good enough – for Hawkins to take up offers from the late Albert Grossman and Morris Levy, who had signed The Hawks to Roulette Records from 1959 to 1964.
Levy came calling when The Hawk was "on the verge of universal acclaim," the promoter said: "I tried, but he wouldn't come home. Loved Canada, he said. Broke my heart."
Today, Hawkins, who has a star on Canada's Walk of Fame in Toronto, is taking it easy.
"I'm having fun, enjoying life for the first time in my life," says the Juno Award-winning Hawkins.
"I don't have to think about working and don't have to be worrying about anything." His career is managed through Hawkstone Enterprises and a film and book on his life are in the works. He's still playing, but only about 10 or 12 gigs a year – usually special, private events for big money. Hawkins is forthright about his fees:
"If it's within a 150-mile radius, it's $25,000 and expenses. If it's further, it's $50,000 and expenses," he explains, breaking out into a hearty laugh.
"I don't have to put on any switchboard yet to take the jobs."
One thing is certain, though. There will be a "big" party this summer to celebrate his 50th anniversary on Canadian soil.
"It ain't just me," Hawkins quickly adds. "It's 50 years of Canadian music."
For him, life has been good at Hawkstone Manor – the name he and his wife of 46 years, Wanda, gave to their 6,800-square-foot home. They have three grown children.
Wanda is "the luckiest girl that ever were," jokes the man clearly more devoted husband than skirt chaser.
With that, The Hawk is tired.
"Listen, babe, I get a headache for talking too long."
But he quickly adds he's open to chatting some more.
"Journalists, they're the ones who made me," says Hawkins.
"Shit, if it hadn't been for a journalist, there wouldn't have been me or Jesse James."