Gordon Lightfoot Forums - Augusta article

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Issue #20.42 :: 05/13/2009 - 05/19/2009
Turning back the pages

After a 2002 health scare, Gordon Lightfoot is back on tour and bringing all his hits with him to Augusta. Not too shabby for a 70-year-old.

BY ERIC JOHNSON

AUGUSTA, GA - What’s Gordon Lightfoot’s favorite Gordon Lightfoot song?

“‘If You Could Read My Mind,’” he says without hesitation. “I always think about Barbra Streisand doing it, because she did such a perfectly wonderful job on it.”

Though Lightfoot, a Canadian who got his start during the pre-Beatles folk revival, has had songs covered by everyone from Peter, Paul & Mary to Elvis, he’s best known for his own versions of his songs, which he’ll be performing along with his four-piece band at the Bell Auditorium May 14.

“I have two playlists, and they rotate back and forth, betwixt and between,” he says. “But I don’t lose any of the main material. If I had to do the same show exactly the same way every night, I think I’d start to feel a little worried — and we’d be missing a lot of good songs.”

That main material — “If You Could Read My Mind,” “Sundown,” “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” — earned him 17 Junos (Canadian Grammys), five Grammy nominations and at least a couple of spots on the Eternal Playlist.

Since an abdominal aneurism put him in a coma for five weeks in 2002 — he tells a great story about waking up during Halloween, seeing nurses dressed as witches and assuming he was hallucinating — Lightfoot has worked his way back into touring shape by going to the gym as often as he goes to his office, and since he and his secretary started handling the business side of things after the death of his business manager a year and a half ago, that’s quite a bit.

“I want to stay in fighting trim for the audience,” he says. “I use the gym as a way to store energy for when I get on stage. The audience expects to see some energy out there.”

If that sounds like a performer working hard to extend an already improbably long career, you’re right. Though he still averages about 70 dates a year, he breaks the tours into segments to help him stay fresh.

A concession to time, yes. But don’t think he’s just out there cashing in on his past airplay. While he no longer has recording obligations to write songs for, he maintains a strict rehearsal schedule, practicing with members of his band every Friday.

“We’re always refining the intonation of the instruments,” he says. “It’s very important, and we practice that as much as we practice the actual tunes themselves.”

That dedication to craft is one of the reasons the 70-year-old Torontonian is still performing when so many others have come and gone.

“Every time we go on stage it’s like a whole new ballgame,” he says. “I take pride in the kind of job that we do when we’re up there. I really feel a need and a desire to do it, and all the people who are with me — nobody wants to stop, and I don’t see any reason why we should.”

Gordon Lightfoot
The Bell Auditorium
Thursday, May 14
8 p.m.
$40-$50
706-722-3521
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