Gordon Lightfoot Forums - GRAND RAPIDS review

http://www.mlive.com/entertainment/g...ing_wreck.html

3 stars of 4
Gordon Lightfoot

What: 50 Years on the Carefree Highway Tour
When: Monday evening, DeVos Performance Hall
Time on stage: 106 minutes, not including intermission

GRAND RAPIDS, MI – For Gordon Lightfoot to come to Michigan to sing “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” you can say he came to the right place.

To come to Grand Rapids not long after epic rainfalls in April led to record flooding along the Grand River, you also can say he came at the right time.

And he knew it.

“It’s a folk song,” Lightfoot told the audience before launching into the song on Monday evening in DeVos Performance Hall. “But it’s a true story that we all know well in these parts of Michigan.”

The Canadian singer songwriter, a native of Orilla, Ontario, has equal claim to the maritime disaster on Lake Superior. But he was on the American side this week for an appearance Monday in DeVos Performance Hall.

Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” still has poignancy for those who remember the 1975 tragedy. A glance around the audience suggested that was nearly everyone in the audience did.

Related: 'Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald' in Grand Rapids: Hear the song, see the exhibit and save a buck

“I want to thank you for coming out on a Monday,” he said early in the show. “Who ever heard of a Monday?”

Spend nearly two hours with Lightfoot, and you’re reminded he’s written a lot of songs – including some such as “Cotton Jenny,” which didn’t do much for his original 1971 recording but turned out to be a Top 20 U.S. hit for Anne Murray a year later.

Though Lightfoot didn’t stick entirely to his own stuff.

Bob Dylan’s been a longtime admirer of Lightfoot, and Lightfoot repaid the complement by playing for his encore Dylan’s “Ring Them Bells,” a song with spiritual overtones, from Dylan’s 1989 album, “Oh Mercy,” which Lightfoot recorded four years later on his album “Waiting For You.”

Plenty of hits, such as “Carefree Highway” had people in the audience singing along softly.

The tour dubbed “50 Years on the Carefree Highway,” is an apt description for his show, which was laid back, understated, even subdued a lot of the time.

When a singer-songwriter does his or her own material, you can only quibble so far over how it sounds. It’s their song, after all. That said, Lightfoot’s 74, and his distinct, dry baritone has become whispery soft.

But his biggest hits, including “If You Could Read My Mind” and “Rainy Day People,” scattered through the two sets, garnered plenty of warm applause.

Lightfoot had a good group of accompanying musicians, some who’ve been with him for decades. Lead guitarist Carter Lancaster contributed nice acoustic guitar leads to “Beautiful” and funkier guitar licks to “Sundown,” a song that had the audience clapping along.

Lightfoot made a few passing remarks from time to time, but politely ignored folks in the audience who shouted out to him. I wish he had said more about some of the songs – where he was, what he was thinking, what inspired him.

But the audience, which ended the show with a standing ovation, mostly was happy to sit and listen.

Hear a few bars of Gordon Lightfoot, who opened his show Monday in Grand Rapids with "Triangle" from his 1982 album "Shadows."