EDMONTON article-review-pics-Nov.2014
 

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/Conce...291/story.html

Concert preview: Lightfoot savours his time onstage

Singer performs in Edmonton on Sunday night

BY CAM FULLER, POSTMEDIA NEWS OCTOBER 29, 2014
PREVIEW

Gordon Lightfoot

When: Sunday at 8 p.m.

Where: Jubilee Auditorium

Tickets: $62.90 to $115.40 through Ticketmaster

It turns out it was fitting that Gordon Lightfoot’s debut album had an exclamation mark on it.

Lightfoot!, released in 1966, forecast a career like no other in Canadian music. You could put one of these things: ! — what old newspapermen called a “slammer” — beside any of the following facts: 15 Juno Awards. Five Grammy nominations. Companion of the Order of Canada. Member of the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame, Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame and U.S. Songwriters Hall of Fame.

That’s clearly enough fame to last a lifetime, but one thing that makes fans exclaim is, despite turning 76 this November, Gordon Lightfoot is still performing.

Still performing!

He tells you why before you even ask.

“I really like to work in front of an audience,” Lightfoot said in a recent interview from his home in Toronto. “I’ve always felt that way, always liked to perform.”

His approach is meticulous. At 2 p.m. on show day, he spends two hours tuning two 12-string guitars in time for sound check at 4. There’s a run-through, a break and another run-through. Dinner is catered to the hall. Then the show starts.

“Most of all, I want everybody to feel good and be happy,” he says. “And it feels like they are, they seem to really enjoy it.”

He has three versions of the concert that will rotate throughout the tour. Each is loaded with two dozen songs and a dozen standards, the ones you can’t not do.

He rattles off titles that now sound more like landmarks than songs: If You Could Read My Mind, Sundown, Carefree Highway, Rainy Day People, Don Quixote.

There’s an insistence in Lightfoot’s voice when he talks about the set list, as if he thinks he has to sway you to his way of thinking.

“They’ve GOT to be there. Every night.”

Performing goes by so fast it almost feels like it’s over before it starts, Lightfoot says.

“It goes for two hours and five minutes, usually, and I wish it could go longer some nights and so do they.”

Another song never overlooked, of course, is what he calls “The Wreck.” Recorded over Christmas in 1975 to ’76, he had no idea what a monument The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald would become.

“But I’ve learned since. It has a responsibility to it that approaches, actually, love.

“Fortunately, too, lt’s a great one for the show, and I’ve got it placed in a real good spot.”

Lightfoot says his big break came when Ian Tyson recorded one of his songs, then Peter Paul and Mary. (Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley and Barbra Streisand would follow.)

“That’s when things opened up for me. It was very unselfish of Ian to do that for me,” he says. “He did a great favour for me. It got me a management deal and it got me a recording contract south of the border.”

Lightfoot says he was happy when fame hit, but to handle the pressure he turned to an old friend from high school — the bottle.

“I drank. And I drank until 1982, and I had to bring it to an abrupt end when it almost ruined my life.

“I had it under control for a long time but, you know, it was fuel for the writing — until it started putting me to sleep,” he says. “I was lucky I had a strong constitution.”

Once he threw out the booze, “I found that I was handling it better and also it did not curtail my creative ability.”

Joining a health club saved his life, he says. He still works out several times a week. Even a life-threatening illness in 2002 didn’t stop him. He spent 19 months recovering and had to suffer the indignity of having his death falsely reported in the news.

“All I wanted to do was just make it back,” he says.

He doesn’t go into specifics about how that illness and recovery changed the way he looks at life. But maybe he doesn’t have to. Maybe the answer is written on the signs in front of the concert halls that he visits some 70 times a year: Lightfoot. If the exclamation mark is missing, it’s there in spirit.

Re: EDMONTON preview article-Nov.2014
 

RICK: One of our favorite stops in Western Canada has always been this beautiful Jubilee in Edmonton, AB.

Re: EDMONTON preview article-Nov.2014
 

pic 2 from Rick:

Re: EDMONTON preview article-Nov.2014
 

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/From+...644/story.html

Review

Gordon Lightfoot

When: Sunday night

Where: Jubilee Auditorium

EDMONTON - As Gordon Lightfoot himself noted early in his Sunday night concert, rumours of his demise have been greatly exaggerated.

Those rumours were quashed years ago, but allow the Ontario-based singer-songwriter his moment of gallows humour. He’s been through some tough times in the last while, dealing with both his own health (a stroke) as well as deaths in the immediate Lightfoot musical family, including longtime guitarist Terry Clements back in 2011.

For all that, he’s still got that essential quality that makes a Lightfoot concert so riveting. He’s like a complex scotch, something to be savoured and sipped slowly; mellow and then unexpectedly intense at the finish.

The Voice:

Sure, it’s not as deep and resonant as when he was at his commercial peak in the ’70s, but in some ways his performances are more moving because of this. Fragile, cracking at points, unable to hit the notes he was once able to, it lends moving humanity to songs like Sundown and Much To My Surprise. On what might be his most famous song, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, it was mesmerizing, dry and rasping, like a messenger from the tomb.

Speaking of which:

It turns out that Lightfoot has had to deal with a certain amount of fallout from the song, with some concerned citizens in Madison, Wisc., taking issue with his original lyric about possible hatches not being battened down as a wrong detail. In a long introduction he noted that the lyric was changed only five years ago to reflect this new information. Who knew a folk song could stir up a fuss?

How is he looking:

Pretty good, actually. He’s a rawboned man, looking like an old cowboy who traded the range for crushed velvet jackets and 12-string guitar, leonine in profile, wry in tone. He’s basically the coolest grandfather ever.

That is, if grandpa could steal your girlfriend:

Seriously, he’s like the Smokey Robinson of folk music. Doesn’t matter how old you are, songs like If You Could Read My Mind, Sundown and Beautiful are just as achingly gorgeous and sexy as when he was posing with shirt buttons opened up on Gord’s Gold. He’s not getting anywhere near my date, based on her reaction.

How was the band:

Are you kidding? Lightfoot always has the best, most exquisitely sensitive players. The youngest member, guitarist Carter Lancaster, slipped perfectly into the very large shoes of Clements. Bassist Rick Haynes, who has been with Lightfoot since 1969, had a brief melodic solo, but mostly stuck to support role with drummer Barry Keane and keyboardist Mike Heffernan.

The audience?

Far more varied than you might think. Sure there were plenty of older people revisiting their youth, but there were also a few of what might be called the Whyte Ave. crowd, and they were just as entranced as their elders. Truth is, like the late Stompin’ Tom, Lightfoot has an audience that draws from all over.

Highlights:

Canadian Railroad Trilogy and Carefree Highway, which can be either maudlin or melancholy depending on your mood. Except that the way Lightfoot sings “The morning after blues, from my head down to my shoes” is as deep as it can get.

© Copyright (c) The Edmonton Journal

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pic 2

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Re: EDMONTON article-review-pics-Nov.2014
 

RICK: looking off to the west, flying south from Edmonton to Calgary today - the Foothills of the Rockies all dressed up with partial snow and cloud cover.