Peterborough Newspaper review:
http://www.thepeterboroughexaminer.c...aspx?e=2533345
Intimate performance by painter passing through
Posted By PAT MAITLAND
For an old fella, Gordon Lightfoot certainly attracts all kinds. During his performance Tuesday night at the Peterborough Memorial Centre, he received many a hoot, holler and cheer, and even a few "we love you, Gordie" shouts from both men and women alike.
Backed by his four-piece band, he played an ambitious two sets that saw him covering more than 25 songs from the course of his 50-plus years of singing and songwriting.
The last time Gordon Lightfoot played in Peterborough was a special appearance at a flood relief benefit concert at the Memorial Centre. That date was doubly significant in that it was only his second public performance after a two-year recuperation from a month-long coma and tracheotomy procedure in 2002 as a result of a near-fatal abdominal aneurysym.
Now, six years later, he once again brought relief by proving he is, in fact, alive and well, something that was in question only two months ago.
Two songs into his first set, he paused to quote Mark Twain and reassure the audience that "reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated," referring to the February morning when an anonymous prank led to media outlets announcing that Lightfoot had died. Lightfoot himself heard the news on the radio while in the dentist chair and phoned a radio station to clarify his status.
The evening provided a bounty of Lightfoot classics, from Cotton Jenny and Ribbon of Darkness to Sundown and Home from the Forest,the latter specially dedicated to Ronnie Hawkins, who himself got a cheer when he entered the venue.
Though Lightfoot was fairly quiet between songs in the opening set, the banter warmed up as his voice did and he offered songs from almost every decade of his career, including the crowd favourites,The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald and If You Could Read My Mind.He closed with Carefree Highway and Blackberry Wine as an encore.
It was an intimate concert, that at times, seemed too intimate for both the size of the venue and the audience members. Maybe it was the nostalgia that had many chatting and talking throughout the performances as if they were sitting in their kitchens listening to a friend strumming away in the living room.
Maybe it was the latecomers stumbling up the stairs or the sudden glare of arena billboard lighting over section C8 that burst on and remained on for much of the first set.
And though the sound didn't seem to fill the far reaches of the venue, that was most likely due to the frailty of Lightfoot's voice.
But as Lightfoot chose songs about nature, finding love, the Canadian landscape and then losing love again, the message came through loud and clear that Lightfoot rightfully owns his place as an international troubadour.
He said it all when he sang A Painter Passing Through,a song he wrote and released in 1998.
"Once upon a time, once upon a day when
I was in my prime, once along the way
If you want to know my secret don't come runnin' after me
For I am just a painter passing through in history."
He finishes this portion of his Canadian tour in Hamilton and London this week but returns to play in his hometown, Orillia, on July 11, at the Mariposa Folk Festival.
Pat Maitland is a Peterborough writer who spent part of her career at Alert Records and has written CD reviews and musician profiles for CD International Magazine.