NEW PHONE CHAT (#6) with Gordon Lightfoot - Tuesday April 21, 2020
It is always an honour to have Gordon call and chat with me and we’ve been doing these “Chats with Char” since 2007 when he approached me after a concert and said he wanted to do a phone chat for the fans/Lightheads on the internet.
To say I was gobsmacked is putting it mildly.. There have been a few phone calls that were not scheduled but pleasantly surprising.
I received word a week ago that Gordon would be calling me as he was doing phone calls over two nights and my name was on the list.
And of course, as I do a lot when something triggers a Lightfoot lyric, my mind went to his song, The List..lol and the lyric:
There's a little room on my list for tonight
Will you be the one to fill it in
Toss around what is up, what is down
In between, would you like to dream
Step on in, you don't have to play to win
But then you might
Thick and thin, you don't have to play to win
But then you might.
They are not ‘’professional’’ interviews by any stretch of the imagination but more like friends just chatting and catching up.. I’m very lucky indeed to have this opportunity and treasure the calls. I have them all recorded so can listen to him whenever I want..lol..
The link to the other chats is:
http://corfid.com/vbb/showthread.php...ight=chat+char
They were longer talks, around 45 minutes to an hour, unlike this one which was 25 minutes. It was supposed to be a hard stop at 20..lol..I have not transcribed all we talked about for privacy reasons.
CW – Hello
GL – Hi Char, it’s Gordon!
CW – Hi Gordon, how are you?
GL – I’m good, how are you doing?
CW – I’m freezing my butt off because it’s so cold out!
GL – Why?
CW – I’m out trying to garden and it’s too cold so I came in.
GL – Have you got a fireplace in your home?
CW – Yes, I have 2!
GL – Is the house cozy?
CW – Yes, it is, I’ve got the heat turned up higher than it was a couple of months ago!
GL – I was out walking today, I walk every day.
CW – I was going to ask you if you were out walking because you can’t go to the club. Are you keeping up with an exercise regimen like you are used to. I hope you are all bundled up out there!
GL – I do my upper body at night and I do it every day and walk every day… and that’s EVERY day. You gotta walk every day.
CW – You’re so disciplined Gordon.
GL – Yep – it’s about ¾ of a mile every day. Just a nice quiet walk. I walk in front of DRAKES house and I wave at his guard. Lol.
CW – How are you and Kim doing during this isolation caused by the pandemic?
GL – Kim has been in the U.S. since March 16 for family business. She left the day before things got locked down.
CW – So you’re on your own in the house?
GL – I have help coming in, the maintenance guy comes and a former Nanny for the kids brings groceries once a week. The rest of the time I practice the guitar for a little while. Actually I practice in sections. I do 10 – 15 minutes, then I put it down for a while, then later I’ll practice for another 10 – 15 minutes.
CW – Yeah, you don’t have any baseball or hockey to watch while you practice like you like to do. They’re running re-runs, are you watching any of those?
GL – The last show I watched was the Kenny Rogers biography that was playing about 2 nights ago. It was really good. He was such a great singer. Big in the 80’s.
CW – Yes he was, and I’m sorry for the loss of your friend John Prine.
GL – I knew John, that well but the last time I saw him was at George Stroumboulopoulos’s place for a house concert. We were there, Meredith, Kim and I were there.
CW – I’ve watched the video of the night and it’s a nice memory for everyone to have of John.
GL – My favourite line of his was, it goes like this; a line from Far From Me, (singing it to me!!) ‘far far from me, far far from me’. Then he recited ‘the June bug flew from the warmth he once knew and I wished for once I weren’t right.’ He then repeated it in a softer, wistful voice, ‘the June bug flew from the warmth he once knew and I wished for once I weren’t right.’ The song takes place in the summer.
(link to song:
https://johnprine.bandcamp.com/track/far-from-me)
CW – I’ll have to look that up on You Tube. His story songs had a lot of words like yours Gordon.
GL – Yeah..
CW – I heard that Mariposa is cancelled this year.
GL - I thought they probably would do that.
CW – They thought they might be able to hold it in September but it won’t happen until next summer.
GL – We might be able to start back up in the fall. I’ll be happy. I am booked at the C.N.E. (Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto) on the 31stof August. There was going to be 7000 people there. That was going to be my first show starting in the fall if we have to wait that long. If we have to wait until the 31stof August, September and October will be loaded. We’ll be running our butts off.
(PLEASE NOTE THAT AFTER CHECKING WITH Gordon’s OFFICE, AS OF NOW THE JUNE CONCERT DATES ARE POSTPONED– re-scheduled dates will be posted as they are scheduled and if further postponements are required into July/August I will post info when I receive it)
CW – It’s so incredible that you had to postpone some shows last year because of your injury, and then some of those re-scheduled shows are some of the postponements this year because of the pandemic.
GL – We got to do nine shows in February tho. We did nine in February and those are the last shows we did.
CW – That’s a long time off for you.
GL – Yeah
CW – But you’re keeping busy. Congratulations on the SOLO album! Everyone thinks it’s just fantastic and they love the guitar and voice. I love Oh So Sweet, that’s your new legacy song for me!
GL – I was going to orchestrate the whole thing, call the band in and the whole thing over again. It’s a damn good thing I decided to do what I did because it would be half done by now. We’d only be half finished with it. You know I found that stuff about a year and a half ago. I was cleaning out my office. I was cleaning my office out. I found it in a pile of gifts and memorabilia and mail from fans. Mounds of them, half of my office! Have you ever been to my office?
CW – Yes, I have. I was there one time a long time ago in November 2000 but you weren’t there. Anne and Barry were there tho and I spent a while talking with them. I delivered printed out birthday wishes at corfid.com from Lighthead fans.
GL – Okay. That pile of gifts in my office is where I found it.
CW – Oh my goodness you need to clean out your office a little more often Gordon lol