[stargazer]

First let me preface my remarks by saying that it’s been about two years since we last saw Gordon in concert.

So this was my first time seeing/hearing Carter. I must say I was impressed with his playing. Unfortunately, as was usually the case with Terry, they had his levels too low or my taste. I love to really hear those guitar solos that Gord wrote. In fact the whole house volume was a bit too low for my taste. Now my wife might say that it’s just the failing hearing of my boomer ears that’s the problem.  If so, I was in good company, because there were a lot of gray heads attending this concert.

Wolf Trap is a very fine venue for music of all sorts and we’ve made the trek up from Richmond many times to see Gordon and other performers. Gordon remarked several times that this was his 14th concert at Wolf trap. Unfortunately, the crowd for this concert was a bit light compared to the other Lightfoot concerts we’ve attended there. That may be because it was a Thursday night. WE were seated in the center of the Loge (balcony) which had only about 100 of the seats taken, which is about 1/3 of the capacity up there. We a great, if somewhat distant view of the stage with a very well balanced (if a little soft on volume) sound mix.

When Gord took the stage, promptly (as usual) at 8 p.m. it seemed to me that he’s lost some weight (judging by his face) since I last saw him. Nonetheless he seemed in a good mood, if perhaps a little tired. He did say that they’d done 10 concerts over the last 12 days. That may explain why he did not talk as much between numbers as I have sometimes seen him do. It may also explain why he only played one song for the encore. That might also explain why he did the Edmund Fitzgerald and not Trilogy too. The set list (see previous posting) included some surprises (especially when compared to the some of the set lists of recent concerts). For example, I never expected to hear Home from the Forest. And it was good to hear Sweet Guinevere.

Gord’s voice was strong throughout the concert and seemed to take less time to warm up than in the previous couple of concerts I’d been to. In the few remarks he made between songs he mentioned John Denver and playing at the Cellar Door in DC. He also made some remarks about using a capo and starting out as a ‘folk singer’ in the early 60s. He also mentioned digging out some of the old songs from the vault. And playing up in New York City the night before at B.B. King’s nightclub to an audience of 300.

The band, as usual, did a great job supporting Gord. They never missed a cue. And Carter fit right in, as if he’d been playing with the guys for years. At the end of one of the early numbers, Gord made a point of leaning over to Carter and holding out his water bottle so he could ‘clink’ it with Carter’s water bottle as a sort of toast/salute. I was disappointed to see that the write up for Gord in the Wolf trap program was unusually short, barely a column long and didn’t mention the names of anybody in the band. Maybe budget cutbacks led to reducing the content? – I don’t know.

One thing that caught my eye, and perhaps others could comment on this, was Gord's use of a free standing mike for his 12-string. I remember many years ago reading an interview with Gord where he stated that (at that time) he preferred using free standing mikes rather than the ‘on-board’ pickups because he had greater control over the sound by his placement of the guitar relative to the mike. Over the many years since that interview, I thought he’d changed that practice and had stopped using free standing mikes for his guitars. So, I was surprised to see him using a free standing mike last night for his 12 string. The 6 string was plugged in, but not the 12-string. Am I just imaging that he used to plug in the 12 string and has gone back to the old way?

All in all, another great Lightfoot concert. Well worth the long (due to DC traffic) drive from Richmond.