http://www.mlive.com/entertainment/s...ows_a_few.html
By Sue White | For MLive.com
on April 28, 2013 at 11:16 AM, updated April 28, 2013
View full sizeGordon Lightfoot, shown here at DeVos Performance Hall in Grand Rapids, promises to bring some old favorites May 5 to The Dow Event Center in Saginaw.
SAGINAW, MI — The last time Gordon Lightfoot called me, he heard my grandson Ethan in the background, jumping up and down on the couch while singing “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” at the top of his lungs.
“Please tell him it wasn’t really the hatch,” Lightfoot said back then. “I’d hate to mislead him.”
The desire to set the record straight is the reason Lightfoot, the Canadian singer-songwriter, will sing a revised version of his ode to Michigan’s most famous shipwreck when his "50 years on the Carefree Highway" tour comes Sunday, May 5, to The Dow Event Center in Saginaw?
The National Geographic Channel’s “Dive Detectives” discovered three rogue waves sunk the Great Lakes freighter in 1975, Lightfoot said, and that brought relief to the mother and daughter of crew members in charge of manning the hatches.
“With the mystery resolved, I made the women very happy. The new line takes the onus off the deckhands,” Lightfoot said, breaking into song with “At 7 p.m., it grew dark, it was then he said, ‘Fellas, it’s been good t’ know ya!’”
Oh, and “been good t’ know ya,” credit that one to Woody Guthrie, he added.
Lightfoot had something more to clear up. About this "50 Years on the Carefree Highway," “that’s something the marketing team dreamed up,” he said, though Saginaw fans will see of side of him seldom shown.
“We’re constantly working on our show,” he said. “A while ago, I started researching the dark horse tunes, the ones that should have had more exposure, but we never had the time to play them.
“It’s very interesting, this business. When you put something in, you have to take something out, and that’s frightening.”
He’ll sing the songs audiences won’t let him forget: “If You Could Read My Mind,” “Carefree Highway,” “Sundown” and, of course, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” Then he’ll throw in a rotating collection of the forgotten tunes, maybe “Circle of Steel,” a song about poverty at Christmastime once too sensitive to handle on stage, or “Race Among the Ruins” or “Canadian Railroad Trilogy,” which he’s always surprised to see American audiences embrace.
“We play something different every night because if we did them all, we’d be there for three and a half hours,” he said. “One reason I’m still out here doing this after 50 years is because I’m always prepared for what comes next.”
Unless, say, Jimmy Buffett or Kiefer Sutherland show up in the crowd.
“Those moments are really precious,” he said. “We really love what we’re doing, and it’s a relief to pour all of our emotion into our music.
“I put my heart out there, and I feel the response back every night. I’m loving every minute of it.”
Lightfoot performs at 7 p.m. May 5 at The Dow, 303 Johnson in Saginaw. Tickets, available at the box office and through Ticketmaster, cost $52.50, $42.50 and $32.50.
SAGINAW article
