Gordon LightfootWhat: Canadian singer/songwriter performs on new U.S. tour
http://www.gainesville.com/article/2...hillips-Center
When: 7:30 p.m. Monday
Where: Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, 315 Hull Road
Tickets: $34.50-$55.50.
Info: 392-2787 or Ticketmaster.com
At age 72, some 40 years after first topping the charts with “If You Could Read My Mind” in 1971, the Canadian singer/songwriter sounds as keen and ready to embark on the U.S. tour that plays the Phillips Center on Monday as he is on the daily routine that keeps him chipper and able to do so.
“I'm doing really good; I'm practicing right now,” Lightfoot says on the phone from the music room in his Toronto home, where he is “noodling” on the guitar and preparing for the next day's rehearsal with his full, five-piece band.
“I'm working hard and I'm always focused on the upcoming, staying prepared,” he says. “I go to a health club and I run a lot of my own errands.”
This despite the fact that just three weeks before, Lightfoot lost his lead guitarist and one of his best friends of 40 years, Terry Clements, to a stroke at age 63. Clements was the guitarist responsible for those irrepressible licks on many of Lightfoot's hits from the '70s, from “Carefree Highway” and “Sundown” in 1974 to “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” in 1976 and beyond.
“He was at a rehearsal here at my house two days before he went into the intensive care unit; kept it up right until the end,” says Lightfoot, who had his own brush with death in 2002 after collapsing onstage from an abdominal hemorrhage and lapsing into a coma for six weeks following emergency surgery.
The new guitarist in Lightfoot's group, Carter Lancaster, will be making his sixth appearance with the band when Lightfoot and company take the stage in Gainesville. And the former will undoubtedly benefit from the latter's approach to performing, one that keeps life onstage both fine-tuned and fresh for all the musicians.
With a career that's produced such other hits and audience favorites as “Beautiful” (1972) and “Rainy Day People” (1975), all of the above and still other songs virtually demand to be included in every show. Yet Lightfoot has honed a setlist style that keeps eight to 10 songs leap-frogging and changing positions every other night.
“It also provides some variety from night to night. And I believe in all that stuff,” he says about the songs. “I personally do believe in every song that we do onstage.”
Like “Beautiful,” for example?
“‘Beautiful' is a must, each and every night,” he says. “I could sing that song every night and never get tired of it.”
Contact Bill Dean at 374-5039 or at
bill.dean@gvillesun.com.
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