http://www.go386.com/music/2012/01/l...n-daytona.html
Lightfoot sets down in Daytona
By RICK de YAMPERT, Entertainment Writer
January 13, 2012 12:10 AM
lightfoot.ca
If You Go
WHO: Gordon Lightfoot
WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Thursday
WHERE: Peabody Auditorium, 600 Auditorium Blvd., Daytona Beach
TICKETS: $39, $44 and $57 plus service fee, available at the Peabody box office and Ticketmaster
INFORMATION: 386-671-3460
When Gordon Lightfoot talks about "the very night before I died for the first time," the Canadian folk-pop musician is being metaphorical -- but just barely.
The creator of "If You Could Read My Mind" and "Sundown" was performing in his hometown of Orillia during his 2002 tour when an abdominal artery burst and he collapsed onstage.
"The first six weeks I was in a coma," Lightfoot said during a phone interview from his Toronto home this week, as he prepared for a tour that brings him to Daytona Beach on Thursday. "I almost died. I came very, very close to dying on two or three occasions during the first three and a half months I was in the hospital.
"What I had was not so much an illness but a mechanical failure. The recovery took about 19 months and I had to go back (into the hospital) two more times. It was quite the ordeal."
Instrumental to Lightfoot's recovery was, of course, his music. While he was still in the hospital, work began on a new album. He hooked up with his band and they began to flesh out guitar and vocal tracks Lightfoot had recorded before his ordeal.
"They would cut CDs of their work in the studio and bring them to me in the evenings in the hospital," Lightfoot said. "I spent about 14 months of recovery time being involved with the post-production."
The result was "Harmony," released in 2004. Eight years later, it's still the last album of new material from the singer-guitarist.
"It came out pretty good," Lightfoot said. "We had to use these old tracks I had lying in the closet as basic tracks. That's the only thing about it -- it's under-produced. But the songs are good. That much I do know."
Lightfoot released his debut album in 1966, and he hit his stride in the 1970s with such hits as "Sundown," "If You Could Read My Mind," "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" and "Carefree Highway."
Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and many others have found Lightfoot's songs to be good, too. Dylan and Elvis covered his song "Early Mornin' Rain" in the 1960s. Cash covered "If You Could Read My Mind," which was featured on his posthumous 2006 album "American V: A Hundred Highways."
Though Lightfoot has never won a Grammy Award over the course of his 20-album career, he has been awarded 15 Junos, the Canadian equivalent of the Grammys.
During the interview, the 73-year-old Lightfoot talked about the prophetic songs he recorded before his health ordeal, and the Lightfoot imitation performed by his friend Burton Cummings of the Guess Who.
The song "River of Light" on your last album, "Harmony," has the line: "Can you tell me how long must I travel on, I won't be looking up old friends ever again" sounds like someone aware of coming to the end of a final voyage. Was that written before or after your health ordeal?
It's odd -- just before. There are a couple of tunes in there that were projecting things. Another song is called "Couchiching." It's the name of a lake near my hometown, Orillia. I sang that the very night before I died for the first time. One of the lines is, "When I get my final slumber, when I pawn my diamond ring, I will do my final number by Lake Couchiching." It was almost prophetic.
My marriage came apart too during that illness. It was a hell of a time.
Q: Did you have thoughts like "What if I can't play guitar again?"
Oh yes. I felt terrible. The first thing I did when I got back to the house after the first stretch in the hospital was pick up the guitar and start learning how to play. My hands were so stiff. I couldn't get my fingers to work. I couldn't get anything happening.
But I kept trying, practicing, practicing and pretty soon it started to come back. Then about three years after that I had a mini-stroke -- a transient ischemic attack. I was playing on a job. By this time it's 2006 and I'm back at full strength again, and I lost the use of my right hand again for another five months.
Now its 2012 and I think I have about 98 percent efficiency on the right hand.
Q: When I saw you in concert back in the mid-1990s in Melbourne, there was a very human and real moment: You flubbed the lyrics to "If I Could Read Your Mind" -- just a minor slip -- and I saw your face briefly contort into an "Oh *#@*!" and then you were right back to the song.
Oh, when a song's finished sometimes I'll go back and sing half a chorus (laughs). If I didn't sing it right, I say "Here's the one I missed in the second section," and I'll sing it for them. They love that. They just think that's the greatest. I like to get a good communication going with the audience. We have a lot of fun doing that.
Q: Do you have a favorite song or several songs that you think "These are some of the best things I've ever done, but no one seemed to notice"?
Yes I do, and most of them are in my show. I do the standards but I have a rotation of about 12 songs that basically they have not heard on the radio. But they are the best stuff I've got to offer: "Did She Mention My Name," "14 Karat Gold," "Never Too Close, "A Painter Passing Through," "Shadows," "Beautiful," "The Watchman's Gone."
Q: Have you heard that hip-hop version of "Sundown" by a guy named Elwood?
Oh yeah. There's been all kinds of versions. There's a wonderful version by Toby Keith, Jesse Winchester. It's a nice little tune. I like it.
Q: A music critic called you an "alpha male folkie" because of such songs as "Sundown" and "For Lovin' Me."
Oh, I know. I hate that one, "For Lovin' Me." And yet Peter, Paul and Mary had a No. 5 hit with a single of that song. It was the song that opened the door for me both as a songwriter and as a recording artist because as a result of that I got a recording contract. Peter did a wonderful sort of tongue-in-cheek approach to it.
It's terribly chauvinistic and I've had to apologize for that many times.
But "Sundown," that's a little bit different. I'm talking about a different set of circumstances there -- the mistrust and that sort of business.
Q: Years ago when I interviewed Burton Cummings, I got to ask him about his imitation of you -- of how you would sound if you sang Rod Stewart's "Maggie May." What were your thoughts the first time you saw or heard Cummings do that?
Somebody told me he was doing that. That didn't bother me. Burton is a good friend and I know him quite well. He was playing at the Royal York Hotel here in Toronto. I went down to see him and he was supposed to do it but he didn't have the nerve -- he didn't do it!
I've never actually sat down and heard him do it like at a concert. It was sort of a light-hearted thing he did for a short period of time, until he got so embarrassed he couldn't do it anymore (laughs).
Q: As for your Daytona concert, I assume, and hope, you're not one of those guys who thinks it's cool to avoid playing your hits?
I have to work within a framework of time. I must, really. I work for two hours and 10 minutes max. I've seen too many bands that played too long.
If you get Springsteen or the Stones, they can carry on for three hours and you still don't get tired of listening to them. So I'm kind of insecure that way. I feel like "How much Lightfoot music do they need?" But I always do the standards.
DAYTONA article/interview
