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What: Gordon Lightfoot, in concert
When: 8 p.m. Monday
Where: Orpheum Theatre,528 Pierce St.
Admission: $37.50 and up
Tickets: Available at all Ticketmaster outlets.
Gordon Lightfoot needs his cup of brew.
For the past six months, the Canadian singer-songwriter has been zig-zagging across the country for some 70 concerts, including a Monday night performance at Sioux City’s Orpheum Theatre. He takes his trusty coffee pot wherever he goes.
In the afternoon, long before the 74-year-old steps on stage, you’ll likely find him seated at a table – guitar in hand, coffee brewing nearby and a puff of smoke swirling in the air.
The folk singer takes but two basic items to help him get ready and relax.
“I bring along a coffee pot and some cigarettes,” he said over the phone from his Toronto home. “It creates a nice atmosphere for the afternoon.”
Lightfoot won’t see the inside of his hotel room until the day’s end. But the rigors of the road don’t seem to bother him. He’d rather be in front of a crowd than in a recording studio.
Two health scares in recent years almost took him out of the business. He fought his way back. Now, he relies on a strict training schedule to keep his strength.
With a powerful drive to perform and sheer love of music, Lightfoot took to the road for a tour titled “50 Years on the Carefree Highway.” His stop in Sioux City marks his 44th live concert scheduled since March.
“I’ve always been a performer, and I’ve loved getting out in front of an audience,” he said. “Playing it live is a lot more fun.”
Over the course of his career, Lightfoot has recorded 220 songs and produced 20 albums.
The tour features his well-known hits as well as some deep album cuts for the die-hard fans. All of which are woven together with some of Lightfoot's own behind-the-scenes stories and personal anecdotes about his historic 50-year musical career.
The songs go into a carefully planned rotation without missing any “standards,” as he calls them, like "Early Morning Rain," "If You Could Read My Mind," and "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”
He has played these songs countless times, but he said every time he strums along with the familiar tunes it’s like he’s just starting to play again. When he’s on stage, time slips away.
“It is two worlds,” Lightfoot said, carefully separating each word. “The family and the music. Two worlds.”
He has been married twice and divorced twice.
“Right now, I’m on the lam, but I’m doing well,” he said. “I have a girlfriend.”
He also has six children, ages 19 to 48, to look after. The youngest, Meredith Moon, has been busking, earning money by street singing folk tunes. She takes after her father. She wants to be a performer, too.
“She’s trying to do it all on her own,” Lightfoot said. “I’ve seen her perform two or three times, and she looks promising.”
His only worry about the future of her music career is that she lacks material. She has one of his songs, “Steel Rail Blues.”
“I tell (my kids) to try and look inside themselves and find something to write about,” he said.
Lightfoot found success in singing and writing his own songs.
In June 2012, he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and honored for his role in defining the folk-pop sound of the 1960s and ‘70s.
Lightfoot credits his workout routine for keeping him able-bodied and active even after an abdominal aortic aneurysm in 2002 kept him from performing for 28 months, followed by a “mini-stroke” that put his right hand out of commission for a several weeks.
When it comes to fitness, he said, “You have to go out to do it. You don’t do it in your living room.”
He goes to Cambridge Club in Toronto, which he describes as a “modest kind of club. It’s not one of those fancy places.”
“They tell me my hair is too long,” he quipped. “I tell them I’ll get it cut for Christmas.”
Before his illness, Lightfoot ran. He ran a lot. Now, he fast walks, lifts weights and stretches, counting the reps throughout the 100-minute program.
“After you do it a few years, it almost becomes like meditation,” he said. “I know that’s what’s making me perform well. Every time I walk on stage, I feel it.
“That’s really what’s keeping me rolling.”
Sioux City article-Sept.13,2013
