Globe and Mail review-Nov.2006

[Auburn Annie]

Timeless songs from a wiry old icon
ALAN NIESTER

Special to The Globe and Mail

Gordon Lightfoot

At Massey Hall, In Toronto on Thursday

Growing old. It ain't pretty, but it sure as hell beats the alternative.

Which is why it was still so good to see Gordon Lightfoot gracing the Massey Hall stage on the first evening of his four-night Toronto run.

That he was there at all is still something of a miracle. In 2002, in the middle of a similar appearance, he had to be airlifted to a hospital in Hamilton, the victim of a major abdominal hemorrhage that could well have killed him. (My mother was in the same hospital that day, being treated for a similar condition by the same surgeon -- Mr. Lightfoot and I are forever bound by that, whether he knows it or not.)

It took him a long time to recover. And frankly, he's never really been as robust since. But he's a wiry old icon, still happy to be up onstage cranking out the hits from his 40-odd years of defining the singer-songwriter genre.

Is his voice as strong as it was 30 years ago? Perhaps not, but is yours? Or your father's? Or your grandfather's? All that said, it's still a bit of a shock to hear Lightfoot's reedy and breathy voice today while mentally comparing it to the earthy, solid baritone it was back in the sixties and seventies.

The guitar playing is as good as ever, though, largely because, well, Lightfoot was never really known for his guitar playing. As he says himself, he really only knows five chords. The music? That's what the backing quartet is for.

So this concert is for the memories -- not so much the memories of Lightfoot and the stronger man he was in his youth, but for the songs, and the memories we associate with them. It was obvious that most in this audience identified with the songs from their own earlier days.

And there were lots of them sprinkled through the two-hour set. Early on: Cotton Jenny, not really a Canadian-sounding song, being about the Deep South and all, but one that felt like it, having been best known as a hit for Anne Murray. Then later: Beautiful, perhaps his most haunting and romantic ballad, a song played at the end of every high-school dance in Canada in the seventies.

And the travellin' songs, of course, the ones that defined him as much as anything else -- Carefree Highway, perhaps the ultimate road song, and Canadian Railroad Trilogy, with its looping rhythms echoing the sound of an old steam engine roaring down the track.

Now 68 (his birthday was yesterday, a fact acknowledged by the crowd when it sang a raucous Happy Birthday), Lightfoot seems more determined than ever to reach out to his audience, delivering little anecdotes and asides in his terse, almost shy manner.

"Is the Don River up yet?" he inquired early on, referring to the downpour that had deluged Toronto. "God, what a night to come out to a show, eh?" That would have been a perfect time to launch into Rainy Day People, but he saved it for a few songs up the road.

Interestingly enough, for a singer / songwriter so strictly defined as a Canadian icon, many of Lightfoot's songs have an American bent. Old Dan's Records, a welcome but surprising choice, has an Appalachian feel. Sundown seems more Arizona than Alberta, and even the Edmund Fitzgerald was an American ore carrier. But what this suggests, and what we need to be reminded of once in a while, is that Lightfoot's music was always more multidimensional than the CBC's constant replaying of Alberta Bound and Railroad Trilogy would suggest.

On this night, Lightfoot was accompanied by his long-time quartet of Rick Haynes (bass), Michael Heffernan (keyboards), Barry Keane (drums) and the sublime Terry Clements on lead guitar. So quiet as to be almost unobtrusive, they gave new meaning to the term "backing musicians," so far in the background did they seem to be. But given Lightfoot's now less-vibrant vocal abilities, pulling the volume knob back down to three was a necessary touch.

There was one troubling sidelight though.

Go to a Rush concert or a Tragically Hip show, or even a Burton Cummings / Randy Bachman Guess Who revival, and you will see a multigenerational audience, kids and teenagers sprinkled throughout the crowd. Lightfoot's audience lacks that. Suffice it to say that when Lightfoot mentioned a slide rule in one of his songs, most of the audience knew exactly what he was talking about.

Too bad, because so much of Lightfoot's work not only stands the test of time, it transcends it. Songs like If You Could Read My Mind, Beautiful and Carefree Highway, well, they just never grow old.

Gordon Lightfoot performs at Toronto's Massey Hall tonight and tomorrow, at 8 p.m. (416-872-4255).