posted at the NG:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniont...w21gordon.html
NORTH COUNTY N&D
The storyteller
Gordon Lightfoot makes a rare local appearance at Sycuan – expect the sounds of 'Harmony'
By Buddy Blue
April 21, 2005
Among one segment of graying music fans, the name Gordon Lightfoot conjures up nostalgia for an era when mainstream FM radio hosted a roster of quality, intelligent singer-songwriters, performing tunes that became intimate reflections of their lives.
A different segment has less fond memories, believing the anemic soft-rockers who dominated the airwaves of the 1970s were a plague upon this country's pop culture, blissfully and deservedly consigned to the dustbin by the punk rock movement at decade's end.
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Perhaps a re-evaluation of Lightfoot is in order among those harboring the latter judgment as Lightfoot towers above the Fogelbergs, Loggins, Denvers and Chapins he's often unfairly lumped together with.
While it's true that Lightfoot's hits were often maddeningly inescapable and some suffered from date-stamping overproduction, he was and remains an artist of substance. In fact, Lightfoot warrants closer association with such critically celebrated Americana/folk artists as John Prine, Dave Alvin and Guy Clark (or such fellow Canadians as the Band, Neil Young and Buffy St. Marie) than he does the aforementioned purveyors of pabulum.
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DATEBOOK
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Gordon Lightfoot
8 p.m. tomorrow; Showcase Theatre, Sycuan Casino, 5469 Casino Way, El Cajon; Sold out; (800) 445-6002, Ext. 1139
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Lightfoot possesses a significant repertoire of gifts: a uniquely moody voice, at once crusty and shimmering; a catalog of songs that meld a traditionalist's intuition for history, a craftsman's flair for melody and a storyteller's knack for poetic melodrama; all put over with a melancholic persona that lends emotional authenticity to his work.
Lightfoot's songbook is nothing if not versatile, from the unabashed tenderness of "Beautiful" and "If You Could Read My Mind" to the epic yarn-spinning of "Ghosts of Cape Horn" and "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" to the wistful folk-pop of "Sundown" and "Carefree Highway."
Lightfoot's career began a decade before he became a public presence, as he was writing hit songs for Peter, Paul & Mary, Ian & Sylvia, Marty Robbins, Bobby Bare and others.
The 1970s, of course, was Lightfoot's decade, as his output regularly marked the pop, country and adult contemporary charts. However, unlike fellow '70s singer-songwriters of similar success and substance (Paul Simon, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, et al.), Lightfoot faded into obscurity after his commercial trajectory had run its course. From 1986 to the present, Lightfoot has only released four albums of new material, and he rarely ventures out on tour.
This has been partially due to Lightfoot's apparent penchant for his native Canada, where he's revered as a national icon and has been the recipient of so many awards and honorariums he scarcely has any motivation to venture far from home base.
On the other hand, there have been personal demons and health problems to battle. Most significantly, Lightfoot suffered an abdominal hemorrhage in September 2002 that placed him in a coma for a couple months and nearly did him in.
Lightfoot's first order of business upon recovery was to record a new album, his first in six years. "Harmony," released last spring, featured a batch of new songs near-equal in quality to anything Lightfoot ever composed, with simple, elegant arrangements that framed the material in a better light than his familiar major label fare of the 1970s.
If Lightfoot's voice sounds thinner and weaker than we're used to; if recent photographs show him looking drawn and gaunt; well, factor in that he is pushing 70 years old these days while still recovering from a near-fatal illness.
Although he's played a handful of one-off concerts since his brush with mortality, this year marks Lightfoot's first full-fledged tour since he took ill. He'll perform locally at Sycuan Casino tomorrow night, in a show that sold out well in advance.
In short, one needn't be a Canadian baby boomer possessed of questionable musical taste to be a fan of Gordon Lightfoot. Give the man a chance to escape the omnipresent shadow of the 1970s, and you may wind up with a newfound appreciation for what he's done and will hopefully continue doing in the years to come.
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Buddy Blue is a San Diego writer and musician.
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This person makes it sound like Gord jumped out of bed minutes after the operation and went to the nearest recording studio! 
- Borderstone
