Lightfoot appearances at St.Paul's church in Orillia-2005-2007-2013

[charlene]

http://www.orilliapacket.com/webapp/...f=News%20Alert

Gord mentioned during the show that he would be doing some songs at a church but he was hard to hear where i was and I didn't get all he was saying. If I'd known I could get a ride back home on Sunday I would have made proper plans and stayed overnight to go and see him.

Legendary Lightfoot returns to his roots

Teviah Moro

Monday, December 05, 2005 - 08:00

Local News - Unplugged, intimate, and at times, whimsical.

Orillia-born folk legend Gordon Lightfoot opened a treasure trove of memories before a packed audience at St. Paul’s United Church yesterday in between stirring performances.

Lightfoot was in town for a performance at the Orillia Opera House Saturday night.

“I like to remember where it is that I come from,” Lightfoot told The Packet after about two hours of stories and songs.

“It felt good. It felt fine,” said Lightfoot, 67, while signing autographs for fans and old friends in the church where, as a child, he was a soprano in the choir.

The audience of about 475 sat spellbound as the songwriter — who shot to international stardom with hits like If You Could Read My Mind, Sundown and Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald — picked through melodies accompanied by bassist Rick Haynes and guitarist Terry Clements.

Lightfoot said the church date was months in the making and a chance to celebrate St. Paul’s 175th anniversary.

“It’s a special event for Rev. (Karen) Hilfman (Millson),” he said before stepping to the dais for his first public performance at St. Paul’s since he was a kid.

Lightfoot’s trademark gravelly timber was strong and on the mark throughout the eight-song performance that found near-perfect acoustics through small amplifiers in the Peter Street church.

“It’s a little rough, but it’s there,” he said before sitting down with Hilfman Millson and Blair Bailey, St. Paul’s music director, to share memories of his youth before the crowd.

A relaxed Lightfoot, wearing shiny black cowboy boots, black jeans and a black shirt and tie under an ash sports jacket, told the audience that he and his sister Beverley Eyers, 70, sitting in the front row, learned the piano at an early age.

But it was under the tutelage of then church music director Ray Williams that Lightfoot found confidence in his singing.

“Ray Williams taught me to sing with emotion,” he said.

Lightfoot also recalled competing in amateur talent shows on CFOR radio, performing in the high school quartet, The Collegiate Four, travelling to Kiwanis music festivals and flunking calculus at Orillia District Collegiate District Vocational Institute.

“Sorry about that,” he quipped.

But it was his behaviour at the back of Donnajean Jefferies’s Latin class that evoked the most devilish image of a budding songwriter neglecting to do his homework.

“Gordie was at the back of my Latin class but Gordie was not always quiet,” said Jefferies into a microphone standing among the crowd in the nave.

“In fact, he wasn’t doing his homework at all. In fact, he was too busy flying his paper airplane,” said the parishioner.

But during Sunday mass, the Latin teacher’s cholera would be soothed by the choir boy’s voice which was “so angelical.”

“And I’m thinking, Donnajean, how could you ever be mad at that kid?” she recalled.

Lightfoot’s sister, Eyers, told the audience how relatives would throw nickels at her three-year-old little brother to sing at their grandmother’s house.

“And you sang your heart out,” Eyers told Lightfoot, reminding him of the time he belted out Jesus Loves Me. “You were promised a nickel to do this and I’ll never forget it.”

In an interview before the performance, Eyers said her brother’s last public performance at the church was before his voice changed at 13 when he sang at her wedding.

During the session, Lightfoot revealed a range of musical influences, including Bing Crosby, Ian and Sylvia Tyson and even jazz pianist Dave Brubeck.

When he saw an advertisement in Down Beat magazine for Sunset Boulevard’s Westlake College of Music, the 18-year-old Lightfoot took off to Los Angeles to study for two semesters.

There, Lightfoot said he learned to write scores by basing everything on a piano keyboard.

“I’ve got a keyboard that’s about two feet long and it’s right in front of my head and it never leaves,” he said.

Though he didn’t start playing the guitar until he was 15, Lightfoot has written about 200 songs on record.

At Hilfman Millson’s hint, he gave the audience a brief glimpse of how his life as a prolific songwriter and performer had taken a certain toll.

“It certainly didn’t work any miracles with my personal life,” Lightfoot said, but didn’t elaborate.

In 2002, before Lightfoot was to play the second of two benefit concerts for Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital and the Sunshine Festival at the Orillia Opera House, he suffered an abdominal hemorrhage.

In a coma for weeks, Lightfoot said he remembers nothing of his time in the operating room. “You know how it feels to be dead. To me, it was no worries, no cares.”

Near the end of the session, Hilfman Millson asked if Orillia’s favourite son had any wisdom to pass on to the audience.

“It’s been a bit of a roller coaster ride, a bit of a highwire act,” Lightfoot confessed. “You can never let any of that stuff stand in your way.”

[ December 05, 2005, 08:22: Message edited by: charlene ]

[Auburn Annie]

What a fabulous article! - though if *my* math is right (no calculus involved, LOL) his sister Bev married REALLY young.

[Auburn Annie]

What a fabulous article! - though if *my* math is right (no calculus involved, LOL) his sister Bev married REALLY young.

[Sheryl]

What a great article. Gord looks great, too!

[johnfowles]

Originally posted by Sheryl:
What a great article. Gord looks great, too!

Unhelpfully the Orillia Packet article was only on line yesterday but for those who might have missed it the trio picture that I had the perspicacity to save was:-

Unfortunately I omitted to save the caption (very naughty of me especially after I had criticised Blackberry John re lack of captions for his recent display
(but then how was I to know that the whole shooting match would shortly disappear!)
Correct me if I am wrong but it went something like Gordon Lightfoot at St Paul's United Church yesterday with Rick Haynes and Terry Clements
John Fowles
The church bell chimed till it rang twenty-nine times

[johnfowles]

Originally posted by <test>:
I clicked on the link at the top of the first message in this thread.

OK you are right today
but yesterday a couple of Newsgroup posters found that that link only yielded a mysterious "catastrophic failure" message.
when I then found the same thing I decided to try to display it here for anyomne who missed it Today
as "test" found it is again viewable so I can now show the correct caption
Legendary Orillia musician Gordon Lightfoot gave an intimate performance at St. Paul’s United Church yesterday afternoon with the help of bandmates, Rick Haynes, left, and Terry Clements, right.


Photo: Teviah Moro
John Fowles
Keep your mind a mystery Runnin hot n cold Shes more than money She's 14 karat gold

Reality brings mystery And ne'er
the twain shall meet And all of my wild horses Cannot pull you off your feet

[silenceandsound86]

Thanks so much! This is the wonder of this site: that people from all around the world can find out about articles like this. Can you imagine what an incredible event that was? Oh, to have been there . . .

[Rona]

Thanks so much! This is the wonder of this site: that people from all around the world can find out about articles like this. Can you imagine what an incredible event that was? Oh, to have been there . . .

[Auburn Annie]

Lightfoot to perform at St. Paul's

By Teviah Moro
Local News - Thursday, June 14, 2007 Updated @ 11:09:58 AM

He’s headlining the Mariposa Folk Festival this year.

But fans have the chance to listen to Orillia-born folk hero Gordon Lightfoot when he joins St. Paul’s United Church choir for this Sunday’s service.

“He said he’d like to come and sing a service,” Rachael Howes, program and people co-ordinator at the Peter Street church, said Thursday.

“He’s going to sit with the choir.
”

Lightfoot, who nurtured his talents with the church choir as a boy, will sing two solos during the 10:30 a.m. service, to which everyone is welcome.

One song Howes has heard he’ll perform is “Sit Down Young Stranger,” a tune from his 1970 album “If You Could Read My Mind.”

Lightfoot will also chat with Rev. Karen Hilfman Millson during the service’s reflection time, which this Sunday is called “Celebrating Creativity.”

The church can hold about 500 people.The service is free and open to the general public.

“We are expecting quite a crowd,” Howes said.

Lightfoot’s last performance at St. Paul’s in December 2005 opened up a treasure trove of memories for a packed audience as he reminisced about his youth in Orillia.

“I like to remember where it is that I come from,” he told The Packet & Times after about two hours of stories and songs, including “If You Could Read My Mind”, “Sundown” and “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”

Since then, Lightfoot and Hilfman Millson have kept in touch, Howes said. tmoro@orilliapacket.com

[Jesse Joe]

Boy this is really something, How more down to earth can this Poet Genius be ?? Id like to be close by. Good work as usual Annie, Keep It UP!!

[ June 14, 2007, 15:21: Message edited by: Jesse-Joe D18 ]

[814scenic]

I wish I could Hop on a plane and be in the front pew! I have to move to Canada. Thanks so much for the info.

[Borderstone]

I wonder,do you think he'll go back to the very beginning and recite/sing "The Lord's Prayer".

You know,the very first thing he ever recorded,that was played over the school intercom?

If he does,someone better have their digital camera ready! ..and I don't mean cell-phone camera.

Be really great too if he did,"Forgive me Lord".

[louisemnnpls]

How absolutely wonderful for the congregation of St. Paul's United Church! (and guests as, as there are sure to be many more people wanting to see and hear him.} Wish we were closer. Am so happy for any of you that get to go.

[charlene]

You can take the boy out of Orillia but you can't take Orillia out of the boy...
FROM 2005 appearance at St.Paul's:

- Gordon Lightfoot helped St. Paul's Church in Orillia celebrates its 175th anniversary, with two hours of music and memories.

Gordon Lightfoot's faithful congregation spans the globe, but his parish remains firmly rooted in Orillia.

There was no doubting that fact when the 67-year-old folk icon stepped to the altar at St. Paul's United Church Sunday afternoon, an acoustic guitar at his side, and a wealth of memories on his mind.

It was in this cavernous place of worship decades before, in front of the orderly oak pews dappled in stained-glass light, that the future music legend would first find his voice, as a member of the junior choir.

"There is no question about it," Lightfoot, looking relaxed and genuinely glad to be there, told a capacity crowd.

"It started right here."

He'd come home simply because his community had asked him to, hoping that their best-known parishioner would help celebrate the church's 175th anniversary.

In the audience were childhood friends and acquaintances - some remembered, others less so - and there was family, too.

In the front pew sat his sister, Beverley Eyers.

"His voice changed when he was about 13," she recalled, twisting around in her seat.

It was Eyers, now a Barrie resident, who often accompanied her brother on organ during his years at St. Paul's.

He would sing there for her wedding as well, but as a boy soprano, he was hard to beat.

"He was way better than anybody in the whole wide world," Eyers said.

Accompanied by long-time bandmates Rick Haynes on bass and Terry Clements on guitar, Orillia's favourite son treated an audience of 500 or so to more than two hours of song and personal recollections.

"Ray Williams taught me to sing with emotion, and that's what I did," he said, crediting the church's late choir director with having encouraged his early interest in music.

In place of the white choir gown of his youth was a charcoal-grey suit jacket, jeans, a paisley tie and black leather boots - ideal for keeping time.

Alternating between stripped-down renditions of the hits that made him famous, and an informal Q-and-A session, Lightfoot offered those gathered a rare opportunity to know him in a way his most diehard devotees could only dream of.

Often, though, he just listened to the stories and kind words spoken by those who had trudged through the snow to spend time with him that afternoon.

"Gord," asked one parishioner, a portable microphone in hand, "do you happen to recall sledding down Langman's hill in winter?" Darn right he did.

"The day had to be perfect," Lightfoot replied, clearly brightening at the memory. "Perfect ice, perfect snow, perfect temperature."

A former teacher, Donnajean Jefferies - "Ms. Irving at the time," - remembered Lightfoot doing everything but homework while seated at the back of her Latin class.

"He was too busy flying his paper airplanes," she said to laughter.

Like others that day, Jefferies would not let her moment pass without offering the heartfelt words that many in the community had been waiting years to say.

"Thank you for what you have given to us and our country," Jefferies said.

Draped across the lectern was a quilt crafted in the late 1940s or early 1950s, inscribed with the names of boys who attended Cub meetings in the church basement at the time.

Lightfoot was among them, and so was Gary Thiess.

Rising from his seat, the local man recalled Lightfoot's drive to excel at everything he attempted, whether it be music or an early interest in, of all things, pole vaulting - the latter ultimately resulting in a torn ligament.

Offered another: "I'm the guy who used to bawl you out for chewing gum while you were singing, right in front of the principal."

Questions put to him by the Rev. Karen Hilfman Millson and music director Blair Bailey were answered with surprising candour, the three of them seated on wooden stools facing the congregation.

Occasionally Lightfoot would shut his eyes, as if mentally scrolling back 50 or more years to the Orillia of his youth, to the place where he and his friends would cycle along country roads or pluck sunfish and chub from the river in nearby Marchmont.

"It was almost like a Tom Sawyer-type experience," he said.

With fame and fortune, he later told the crowd, comes great responsibility and, all too often, a distancing from friends and loved ones.

Tickets to the unpublicized performance were given free to church members, though word of the upcoming event was kept to a minimum to avoid having to turn away the inevitable crush of admirers.

Chances were good that many were within the vicinity.

Only the night before, at Orillia's historic opera house, Lightfoot had played a long-awaited show that was three years in the coming.

That performance, too, was special, a makeup gig for a show cancelled due to an abdominal hemorrhage that left him near death and in a drug-induced coma for six weeks.

"You know how it feels to be dead ... no worries, no cares," he said of the experience that resulted in an outpouring of concern from fans the world over.

By Frank Matys
http://www.lightfoot.ca/051204r.htm

His mum raised him right..he's a thankful guy from Orillia.

[RJ]

Gord: keepin it real..

[Borderstone]

So,"did" he sing "The Lord's Prayer"?
Just wondering.

Great article at Lightfoot.ca too.

[Auburn Annie]

House of worship ideal setting for Lightfoot's homecoming

Nathan Taylor

Monday, June 18, 2007 - 09:00

Local News - In his Sunday best, Gordon Lightfoot emerged with his guitar in front of an audience that packed St. Paul's United Church yesterday.

The Orillia folk legend set his guitar on its stand and sat down in an old, familiar spot: the choir section.

"It was really an important part of my development as a singer," Lightfoot said of his boyhood years as a soprano in the St. Paul's choir. "The next thing I knew, I started moving up in the pecking order."

The first song Lightfoot performed was "Sit Down Young Stranger."

Rev. Karen Hilfman Millson and other church members reflected on what the lyrics meant to them.

One of the reverend's favourite lyrics was "I never had a dollar that I didn't earn with pride, 'cause I had a million daydreams to keep me satisfied."

"But they won't pay the bills," Lightfoot quipped.

Lightfoot knew he wanted to be a musician since he was about 11, he told the congregation, crediting the Kiwanis Music Festival and the church choir for his decision to pursue a musical career.

He was 17 when he wrote his first song.

"And I never stopped."

He had an urge to write about the Vietnam War during the conflict, but, being a Canadian citizen and considering the fact Canadian troops weren't involved, he didn't think it was appropriate for him, "as a bystander," to touch on the topic.

However, with Canada now involved militarily in Afghanistan, "Sit Down Young Stranger" can be applied to that situation.

"We've lost 58 (soldiers) since 2003, so I can sing a song like that," he said.

His second and final solo was a cover of Bob Dylan's "Ring Them Bells."

After the service, friends and fans gathered downstairs to chat with and get autographs from Lightfoot.

"It was a challenge met and followed through," Lightfoot told The Packet & Times, referring to his performance. "It's a lot tougher than the real thing (regular concerts)."

Hilfman Millson held a one-on-one with Lightfoot onstage yesterday. "It was just a delight to have him home again, and really fun to have him in the choir and step forward, as he did as a young boy, to do a solo," she said.

ntaylor@orilliapacket.com

[charlene]

How much do you love that man???
He seems to be on a 'thankful' and sentimental journey these last several months..it's very, very sweet.

[Jesse Joe]

A lot Charlene...

What a terrific Guy!!!

[charlene]

http://www.orilliapacket.com/2013/02...o-lightfoot-qa
Jim Wood waited all night to ask Gordon Lightfoot a question.

The occasion was Friday night at St. Paul’s United Church for An In-Depth Conversation with Gordon Lightfoot with Rev. Karen Hilfman Millson that lasted more than two hours.

The full house listened intently as Hilfman Millson guided Lightfoot through his life story, one that began with Lightfoot’s musical development in elementary school through to what he expects to be doing on his 75th birthday later this year (working on tour).

As the event headed for a conclusion, Wood, from his front-row seat, asked, “Will you take anything from the floor?”

It turned out the 96-year-old Wood was the choreographer of the barbershop quartet Lightfoot was in during high school and he wanted to know if Lightfoot remembered a particular song the quartet sang.

Lightfoot remembered the song and even sang a few lines with Wood joining in.

“I figured he would because I had a lot of fun with him back in those days. He was the acme of barbershopping in Orillia, as far as I was concerned,” Wood said afterward.

Lightfoot also remembered the influence Wood had on his musical knowledge.

“We learned. We learned well,” Lightfoot told the audience.

Lightfoot told engaging stories of his early career-shaping experiences (his first recording, Remember Me [I’m The One], turned into a Canada-wide hit, and it then took eight years to for another hit) to learning how the real story of what caused the Edmond Fitzgerald to sink made Lightfoot realize he had to change a line in one of his most famous songs, which, to this day, is how he sings it in performance.

Lightfoot said the original line cast blame on two crew members for the sinking and caused angst for their family members. He was always troubled by that and was happy to make the change.

Hilfman Millson publicly interviewed Lightfoot on three other occasions. She is leaving the pulpit April 7 and wanted to repeat the experience one more time.

“He told different stories this time because it got into some different topics that he hasn’t always got into, and he got into some poignant moments that were quite touching, I thought ...” said Hilfman Millson.

Mayumi Kumagai sat so far back she couldn’t see Lightfoot and Hilfman Millson on the dais. Fortunately, the set was projected onto two screens on either side of the house, so she could put a picture to the amplified words she heard form Lightfoot.

“I thought he’s able now to talk as well as he sings. He might end up being a talker,” said Kumagai.

Many members of the audience stayed after to meet Lightfoot at a reception.

[KHester]

How cool

[DellroyGM]

cool. Not very light on the keys, today...

-DellroyGM

[lighthead2toe]

A most memorable occasion.

Thanks Char.

[T.G.]

LINK DOES NOT WORK..

Interview with Gordon Lightfoot - YouTube

Singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot is a Canadian musical icon. This past February, the former choirboy talked to minister Karen Hilfman Millson before a live audience at his home congregation of St. Paul's United in Orillia, Ont.

Interview by Karen Hilfman Millson
Videographed by Tyler Knight
Recorded by Bruce Clark
Edited by Kevin Spurgaitis

Additional video courtesy of BBC, "Early Morning Rain," written and performed by Gordon Lightfoot, EMI Music

[jj]

Yeah, this was neat to hear. Check initial posting and comments.