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Healing Journeys A Night of Triumph By Bo White
Gordon Lightfoot’s career spans five decades. His sixties style was a folk/country hybrid that owed as much to Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard as it did to Woody Guthrie and Bob Gibson. He wrote glorious songs such as For Lovin’ Me and Early Morning Rain from the very beginning. And he began using 12 string acoustic guitars to anchor and accentuate the rhythm. But it wasn’t until the 1970 release of Sit Down Young Stranger that he found his “voice”. You can hear his new contemplative style on If You Could Read My Mind – his American breakout, a bonafide smash that brought him worldwide recognition and a legion of fans, including such notable contemporaries as Bob Dylan, Dan Fogelberg, Jimmy Buffet and Roger McGuinn and David Crosby of the Byrds. In fact Dylan once said that Lightfoot was his favorite songwriter. No small praise, indeed. Randy Bachman and Burton Cummings of the original Guess Who wrote and recorded a tribute to their hero entitled Lightfoot on their 1968 LP Wheatfield Soul. It must be in the air and in the water or in the wide-open expanse of the prairies that stirs the creative juices of Canadian artists. It seems to me that Lightfoot, Neil Young, Robbie Robertson, Bachman and Cummings share a Canadian heritage of radical genuineness and a stubborn musical spirit that resists recycling and cooptation from ravenous commercial demands. There is an undeniable camaraderie amongst these musical stalwarts. In a recent broadcast from Toronto, Burton Cummings told the story about incorporating a Lightfoot parody into his 1982 solo act – a take on Lightfoot singing Maggie May (It’s a hoot) - but Lightfoot is in the audience – and he’s sitting in the front row. Afterwards, they meet backstage. Lightfoot tells Cummings, “It’s pretty funny but it doesn’t sound a bit like me”. His manager leans over and says, “Gordon, it sounds EXACTLY like you.” At 70 years old, Gordon Lightfoot is in the twilight of his career and he is touring because he is a minstrel and that is what minstrels do – they make music. Without his music, Lightfoot would be a fish out of water, a spirit dried up and defeated devoid of its basic sustenance. Gordon Lightfoot was born to make music. It is his calling. His soul needs to be heard. How could it be otherwise? Lightfoot has been around the piss-pot a few times and has paid witness to the dramatic changes in popular music, arts, politics, you name it. He’s a person of the world who has experienced incredible joy and devastating sorrow - the necessary losses that are part of living a human life and the betrayals of our body and our heart - infidelity, divorce, addiction and illness. I carried all these thoughts and emotions with me on this unseasonably warm evening as the last gasp of winter yielded to the eternal hopes of spring. And as I entered the sanctuary of the glorious Temple Theatre, I felt a sense of anticipation, wondering how on earth Gordon Lightfoot could possibly pull it off. Lightfoot walked out to the stage to a collective gasp. For those who hadn’t seen him lately, his appearance was shocking. He was painfully thin, almost skeletal. He didn’t look the same… and he didn’t sound the same. Gone was that deep expressive baritone, replaced by a hoarse type of intoning whispered more than sang. On any note outside of his limited range, Lightfoot would strain and distort his face like Clint Eastwood saying, “Make my day”. But that is only the obvious. It misses the point Lightfoot performed 25 songs or so from his massive catalog of music. The quality of the music and lyrics was above reproach, near genius. He picked songs that spanned his career from the 1967’s epic Canadian Railroad Trilogy to Restless from 1993. He opened the show with the folk tale Cotton Jenny followed by concise song-stories without flash or volume. This 5-piece band was very sound conscious and was, perhaps, the quietest band I’ve ever heard. The lead guitarist Terry Clements was exceptional. His minimalist tonal leads were musical punctuations executed perfectly. The rest of the band stepped back and let Lightfoot perform his songs. And he was masterful…fretting with his thumb and effortlessly picking circular patterns on both his 6 and 12-string acoustic guitars. He’s mostly a finger-picker and his driving rhythm patterns seem to highlight the melody of the songs. Lightfoot delivered one staple after another with clarity of vision and degrees of awareness that was not lost upon the adoring crowd. An understated Carefree Highway was followed by a joke: How long is the hair on a rabbit? About 3 1⁄2 seconds Ok. Pretty corn ball but mostly endearing. In rapid-fire succession laid down the folk gospel with 14 Karat Gold, Minstrel of the Dawn, Let it Ride and A Painter Passing Through. And as he performed his homespun prairie voodoo, I swear he took us to another place, a moment of deep truth, and his anguished monotone rasp revealing his awakened state. He knows things we don’t know. And he led us to the mountain and through the valley with Me and Bobby McGee, The Watchman’s Gone, Old Dan’s Records and Hang Dog Hotel. One of his lesser known masterpieces, Beautiful, is stunning in its absolute simplicity and heartfelt sentiments. When the heart is truly touched not too many words are needed. Sundown got one of the biggest responses of the night. It is (allegedly) about Lightfoot’s former girlfriend Cathy Smith, who traveled the circuit and was linked romantically with Levon Helm from the Band and others. You may recall that Smith did time for supplying John Belushi with a lethal dose of heroin. This song opens a core wound - an imbedded existential reality. The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald also received a tremendous and well-deserved ovation. It is a masterpiece that conveys a sense that the writer’s heart has opened and others are deeply known…it seems to convey a healing power. Lightfoot appeared to understand this and mirrored it back to the audience, saying, ”I’m mesmerized, You’re Wonderful.” The artist is the healer and the healed. If You Could Read My Mind was truly the highlight of the show. It was released in 1970 and was Lightfoot’s ticket to stardom and international acclaim. It is both sad and redemptive as Lightfoot is able to stand outside that sadness and triumph over the loss – a perfect dialectic and a metaphor for this incredible evening of music. Perhaps the deepest truth Gordon Lightfoot revealed is that it’s not what we lose as we age but what is possible - what happens when we let go and our dreams come true…and we realize the journey becomes more important than the destination. |
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