Re: Lightfoot in Hamilton
 

The unveiling of the Lightfoot bust was a unique experience; I’m glad I went. It was a pleasure to accompany Char & Lisa. The venue was a beautiful new banquet hall up on the mountain in Hamilton. We arrived around 1:30 and were among the very first people there. We chatted with some of the organizers and Gino Cavicchioli, the sculptor – a very warm and charming fellow. About half of the hall had his works on display – about 12-15 sculptures and maybe 10-12 paintings and drawings. All of the exhibits were incredible. The other half of the hall had three tables for the dignitaries and a very elevated stage with the Lightfoot sculpture draped.

By 2:00 there were still not many in attendance. But people soon poured in. By the time the program began around 2:30, I’d guess there were 700 or 800 in attendance. There were some opening comments and then a pianist, Valerie Tryon, was introduced. Before she could begin to play, Gino had to rush out and back twice – first to fetch her a bench to sit on, then to unlock the piano keyboard. Did I mention that this guy was very charming? Ms. Tryon was a fantastic pianist and graciously played an encore piece.

Then it was Mr. Lightfoot’s turn. They started to make arrangements to bring him a vocal mike, but he said “No” (What a shock!). So he walks up, plugs his guitar into this little mini-amplifier on the floor and begins. He sang If You Could Read My Mind and Diamond Joe. We were sitting not more than 20 feet from him and it was really hard to hear the vocals. It must have been almost impossible for the people standing behind us to hear much of anything.

Nonetheless, he got a huge ovation. Then they did the grand unveiling. His comment was something like, “You know Gino. . . it does bear a resemblance, there is a resemblance!”. Gord also commented about how he had gotten the hair right (which is VERY long in the back). They hugged and took some pictures; it was evident that Gino was very pleased (as very well he should be).

After the unveiling, Gord signed autographs and posed for pictures for well over an hour – had to be tiring for him, but he seemed in great spirits the whole time.
That’s about all I remember.

Brian
(Official driver of the Westbrooks)

Re: Lightfoot in Hamilton
 

Fascinating ... Gord plugged into a battery operated Pignose amplifier -- I've been trying to get one of those for years -- stepped right up to the crowd with no mic and started. At one point, he turned and especially played for a fellow battling cancer who made a trip in from Quebec especially to see his idol. Very moving. Later, there was a presentation of a piece of the Edmund Fitzgerald's bell tower to Gordon in honor of his song about the sunken ship.

Gordon stayed until the hall was empty, signing every autograph and posing for every picture. Sitting beside Lincoln Alexander, someone asked him how he manages to deal with all the crowds hassling him for attention. "You just do it!" he laughed. A class act.

I got some good video of the performance and bust unveiling and will try to upload to YouTube shortly, if I can get through the technical snafus I always seem to encounter while trying to do so.

Re: Lightfoot in Hamilton
 

do you know how to 'rotate' the video I took - I held the camera for portrait pics/video and can't rotate it to 'landscape' viewing..

i have to lay on my side to view it..lol

Re: Lightfoot in Hamilton
 

I recorded the video with my DVD recorder today (from my camera), but the computer won't read the disk. Grrr. It's excellent video too. I'll try to do get it on the computer using school computers tomorrow.

Pictures from Hamilton event
 

pics:

Re: Pictures from Hamilton event
 

Thank you!

Re: Pictures from Hamilton event
 

OMG, he's wearing a very spiffy suit! :biggrin:

Thanks so much for the pix. SherylKat

Re: Pictures from Hamilton event
 

more:

Re: Lightfoot in Hamilton
 

dunno what edit tools you might use or have but i notice windows movie maker will do this...go to edit video and select rotate 90...or if it needs 270 then do it two more times...i dont edit much using windows but i hear pc's are more stable these days...i can't wait til rj gets into his mac and does some video of his and liam's productions...hope the labour day parade gig went well down at the fading cne


ps) looks like Gord was wearing an uncle toad tie (or perhaps they're uncle froggies)...a Mer gift i imagine

Re: Lightfoot in Hamilton
 

Lisa said to Gord : "I like your tie!"..and Gord was quite happy to hear something other than "i saw you in 1969/75/84/96/2005 etc..!
He told her he received the tie (with frogs on it) from a friend and it is an antique that is 80 years old..
When he looked at her he said " I've met you before!"..lol

Re: Lightfoot in Hamilton
 

We were going to ask Gordon about the tie...and forgot! Gordon was asking my son about the college he went to and I thought my son would mention the "frog city" then.

The frog bridge is pretty neat and the city places giant scarves around the frogs' necks during the winter :p. The frog theme has really caught on and it's just all over the place. Seemed a tad lame for me to be taking a pic of Gord's tie :rolleyes:...for my cousins who live in town there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willimantic

Re: Lightfoot in Hamilton
 

show us the rest of the picture Pam!
;)

Re: Lightfoot in Hamilton
 

bad tutorial by jj....it's called view video effects actually

here's a thorough screen capture in sir fowles fashion :)

to apply it i think you just drag the 90 degree rotation effect to the intended object/clip...give er a go

Re: Lightfoot in Hamilton
 

Would someone please post a video......I've grown weary of being teased.......

Re: Lightfoot in Hamilton
 

Honest lol I really just took a pic of his tie there.

The rest of my pics didn't come out well :( . It's about time for a new camera...the one I have got busted when I had to slam on my brakes while driving on the QEW on my way to Massey '08. I managed to fix the toggle -don't know how but just took it apart figuring it's busted anyway...but have had to duct tape the battery cover closed all this time.

ok so a few to share!

Re: Lightfoot in Hamilton
 

http://www.thespec.com/article/552526
Every face tells a great story
Picture at link: Ron Albertson, the Hamilton Spectator Sculptor Gino Cavicchioli in his studio surrounded by some of his work.

Jeff Mahoney
The Hamilton Spectator
(Apr 22, 2009)
Last week I sat in Gordon Lightfoot's chair, the one he sat in at Gino Cavicchioli's house in east Hamilton when songsmith met sculptor.

Cavicchioli had Lightfoot over to talk about sculpting his face and head. (Cavicchioli's licence plates read Bust Man.) Before Lightfoot modelled for Cavicchioli in the studio at the back of his house, the two became acquainted at the dining room table.

"He sat right there, where you're sitting now," Cavicchioli told me, as we talked across that same table.

I grabbed the arms of the chair as though to steady myself. Wow. Gordon Lightfoot. You know that feeling you get when someone has warmed up a seat for you? Well, it wasn't that feeling, because Lightfoot used the chair in September.

But there was some kind of energy transfer because when I came back to the office everything I wrote came out in the meter and cadence of The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

"The public works shed never gives up its dead, and the budget increase will come early."

Cavicchioli is not doing my bust. Just the opposite. I was there to turn the table on him, so to speak, taking the measure of his head. And heart.

Born in Melbourne, Australia, he moved with his family to Rome when he was a boy, until his father, an engineer (and so much more), took a job in Canada and fell in love with the country.

Cavicchioli served Mass as an altar boy at the Vatican. And his father, who was an artist before he was an engineer, would take him around the city to see firsthand the great art that is everywhere in it.

"He would say, 'This weekend, Gino, we are going to the Villa Borghese to see Bernini's masterpieces.' And when we got there he would say, pointing to a sculpture, 'Look at that face. Why is it that way? What makes it work?'"

Cavicchioli could speak no English when he came to Canada. He hated it. He had, after all, come from Rome. He was a teenager in Burlington and he'd get into fights at school.

He was on track to fail Grade 9. One day his father told him, "Gino, you can do Grade 9 until you're 40 but you're going to pass." You didn't defy his father. In a matter of months, Cavicchioli astounded his teachers, learning English, bringing up his marks.

Art was his saving grace. When he sought a source of confidence in his troubles he had only to look as far as the products of his own hands. There is a bust of a girl on Cavicchioli's mantel. Exquisite. He did it when he was 15.

In time, Cavicchioli became a pipefitter, working 10-hour shifts at Dofasco, sleeping, getting up at midnight, working till 6 a.m. on his art, mostly painting, then starting his next shift. In the late '90s he switched to sculpture and before long his commissions enabled him to retire from pipefitting.

Cavicchioli does the busts for the CFL Hall of Fame. He did Lincoln Alexander's bust. And he did full-figure sculptures of the Juravinskis for the Ontario Cancer Centre lobby.

His work, rooted in classical values, is technically virtuosic. Again, his father.

"He was my best critic," says Cavicchioli. "'Yes, yes, nice nose and mouth,' he would say, 'but can it breathe?' Or 'does it have a pulse?' Or 'can it walk?'" His father would spur him on.

Cavicchioli's busts do breathe. He does get blood out of a stone, to put a new twist on that phrase. They have a pulse. He has put a living joy into Pinball Clemens' famous smile.

"When Pinball came to my door for his sitting, I went to shake his hand and he said, 'Gimme a hug.' And when I hugged him he said, 'Can you feel the love?'" That's Pinball.

Gordon Lightfoot is one of his latest and he has practically written the Canadian music legend's biography with every line and contour of his craggy bust. But perhaps the most telling highlight is the cascade of hair.

"I wanted to make it flow like the water of the Great Lakes," says Cavicchioli.

He sums up eloquently what he attempts to capture, to achieve in his busts, especially of older subjects.

"I'm interested in the faces they've earned, more than the faces they've been given."

Cavicchioli's father died in 2003, at the age of 81. His name was Amadeo.

"Those are his," Cavicchioli says, pointing to several beautiful urns with Grecian friezes in a glass display case by the dining room table.

He learned another thing from his father. How to fly. Amadeo did aerobatics. And now, says Cavicchioli, one of his great comforts is recalling their moments together in their glider, son flying, catching the thermals, turning around, seeing his father's face behind him.

(To learn more about Cavicchioli and his work, check out his website at ginocavicchioli.com.)

Re: Lightfoot in Hamilton
 

video of IYCRMM (very amateur video..)

Re: Lightfoot in Hamilton
 

thanks for the load up (aka upload, lol), char

btw, the file you sent me was only 7 kilobytes (and it won't play), even after unzipping, you may have attached the wrong file...the flower is just the goofy wmm user interface icon...you might as well just load up diamond joe in sideways fashion before rm starts climbing the walls

btw, why the diamond joe selection (i remember he played it solo in Peterborough comeback)?

i was wondering how many acoustic solo tunes GL has in his bag...could he do a whole night solo? the decibel level was just as if this were at Massey, lol...great crowd in the Hammer, cheers!:)

Re: Lightfoot in Hamilton
 

it`s going to take over an hour so it will be up in the morning..
I am sure 99.5% of the folks there had never heard of Diamond Joe ..
I`ve re-sent the video to you...it was in ZIP file mode...
this one is 332MB.

Re: Pictures from Hamilton event
 

All right, because people like RJ just can't wait any longer (LOL), here's a rush job video posted to YouTube. There are some skips and slips along the way; the data stream hiccuped here and there. But you get the general idea.

Re: Pictures from Hamilton event
 

TG - great video! I'm hoping to find out how to get copies of my videos/pics to the fellow with cancer. I can pass along the info if you wish to do same.

Here's Gord admiring how Gino got the hair perfect on the bust:

Re: Pictures from Hamilton event
 

Lightfoot lights up the fundraiser
Gary Yokoyama, the Hamilton Spectator

September 08, 2009
Dana Brown
The Hamilton Spectator
(Sep 8, 2009)
It seemed like everyone had a story to share with Gordon Lightfoot.

A man from Toronto who had been trying to shake Lightfoot's hand for years, a woman who met him when she was a little girl, another man who was donating his newly autographed shirt to his 92-year-old father-in-law.

The Canadian music legend was in town as part of the Hamilton Earthquake Relief Fundraiser, held Sunday at Michelangelo Banquet Centre.

The event, to support earthquake relief in L'Aquila, Italy, was organized by the National Congress of Italian Canadians-Hamilton District and renowned artist Gino Cavicchioli.

To date, around $400,000 has been raised to help with the aftermath of the April 6 quake.

Cavicchioli estimated more than 1,000 tickets, which cost $10 each, had been sold for the event.

It was an art show first, and for $10 patrons got to enjoy the works and wine, but were treated to performances by Lightfoot and acclaimed pianist Valerie Tryon.

Lightfoot was on-hand to help with the effort, as well as enjoy the unveiling of a bust depicting the superstar.

"Lightfoot is someone that I've loved for about 40 years, so I approached him last summer to come to my studio and sit for me," Cavicchioli said.

It took the artist, who was responsible for bringing Lightfoot to the fundraiser, more than 200 hours to complete the work.

"Gino has the cascade (of hair) very nice in the back," Lightfoot joked after seeing the bust.

The singer dazzled the hundreds who attended the exhibit of Cavicchioli's work with an intimate performance of two songs, including the hit If You Could Read My Mind. Afterwards, fans flocked to the music legend, telling him stories, asking for autographs and snapping pictures.

One Ancaster fan, Chuck Ouellette, 55, presented Lightfoot with a piece of the bell tower from the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Ouellette said he was friends with those who went to retrieve the bell.

One of Lightfoot's best-known hits is the The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald.

At first Ouellette thought of an autograph, but decided on giving the piece to Lightfoot instead.

"It meant more to give it to him because he brought the ship to life," he said.

dbrown @thespec.com

905-526-4629

Re: Pictures from Hamilton event
 

By all means I can pass on my video footage to the fellow with cancer. I got just under an hour in all, mainly including the meet and greet.

Re: Pictures from Hamilton event
 

WOW - Do you give lessons? What a great video! Thanks for sharing...:clap:
SherylKat

Re: Pictures from Hamilton event
 

Char, what a great shot of Lisa and Lightfoot, not to mention you with the bust. It looks like a great celebration! SherylKat:clap: