Gordon Lightfoot Forums - View Single Post - CHat #3 with CHar and Lightfoot

charlene · 07-15-2012, 01:38 PM

July 10, 2012
3rd Gordon Lightfoot CHat with CHar

When I saw Gordon in Orillia at Casino Rama in April it was after a lot of media coverage of the release of the “ALL LIVE” CD consisting of tracks recorded from 1998-2001 at Massey Hall in Toronto. There was TV, radio, print coverage for a few weeks and he was everywhere I turned! So I sort of gave him the gears after the concert and said I felt left out that I wasn’t one of the reporters going to his house to do an interview! Laughing, he explained it had all been set up by the record company and they all showed up on one day taking turns speaking with him. I told him I was just giving him a hard time but he surprised me and said we could do another of our phone chats. So I obviously said, “OK!” He told me he’d call and we could set up a date and time. OK!

Fast forward to June 15 in Ottawa and after the show the first thing Gordon says to me was, “We have to do that CHat! We’ll get to it CHar!” and I once again said “OK!”… He also reminded me in Montreal two nights later and then in Kitchener 4 nights after that on June 21. He’s a man who is true to his word! I told him to finish up the tour and take a few days to relax when he got back home and then we could do our CHat. So that’s how things were left.

On Thursday July 5 I received an 11 a.m. call from Anne @ EMP asking if I was available for Gordon to call that evening between 7:30 and 8 p.m. Well as a matter of fact I WAS available! The day before that call I had prepared my recorders (digital and tape) and checked over my list of questions/thoughts I would refer to as I spoke with Gordon. I had a feeling he would be calling. Needless to say nothing else was done for the rest of the day after that call from Anne.
At 7:59 p.m. the phone rang and The Man said “CHar! It’s Gord!” I said hello and asked him how he was and he said we’d have to do our CHat the following week, early in the week, like maybe Tuesday? I told him that was not a problem and I looked forward to hearing from him then..and when he called back he could sing Happy Birthday to me because Tuesday, July 10 was my birthday. He laughed and said, "is that your birthday? You're going to interview me on your BIRTHDAY?" I said yep-best present I could get!" He said, “ok, that's very, very nice, I look forward to it!"

On Saturday, July 7 some Tweets came up from the Mariposa Festival being held in Orillia that mentioned the surprise guest, Gordon Lightfoot was there and other folks started posting pictures of him. Jann Arden was the headliner on the main stage that night and as it drew close to her time to perform she was tweeting too. “I was just shoulder to shoulder with Gordon Lightfoot. I am speechless.” Then, “Honestly. Freaked out that Gordon spoke to me.” “I can’t wait to call my folks and tell them I met Gordon!!!” The other people who were tweeting were just as gobsmacked and excited as Jann. Had Gordon and I done our chat on the first night he called one of my questions was going to be “will you be back at Mariposa any time soon?” Perhaps he would have told me he’d be there on Saturday and I could have tried to get 90 minutes north to see him again. And I could have tried hitting him up for a ride!

7:48 – July 10, 2012
After saying HI to Gordon and thanking him for calling I asked him about his trip to Orillia on July 7 to be a surprise guest at Mariposa. He told me he had been asked to attend and wasn’t sure if he would sing or not. I mentioned that Jann Arden was quite thrilled to meet him and was tweeting that she could hardly wait to phone her parents in Alberta and tell them. Her tweets were: “I am shoulder to shoulder with Gordon Lightfoot. I am speechless.” “Honesty. Freaked out that Gordon spoke to me.” “I am honoured and excited to be performing at the Mariposa Folk Festival tonight.” “Gordon Lightfoot is Canada.” “There are moments in a person’s life when planets collide and dreams collide with nothing but humility and love.” “I can’t wait to call my folks and tell them I met Gordon!” “People are music to my ears.” “Thank you Mariposa! What a fantastic night!”

I told Gordon about some of the tweets and he said he told her, “I sure don’t want to step on anybody’s toes” and “she was just more than receptive and gracious. We had pictures taken and my two daughters were there. I had a little family group there.” He told me he had seen one of her shows a while back. He laughed and said “really!” when I said Jann must have been excited to have Gordon Lightfoot open for her.

It reminded him of a couple of years earlier that Jim Cuddy and Greg Keelor of Blue Rodeo were surprise performers prior to his set. He said, “my god these guys are so hot they were a hard act to follow.”

He spoke about the honour of receiving the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee medal and attending three events for it. http://canadiancrown.gc.ca/eng/13318.../1331815965391 There were 30 recipients who received their medals at the Parliament Buildings in Toronto (others rec’d theirs in Ottawa and various other cities across Canada) He mentioned that “Natalie McMaster got one too, folks from all walks of life were there.”
http://www.nataliemacmaster.com/

He said he was seated between Stephen Lewis http://www.stephenlewisfoundation.or...-stephen-lewis and Major General Mackenzie. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_MacKenzie
“Interesting guys to talk to, I got into some very interesting conversations with them.” “A couple of weeks after that they had a display of photographs of the Queen over the last 60 years – many of her visits to Canada. My favourite was of Queen Elizabeth meeting Pierre and Margaret Trudeau. Wonderful photograph, unbelievable.” (http://canadiancrown.gc.ca/eng/1336579543289 - the picture is not in the 60 at the link but I believe this is the picture he spoke of when The Queen met them in 1971 in British Columbia shortly after Pierre and Margaret were married. http://www.vancouversun.com/technolo...141/story.html )

I mentioned seeing him on TV with Gordon Pinsent after they rec’d their awards and the two of them speaking about the monarchy and The Queen. Gordon said, “Beverly and I, our parents were very much into the Royal family. The Queen does such a wonderful job for a woman her age.” I said, “she’s very much like you, always on the go, doing something.” He replied with a laugh, “we always like to stay prepared.”

I asked about the empty weeks with no tour dates in the upcoming September tour and he said, “we’re heading south of the border as we always have and always will.” He had a piece of paper with the schedule and read it off to me.
He mentioned B.B.King’s Theatre as their first New York date coming up and that “it’s a wonderful place that seats about 600 people and of course it’s just packed. We’ve already done it and it’s quite fun.” He said if they were able to book Avery Fisher Hall they would. “We’ve done Town Hall, we’ve done Carnegie Hall, and a number of engagements at Lincoln Centre in the past.” “Then we go upriver to Tarrytown, from there we go to Cleveland, then Charleston West Virginia, Toledo Ohio, Peoria Illinois, Rockford Illinois, Manistee Michigan which is a casino, I don’t really know where that is, but we get into some of these markets, we’ve got no problem at all, they have old converted theatres, … Cincinnati, that’s a nice one, we’ve got the nice ones in here and the ones that are a little bit more challenging, Paducah Kentucky, Bowling Green apparently is a great one, Newberry South Carolina, Fayetteville North Carolina, then I fly back to Toronto as soon as I’m finished in Fayetteville on the 30th of September. The whole thing is done, 17 days and 14 shows. ( 7 states) I asked if there would be any west coast/California dates and he said, ”no, then we come back to our families, we’ll have some other things, smaller things, I do things that people never hear about, probably we’ll take the month of October down, and just work our way into Massey, probably rehearsing three or four times.”

07-15-2012, 01:38 PM	#17
charlene Moderator Join Date: May 2000 Posts: 16,001	Re: #3 CHat with CHar and Lightfoot July 10, 2012 3rd Gordon Lightfoot CHat with CHar When I saw Gordon in Orillia at Casino Rama in April it was after a lot of media coverage of the release of the “ALL LIVE” CD consisting of tracks recorded from 1998-2001 at Massey Hall in Toronto. There was TV, radio, print coverage for a few weeks and he was everywhere I turned! So I sort of gave him the gears after the concert and said I felt left out that I wasn’t one of the reporters going to his house to do an interview! Laughing, he explained it had all been set up by the record company and they all showed up on one day taking turns speaking with him. I told him I was just giving him a hard time but he surprised me and said we could do another of our phone chats. So I obviously said, “OK!” He told me he’d call and we could set up a date and time. OK! Fast forward to June 15 in Ottawa and after the show the first thing Gordon says to me was, “We have to do that CHat! We’ll get to it CHar!” and I once again said “OK!”… He also reminded me in Montreal two nights later and then in Kitchener 4 nights after that on June 21. He’s a man who is true to his word! I told him to finish up the tour and take a few days to relax when he got back home and then we could do our CHat. So that’s how things were left. On Thursday July 5 I received an 11 a.m. call from Anne @ EMP asking if I was available for Gordon to call that evening between 7:30 and 8 p.m. Well as a matter of fact I WAS available! The day before that call I had prepared my recorders (digital and tape) and checked over my list of questions/thoughts I would refer to as I spoke with Gordon. I had a feeling he would be calling. Needless to say nothing else was done for the rest of the day after that call from Anne. At 7:59 p.m. the phone rang and The Man said “CHar! It’s Gord!” I said hello and asked him how he was and he said we’d have to do our CHat the following week, early in the week, like maybe Tuesday? I told him that was not a problem and I looked forward to hearing from him then..and when he called back he could sing Happy Birthday to me because Tuesday, July 10 was my birthday. He laughed and said, "is that your birthday? You're going to interview me on your BIRTHDAY?" I said yep-best present I could get!" He said, “ok, that's very, very nice, I look forward to it!" On Saturday, July 7 some Tweets came up from the Mariposa Festival being held in Orillia that mentioned the surprise guest, Gordon Lightfoot was there and other folks started posting pictures of him. Jann Arden was the headliner on the main stage that night and as it drew close to her time to perform she was tweeting too. “I was just shoulder to shoulder with Gordon Lightfoot. I am speechless.” Then, “Honestly. Freaked out that Gordon spoke to me.” “I can’t wait to call my folks and tell them I met Gordon!!!” The other people who were tweeting were just as gobsmacked and excited as Jann. Had Gordon and I done our chat on the first night he called one of my questions was going to be “will you be back at Mariposa any time soon?” Perhaps he would have told me he’d be there on Saturday and I could have tried to get 90 minutes north to see him again. And I could have tried hitting him up for a ride! 7:48 – July 10, 2012 After saying HI to Gordon and thanking him for calling I asked him about his trip to Orillia on July 7 to be a surprise guest at Mariposa. He told me he had been asked to attend and wasn’t sure if he would sing or not. I mentioned that Jann Arden was quite thrilled to meet him and was tweeting that she could hardly wait to phone her parents in Alberta and tell them. Her tweets were: “I am shoulder to shoulder with Gordon Lightfoot. I am speechless.” “Honesty. Freaked out that Gordon spoke to me.” “I am honoured and excited to be performing at the Mariposa Folk Festival tonight.” “Gordon Lightfoot is Canada.” “There are moments in a person’s life when planets collide and dreams collide with nothing but humility and love.” “I can’t wait to call my folks and tell them I met Gordon!” “People are music to my ears.” “Thank you Mariposa! What a fantastic night!” I told Gordon about some of the tweets and he said he told her, “I sure don’t want to step on anybody’s toes” and “she was just more than receptive and gracious. We had pictures taken and my two daughters were there. I had a little family group there.” He told me he had seen one of her shows a while back. He laughed and said “really!” when I said Jann must have been excited to have Gordon Lightfoot open for her. It reminded him of a couple of years earlier that Jim Cuddy and Greg Keelor of Blue Rodeo were surprise performers prior to his set. He said, “my god these guys are so hot they were a hard act to follow.” He spoke about the honour of receiving the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee medal and attending three events for it. http://canadiancrown.gc.ca/eng/13318.../1331815965391 There were 30 recipients who received their medals at the Parliament Buildings in Toronto (others rec’d theirs in Ottawa and various other cities across Canada) He mentioned that “Natalie McMaster got one too, folks from all walks of life were there.” http://www.nataliemacmaster.com/ He said he was seated between Stephen Lewis http://www.stephenlewisfoundation.or...-stephen-lewis and Major General Mackenzie. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_MacKenzie “Interesting guys to talk to, I got into some very interesting conversations with them.” “A couple of weeks after that they had a display of photographs of the Queen over the last 60 years – many of her visits to Canada. My favourite was of Queen Elizabeth meeting Pierre and Margaret Trudeau. Wonderful photograph, unbelievable.” (http://canadiancrown.gc.ca/eng/1336579543289 - the picture is not in the 60 at the link but I believe this is the picture he spoke of when The Queen met them in 1971 in British Columbia shortly after Pierre and Margaret were married. http://www.vancouversun.com/technolo...141/story.html ) I mentioned seeing him on TV with Gordon Pinsent after they rec’d their awards and the two of them speaking about the monarchy and The Queen. Gordon said, “Beverly and I, our parents were very much into the Royal family. The Queen does such a wonderful job for a woman her age.” I said, “she’s very much like you, always on the go, doing something.” He replied with a laugh, “we always like to stay prepared.” I asked about the empty weeks with no tour dates in the upcoming September tour and he said, “we’re heading south of the border as we always have and always will.” He had a piece of paper with the schedule and read it off to me. He mentioned B.B.King’s Theatre as their first New York date coming up and that “it’s a wonderful place that seats about 600 people and of course it’s just packed. We’ve already done it and it’s quite fun.” He said if they were able to book Avery Fisher Hall they would. “We’ve done Town Hall, we’ve done Carnegie Hall, and a number of engagements at Lincoln Centre in the past.” “Then we go upriver to Tarrytown, from there we go to Cleveland, then Charleston West Virginia, Toledo Ohio, Peoria Illinois, Rockford Illinois, Manistee Michigan which is a casino, I don’t really know where that is, but we get into some of these markets, we’ve got no problem at all, they have old converted theatres, … Cincinnati, that’s a nice one, we’ve got the nice ones in here and the ones that are a little bit more challenging, Paducah Kentucky, Bowling Green apparently is a great one, Newberry South Carolina, Fayetteville North Carolina, then I fly back to Toronto as soon as I’m finished in Fayetteville on the 30th of September. The whole thing is done, 17 days and 14 shows. ( 7 states) I asked if there would be any west coast/California dates and he said, ”no, then we come back to our families, we’ll have some other things, smaller things, I do things that people never hear about, probably we’ll take the month of October down, and just work our way into Massey, probably rehearsing three or four times.”