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Lightfoot still has the touch
John Swartz
Local News - Thursday, July 07, 2005 @ 08:00
If there's one thing that's clear from last weekend's Live 8 concert in
Barrie, it's that Canadians of all ages love Gordon Lightfoot - and we're
glad to have him back.
Witness the spontaneous cheering that broke out when Lightfoot got to the
middle of If You Could Read My Mind.
"I thought it was great," Lightfoot said of the experience in Barrie last
Saturday.
Lightfoot wasn't sure at first how to approach the Live 8 event.
He'd been easing back into performing after his long recuperation from a ruptured artery suffered in the fall of 2002, beginning with a surprise appearance at last year's Mariposa Folk Festival.
But performing in front of 35,000 people and a world-wide television audience of millions was a big departure from his usual gigs.
"You know, when they asked me to do it that's the first thing I thought
about," said the 66-year-old musician. "What it would be like in front of an audience that
basically is attuned to rock music - and believe you me there was a lot of
real good rock music in that show; it was an excellent show - and would I be
able to dovetail my way into that? I thought about that very seriously for
about a week or so. I found a method and that was to do it solo."
Like his solo appearance last year at Mariposa, the crowd loved it.
They'll
take Lightfoot anyway he wants to present himself.
"I do things like that from time to time," he said of appearing without his
band. "Sometimes we work also just as a trio. Mostly we work with the five
piece. It depends upon what the function is. The trio is a different sort of
approach."
It's the trio format that Sunday's Mariposa audience will get to hear. He'll
have Terry Clements and Rick Haynes on stage, making for two guitars and
bass for musical accompaniment.
"I'm going to do a couple of tunes off the new album (Harmony) - and do
Couchiching of course. I'll probably do one of the ballads and the rest of
it will be pretty familiar stuff and kind of ethereal stuff that works real
nice with just the trio."
Lightfoot is back to work. His schedule is not as heavy as it used to be.
He'll do ten days to California in August, followed by a few weeks off and
another stint in Boston and New York City in the fall.
"It's all booked up to the end of the year," he said. "We have to maintain,
that goes without saying."
Quite obviously his health has returned sufficiently to allow working again,
but working and being on stage isn't going to be exactly like it used to be.
"As long as everything holds together, I'm fine," he said. "The problem I had
was like a mechanical failure, like a hose in an automobile."
The last comment provoked laughter at both ends of the telephone line, and
some comments about not being able to get the parts at Canadian Tire
anymore. One of the reasons doctors attributed Lightfoot's survival and
ability to recover was that he was in great physical shape. He used to run
several times a week.
"That's the only thing I can't do. I can't run. They had to take muscle
fibre out of both sides of my legs to make an inner girdle and it's affected
my running."
"I work out though. I still have a program and I still adhere to it because
I know that it helps my singing and it helps my stamina. I don't do it on
the road, that's enough of a work out"
He's had to make some adjustments to his singing style, which if Live 8 is
the measure, are not very noticeable.
"Once I'm up there it feels effortless, except for the high notes. I just go
at them right in the same places they were before. If they're not there,
well, the people will get the message. They're very, very forgiving."
"I know which ones I can't do so I leave them alone," he said of the harder
songs to perform. "They're really odd cases. The ones with long phrases,
things like that. Hang Dog Hotel Room is one with really long phrases and we
used to really like to play that, but I can't get in enough air. I'm
learning how to split the phrases up now and that's all coming around."
Mariposa Folk Festival organizers have been surprised by a substantial
increase in ticket sales this year. They attribute Lightfoot's Sunday night
appearance as one of the key reasons sales are up.
"I'm very happy to be a part of that, and believe you me, it will be just as
much a challenge as always to get up there and do a great show. It's a
little tougher to play outdoors."
Some artists say that performing in front of a home town crowd is the
hardest thing they do. Not so for Lightfoot, there are no jitters to deal
with.
"I don't feel that. The getting ready and the preparation and making sure
that the instruments are in absolute tune; that sort of thing is the most
important thing to me, getting ready to do a show."
"We'll be in a trailer somewhere touching up those guitars at the last
minute and I got to bust out of there so I can go and hear Murray McLaughlin
because I love him. I think he's a great performer."
McLaughlin, along with Lynn Miles, Fred Eaglesmith and Harry Manx will
perform ahead of Gordon Lightfoot at Sunday's 6 p.m. concert.