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A happy accident lead to this guy drumming with Gordon Lightfoot for almost 50 years
by Mitch Teich (Program Host) & Ethan Shantie (Producer, editor, host)
A happy accident lead to this guy drumming with Gordon Lightfoot for almost 50 years
Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot's iconic career stretched more than a half-century, from the 1960s until he passed away last year at age 84. But perhaps just as impressive as Lightfoot's litany of well-known songs was the fact that the musicians who backed him went almost unchanged throughout his musical life.
And so there is no better group of musicians to keep Lightfoot's music alive than the members of that group, which now calls itself The Lightfoot Band.
Each of the musicians that makes up the group has his own story that is - in some ways - just as remarkable as the man who brought them together. Among them is drummer Barry Keane, who worked with Lightfoot for 47 years - but also performed and recorded with more than 250 other musicians, ranging from Nelly Furtado to Anne Murray to Bachman-Turner Overdrive.
Ahead of an April 19th concert in Brockville, Keane talked about the circumstances took him from being a record company executive to a working musician - a set of life circumstances that Keane says makes him feel like he's been living in a fantasy camp for almost 50 years. He also tells us that when he sat down to record the drums for "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," he had never even heard the song. What you hear on the record is lightning in a bottle.
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Barry Keane radio interview - April 2024
