Last year around New Years, my wife and I heard Gordon Lightfoot’s “Song For a Winter’s Night” and asked each other, on a lark, “I wonder of he’s still touring.” Within minutes we discovered he’d be playing in April in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, on our wedding anniversary, and couldn’t resist.
Gord in Stroudsburg, PA in April. He’s had the same bass player, Rick Haynes, for 48 years.
On our way we wondered if he’d pay any tribute to Prince, who’d died a few days before – dedicate a song to him perhaps. (Springsteen played “Purple Rain” that same weekend.)
For the record, he did speak fondly of Prince, describing him as a “genius,” but didn’t play any song for him. Nor did he play the “Canadian Railroad Trilogy,” which disappointed me a bit. Months later I heard the WNYC interview with him and realized that this century he’s suffered both an aortic aneurysm (six weeks in a coma) and a minor stroke, and that he rehearses more than he ever did, because he has to! So you have to forgive him for skipping his hardest songs.
Today is my birthday, and I have too much to do to fall into a YouTube hole, but I’ve been known to spend hours watching singers. I even love seeing them try to lip sync to their own records during TV appearances. “Where are those strings coming from?” you wonder, “and was anyone really fooled by this?”
I also adore homespun attempts to sync up studio versions of songs with live footage, like the one below. I picture a guy with a Mac or at a cable access studio poring over the exact outpoint when the singer is obviously going “off script.”
I don’t know how you experience birthdays and anniversaries, but they’re starting to make me feel old. Like the pain in my feet and the extra second it takes to remember a coworker’s name is who I am. This year Gord was there, all 150 pounds of what used to be an imposing Northwoods frame, with a sweet smile and lovely manner, to say, “Don’t worry, you’re going to be cool old people.” He turned 78 a few weeks ago.
He started his set by playing about a half dozen of his recent songs – a classy maneuver – then played his 70s hits, starting with “Carefree Highway.”
More Has To Happen 