If you could read my mind, love, what a tale my thoughts would tell.— Gordon Lightfoot
On Wed, April 13, 2016, Gordon Lightfoot and his band made a stop on their world tour at the Bergen Performing Arts Center (BergenPAC) in Englewood, NJ. The excited crowd cheered and whistled as Lightfoot, 77, and his band —Michael Heffernan on keyboards, Rick Haynes on bass, Barry Keane on drums, and Carter Lancaster on lead guitar — took the stage.
“I’m Gordon Lightfoot and the reports of my death have been highly exaggerated,” he joked as he greeted the audience.
And Lightfoot, the legendary Canadian singer/songwriter, provided them with a homespun evening of story and song where he played a unique assortment of the several hundred compositions he has written over the course of his 50-plus year musical career.
Some of the pieces Lightfoot performed were relatively obscure to certain members of the audience. These tunes included the wistful “Shadows,” a folky version of “Did She Mention My Name?,” the bluesy “Baby Step Back,” and the imagery-invoking “Let it Ride” which also featured exquisite guitar harmonics that rang out like chimes along with a smooth-as-silk bass solo.
Others, however, were certified hits.
“Rainy Day People,” a 1975 radio staple about opportunism gained from someone else’s lost relationship, for instance, featured an easy listening vibe which smoothed out the roughness of Lightfoot’s voice and allowed the audience to appreciate its poetry.
A “painter with lyrics” through and through, Lightfoot considers himself a folk artist. As he explained to the audience at Bergen PAC, “I was part of the folk revival of the 60s, and I’m still a part of it. In fact, I was just talking with John Prine, Kris Kristofferson, and Dylan.”
And in the folk tradition, Lightfoot performed his 1974 #1 hit, “Sundown” — his ode to unrequited love with a touch of infidelity — the sound of acoustic guitars twinkling while the rest of the band gently supported his staccato-like vocal performance.
The guitar introduction to another enormous hit, 1976’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” brought forth spontaneous clapping and cheering from the audience. Based on a story in Newsweek about a shipwreck on the Great Lakes, Lightfoot revealed he wrote the piece for a folk album he was working on but it went on to become a pop hit nominated for a couple of Grammys. Noted Lightfoot, “It’s been an experience writing a song like that.”
1974’s “Carefree Highway,” another Top 10 hit, is a song Lightfoot wrote about the sense of freedom he felt driving a section of road in Arizona. While performing it, the theater backdrop at Bergen PAC shifted to the music with swirling colors producing an ever-changing kaleidoscope of color and motion. Moreover, as it did with a number of other tunes over the course of the evening, the backdrop morphed with the rhythm of the music, dissolving and sharpening, intensifying in texture, and redefining as the music swelled and rolled throughout the theater to the ears of the appreciative crowd.
Another highlight of the evening was “Early Mornin’ Rain,” one of Lightfoot’s earliest compositions. Written in 1964, initially it was a chart-topper for the Canadian duo, Ian and Sylvia. Soon after, in 1965, it became a hit for Peter, Paul & Mary. According to Lightfoot, in 1972 the song raced up the charts with a version by “The King” himself, Elvis Presley, about whom Lightfoot reflected, “Elvis did it very well, indeed.”
Perhaps the song which wowed the crowd more than any other during the course of the evening, however, was Lightfoot’s 1971 classic, “If You Could Read My Mind.” A song about achieving peace through acceptance following the failure of a marriage, at Bergen PAC, Lightfoot’s voice and message rang true, his artistry conjuring up images of “ghosts” and “wishing wells,” “heroes” and “movie queens,” all in the name of love lost.
As many of his fans are well aware, over the years, Lightfoot has experienced many personal challenges in his life. Each time, though, he has managed to overcome adversity and spring back with a vengeance. He is a survivor whose work has influenced many top-flight artists and his songs are beloved by music afficianodos around the world. Through his music and poetry, Lightfoot offered those in the audience at Bergen PAC a unique glimpse into his mind, leaving them standing on their feet with appreciation for an evening of extraordinary tales his “thoughts could tell.”
For more on Gordon Lightfoot’s current world tour, go to lightfoot.ca. For more information on upcoming performances at BergenPAC — including Tower of Power & Average White Band on April 21 and Boz Scaggs on April 27, 2016 — go to bergenpac.org.
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