Gordon Lightfoot Book, Music and More!

On an unseasonably warm Thanksgiving, Gordon Lightfoot is in an uncharacteristically reflective mood, sipping coffee and looking back on a career that has produced every kind of song imaginable: historical epics, romantic ballads, sea shanties, country ditties, folk-style protests and bluesy “toe-tappers,” to use Lightfoot’s quaint term for his uptempo numbers. Many became hits; many more are considered iconic, as quintessentially Canadian as a Group of Seven painting or Alice Munro short story. To say that he’s been prolific is like saying the CN Tower looms over Toronto. Sitting in the kitchen of his sprawling home in North York’s exclusive Bridle Path neighborhood, the 75-year-old legend ...

It’s not surprising that Gordon Lightfoot’s latest album—the 20th of a long and illustrious career—is also his most reflective. After all, Lightfoot has looked death squarely in the eye, having fought his way back from an abdominal hemorrhage in September 2002 that very nearly killed him. Nothing like a brush with the Grim Reaper to put things in perspective. The songs gathered here revisit many of the themes familiar to fans of Lightfoot’s best work: travel, nature, loneliness and love in all of its many forms. The eerie “Flying Blind” places a northern pilot in peril as he tries to land amid oil rigs, ice caps and polar bears. The stirring “River of Light” conjures up bucolic visions of mi...

Dallas and Travis Good have worked with Neil Young, author Margaret Atwood, Randy Bachman, Buffy Sainte-Marie and actor Gordon Pinsent. But it was another Canadian icon—one with whom they’ve yet to collaborate—who offered some crucial wisdom. It was 1996, when their band the Sadies was getting started, and Dallas’ and Travis’ father, Bruce, of bluegrass heroes the Good Brothers, was celebrating his 50th birthday at Toronto’s Horseshoe Tavern. Into the club walks Gordon Lightfoot, who’d had the senior Goods open for him during the 1970s. “Afterwards,” Travis recalls, “Lightfoot turned to us and says, ‘The only advice I’ll give you is do your own songs.’ We took heed and started getting rid of...

Many fans have made pilgrimages to Toronto’s Massey Hall to attend the Canadian legend’s annual concerts. This album is a Lightfoot lover’s dream: 19 songs recorded in the hallowed hall between 1998-2001—exactly as they were performed. Includes such early classics as “Sundown” and later favorites like “A Painter Passing Through.”

A mixed bag, this Lightfoot love-in ranges from refreshing interpretations by Cowboy Junkies (a rocking “The Way I Feel”), Bruce Cockburn (a spooky “Ribbon of Darkness”) and Blackie & the Rodeo Kings (a stirring “Summer Side of Life”) to such weak or dated choices as “Go Go Round” (Blue Rodeo), “Bend in the River” (Harry Manx) and “Black Day in July” (the Tragically Hip). With Aengus Finnan’s paean joining the Guess Who’s early testimonial, at least two tribute songs now exist titled “Lightfoot.” Go Go Gord.