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Various artists
Celebrating Gordon Lightfoot
Massey Hall
Thursday night
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Everyone from his own daughter to contemporaries like Burton Cummings paid tribute to Gordon Lightfoot in song on Thursday night at Toronto’s Massey Hall in the first musical gathering to honour the iconic singer-songwriter since his death just over a year ago at age 84.
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But the biggest surprise was when previously unannounced performers Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson of Rush fame took the stage to join Blue Rodeo, one of two house bands for the evening, to perform The Way I Feel.
“Fancy meeting you here,” joked Lee.
The crowd went nuts during a night of many such memorable moments starting with Lightfoot’s youngest daughter Meredith Moon performing Oh, So Sweet, her own Slow Moving Train (a favourite of her dad’s) and was then joined by Serena Ryder to make beautiful harmonies for If You Could Read My Mind.
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From there Tom Cochrane took on the mighty The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald with The Lightfoot Band, the other house band of the night, reminding everyone just how much of a songwriting genius the Orillia native really was.
“I hope I remember the lyrics,” Cochrane joked.
The kind, generous and sometimes political spirit of Lightfoot, who performed the most at Massey Hall at a whopping 170-plus times, was most definitely in the house.
Particularly during William Prince’s poignant solo take on The House You Live In, Julian Taylor’s beautiful rendition of All I’m After, Kathleen Edward’s rousing version of Carefree Highway (backed by Blue Rodeo including ex-husband and guitarist Colin Cripps in a bedazzled nudie suit), and Allison Russell’s defiant Black Day In July, which Lightfoot wrote about the Detroit riots back in the ‘60s and found himself banned from many American radio stations as a result.
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The biggest laughs came before Burton Cummings’ simple piano rendition of If You Got It as he re-enacted his famous impression of Lightfoot singing Rod Stewart’s Maggie May, and the biggest crowd singalong came during The Good Brothers’ Alberta Bound before all of the artists gathered for the grand finale of Summerside of Life.
The show, which was broken down into two hours on either side of a 30-minute intermission, was hosted by CBC Radio’s Damhnait Doyle, who often told the next performer’s Lightfoot story before they could while trying to kill time between band set-ups.
There were also cameras on stage and in the aisle with the concert being filmed for a future special edition of CBC Music Live at Massey Hall.
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SET LIST/SONG/ARTIST(S)
Talking In Your Sleep, Caroline Wiles/Bob Doidge
Looking at the Rain, Aysanabee
At the End of the Day, Sylvia Tyson with Joan Besen
Cold on the Shoulder, Tom Wilson with the Lightfoot Band
Oh So Sweet, Meredith Moon with Tony Allen
Slow Moving Train, Meredith Moon with Tony Allen (the only non-Lightfoot song)
If You Could Read My Mind, Meredith Moon/Serena Ryder with the Lightfoot Band
The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, Tom Cochrane with Lightfoot Band
Sundown, City and Colour with Lightfoot Band
INTERMISSION
Early Morning Rain, Murray McLauchlin with Victor Bateman
The House You Live In, William Prince
If You Got It, Burton Cummings
Steel Rail Blues, Blue Rodeo
All I’m After, Julian Taylor with Blue Rodeo
Carefree Highway, Kathleen Edwards with Blue Rodeo
Black Day in July, Allison Russell with Blue Rodeo
The Way I Feel, Rush’s Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson with Blue Rodeo
Alberta Bound, The Good Brothers with Blue Rodeo
Summerside Of Life, All Artists
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