Death-defying troubadour Gordon Lightfoot turns 80, remains timeless

Photos by Andy Argyrakis

There’s no higher honor for a songwriter than being covered by the likes of Elvis Presley, let alone Bob Dylan, The Grateful Dead, Jerry Lee Lewis, Neil Young, Judy Collins or Peter, Paul & Mary, and considering that’s just referencing a single track without others done by Johnny Cash, Barbra Streisand, Paul Simon, Harry Belafonte, Olivia-Newton John and tons more, Gordon Lightfoot sure is special. Without question, the Canadian troubadour performed “Early Morning Rain” for a rapt Pabst Theater in Milwaukee, but throughout a double act evening stuffed with around two dozen tunes, he constantly demonstrated a supreme knack for his craft.

He also paid it forward with a gripping rendition of “If You Could Read My Mind,” which alone could be offered as a crash course to any of today’s troubadours searching for the same secret to sheer timelessness that’s afforded Gordon Lightfoot such longevity.

As his “80 Years Strong” Tour moniker implies, Lightfoot is celebrating a personal milestone enhanced by his miraculous survival of a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm, and though his vocals sounded like an older blend of sweet and sandy than the records that made him a folk and country legend throughout the 1960s and ‘70s, he was no less deserving of the attention. After all, storytelling tunes such as “Carefree Highway,” “Sundown,” “The Wreck Of Edmund Fitzgerald” and “Rainy Day People” (recreated at the show with an easygoing four-piece band) were the same ones that attracted the ears of Dylan, Eric Clapton, Billy Joel and Jimmy Buffett, all of whom consider him a hero, despite eclipsing him in terms of album and ticket sales.

Nonetheless, Lightfoot maintains a dedicated following now made up of multiple generations, who hung on practically every articulate word he uttered either in song or the casual conversations that cast him as a down to earth poet. However, the takeaway wasn’t so much his humble personality, but the mint of a songbook where even the ones that missed the radio mark were worth equal investment.

Granted, the Canadian Music Hall of Famer (who’s ridiculously not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame) hasn’t recorded all that much lately outside of 2004’s “Harmony” and 2012’s “All Live,” but that allowed extra room for the retrospective nature of what wound up being be a bountiful birthday. He also paid it forward with a gripping rendition of “If You Could Read My Mind,” which alone could be offered as a crash course to any of today’s troubadours searching for the same secret to sheer timelessness that’s afforded Lightfoot such longevity.