HOW TO GO
Who: Gordon Lightfoot
Where: Fraze Pavilion, 695 Lincoln Park Blvd., Kettering
When: 8 p.m. Tuesday, July 30
Cost: $35 lawn & terrace, $45 side orchestra, $55 center orchestra, $65 plaza
More info: (937) 296-3300 or www.fraze.com
Artist info: www.gordonlightfoot.com
There is a lot of great musical talent in Canada that for one reason or another just doesn’t translate to audiences in the United States. For every Neil Young, Rush or Sarah McLachlan, there are hundreds of superstar acts north of the border that fail to make a mark here.
Gordon Lightfoot — who brings his 50 years on the ‘Carefree Highway’ Tour to Fraze Pavilion in Kettering on Tuesday, July 30 — hasn’t had that problem. He first made a name in the U.S. in the 1960s with a string of radio hits and despite some expected ups and downs in his career, the 75-year-old performer remains a top concert draw through his dogged devotion to touring.
“People know me all over the whole country because we play everywhere in the U.S.,” Lightfoot said recently, speaking over the telephone from his home in Toronto. “There is nowhere in the U.S. we haven’t been. We play every corner, including Alaska and Hawaii. We’ve been to Europe and Australia, of course to Britain, but we have no interest in going there now because it’s all right here. We just play in North America, boom, that’s it.
“I’m 75 years of age and don’t really want to stop performing yet because I have a passion for it,” he continued. “The only way I can keep it rolling is to stay active. While I’m home I’ll be exercising, interacting with the family and thinking about the upcoming shows and planning what material I will be performing.”
Lightfoot keeps his repertoire fluid. He always performs major hits such as “Sundown,” “Carefree Highway” and “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” but keeps the show fresh by mixing in other beloved songs from his vast catalog.
“We don’t lose any of our standards, which is 10 to 12 songs we certainly don’t want to leave out of the show,” Lightfoot said. “The rest is in a state of rotation. We’ve been able to research out perhaps half a dozen tunes we haven’t done for a long time and some people probably have never heard live. These were outstanding album tracks for us at certain points in time like ‘Circle of Steel’ and ‘You’ve Got to Press On,’ so there’s some really good stuff in there.”
While the songs change, Lightfoot keeps the framework of his concerts very structured.
“It’s a two-hour show and we always start on time,” he said. “We’ve always done that. We take a 20-minute break in the middle and then we get right back into it again. It’s important to me to work within a framework of time. If I tried to do too much we’d be dragging it out. We don’t want to wear out the welcome mat, so to speak.
“We’ve kept it a tight show,” Lightfoot added. “It’s got a lot of great little tunes in it. There’s a lot of toe-tappers in there and nice ballads and topical songs. Everything is all spun together real quick. I don’t do a lot of talking. I just sort of run the songs off and keep them coming.”
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