  Gordon Lightfoot celebrates his 70th birthday on November 17.
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Gordon Lightfoot celebrated his 70th birthday, November 17 2008.
I'm not the only music lover in this country who's been trying to read Gordon Lightfoot's mind for years. In my own case, it's because I've been the MC for a series of tribute concerts to the man and his music called "The Way We Feel," founded in 2003 by Canadian indie singer-songwriters Aengus Finnan and Jory Nash.
Jory Nash on Lightfoot
In hosting this show, I've had a chance to work with an inspiring crew of Canadian folk, roots, blues and indie artists: sensitive songwriter Ron Sexsmith, folk diva Connie Kaldor, ageless troubadour Valdy, Juno-winner Jenny Whiteley, legendary Nasvhille tunesmith Buddy Mondlock, and others too numerous to name. We're all trying to read Gordon Lightfoot's mind. What a tale his thoughts could tell...
His influence is in all of us. Anyone with a tune in mind in this country has Gordon Lightfoot on his or her shoulder. It's no coincidence that Tom Cochrane inducted Mr. Lightfoot into the Canadian Songwriters' Hall of Fame; the ragged-ass brand of rock that Cochrane personifies has roots in the stormy waters of Lightfoot's oeuvre. But then so do the haunting strains of Sarah McLachlan's ballads. Ron Sexsmith is practically a Lightfoot jukebox. Canadian songwriters almost all trace their roots to Gordon Lightfoot. Michael Johnston calls him "The Gordfather," and it's apt.
Tom Cochrane on Lightfoot
There are quirks and ticks to Lightfoot's songs that make identifying his influence easy enough, when it's obvious: unusual chord progressions support a thinking musician's melodies; the lonesome quality of his voice is familiar, yet distant; the landscape looms large in almost every song. You don't have to look far to find those qualities in contemporary Canadian performers, from Gord Downie to Jann Arden.
Lyrically, Lightfoot could be shockingly open, as in the infamous "That's What You Get for Lovin' Me," but often writes from a distance - in the iconic "If You Could Read My Mind," the entire song plays out as a story, a novel, a film, heightening the gap between the singer and his lost love. Always, he writes with a serious pen; there's nothing silly or superfluous in any Lightfoot song, whether it's an extra half-bar in the instrumental intro, or a slight shift in the wording of the refrain. That's where his influence is more pervasive and less easy to spot, because it's everywhere in Canadian music.
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He's called himself "A Painter Passing Through," as if all he's done is observe and to make pictures on an artist's journey through life. But the comparison is apt in more ways than one: to borrow an observation from Cochrane, Lightfoot is to Canadian music as Tom Thompson was to Canadian painting. To call Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Murray MacLachlan, Bruce Cockburn, the Guess Who, Stompin' Tom and Anne Murray the equivalent of the Group of Seven would only be to underestimate how many others followed after them, right to the present day. Could there be Cowboy Junkies, or Blue Rodeo without Gordon Lightfoot? Things wouldn't be the same, somehow.
Today our artists sing with Canadian voices, about Canadian places, about woodland and prairie, mountain and ocean, Saskatoon and Springhill. Today it's cool to be Canadian and concerned with Canadian things. It's okay to be wordy and weird, wild and wanton all on the same album, whether you're the Barenaked Ladies or Broken Social Scene. And it's also okay to head south of the border to hit the big-time, returning to live and work and write up here, as Lightfoot's always done.
When Lightfoot first hit the airwaves, Guy Lombardo and Paul Anka were our biggest musical exports - one a big-band leader, the other a popster singing about Puppy Love. Wilf Carter and Hank Snow were toiling with success on country radio, but they'd had to leave Canada behind to do it. Leonard Cohen, now a contemporary, was then unheard as a singer, though he was a poet of note. It was Ian and Sylvia Tyson who blazed the trail that Lightfoot would widen into the national highway of Canadian song.
The scene in Canada today is diverse, too diverse for me to speak about from personal experience. Maybe I wouldn't hear Lightfoot echo in every young rapper, dub poet, ambient artist, power-pop princess even if I strained my ears. But the fact that there's a scene at all in this country owes much to Lightfoot's greatness. And if today we break musical boundaries with ease, simply look at the way he moved from folk, to pop, to country, to blues, to rock, to easy listening, to social commentary, over the course of a career that spans 5 decades and just keeps rolling.
When we walk the musical trail in Canada, we walk in Lightfootsteps. How did he do it, how does he do it? That's the mystery of genius. If we could read his mind, we'd know; but if we could read his mind, he wouldn't be Gordon Lightfoot.
Happy 70th Birthday Gord, from all of us to all of you. May your highways be always carefree!
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EDITOR'S NOTE: Check out our reader photos, ticket stubs, autographs, and stories in the Lightfoot community. Read birthday wishes and post your own here, and please check out Tom Cochrane on Lightfoot and Jory Nash on Lightfoot.
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