Gordon Lightfoot performing at Interlochen several years ago. Courtesy photo.
By McStellar
As kids, my brothers and I were taught by our grandmother that proper road trip preparation includes Twizzlers and plenty of music to set the mood. Gordon Lightfoot had become so expected and ingrained in our family’s road trip repertoire that any one of us kids can now recite many of his songs without difficulty. You might even consider us Lightfooters. What is a Lightfooter? A Lightfooter knows what it feels like to be a robin, to sit on the banks of the Long River, to watch your backstairs for sundown and to slip away on the carefree highway.
Speaking of carefree highways, I am embarrassed to admit that I have only been to the Upper Peninsula a handful of times in my life, though I hail from Northern Lower Michigan. I am also embarrassed to admit that it has been awhile since I last listened to Gordon Lightfoot, likely because his music strikes a nerve deep within me.
With Twizzlers, camping gear and Lightfoot’s discography on-hand, I recently hit the road in the quintessential early morning rain. As I drove north, I couldn’t help but notice the October colors -– the ruby, maize and orange leaves, a reminder of the scorching flames of a world on fire. For most of us, 2020 has been a challenging year. Lately it has felt like a “Ribbon of Darkness” over me, tugging at my desire to understand the “Wherefore and Why” of these days.
The wise say that listening to understand is vastly different than listening to respond. I apply this concept to music unfailingly but acknowledge my intermittent practice while communicating with my own species. Some hours later I found myself setting up my tent, tears welling in my eyes after going down this old, familiar road with Lightfoot. Avoidance of understanding and of feeling emotions is easy, but it is hard to let them out. Perhaps the absence of Lightfoot’s music in my life isn’t a coincidence.
For those of you who have never delved into Lightfoot, you ought to know he possesses a rare ability to weave love, loss, nature and industry into harmonious, thought-provoking folk gifts. He builds an atmosphere within the song unlike any other artist. For example, “Steel Rail Blues,” from his first album Lightfoot! in 1966, marries the human condition with thoughts of taking a train. It isn’t until the song ends that you realize you aren’t, in fact, the one sitting on the big steel rail being carried home to the one you love, and you are left feeling blue as hell. Lightfoot’s music exists to share the human experience and help us understand the wherefore and the why.
His ability to render empathy through words led him to become one of the boldest poetic storytellers of his time. Like Bob Dylan, a contemporary and friend of Lightfoot’s, he ushered in an era of songwriting that laid bare the human condition and society of the 20th century. Some of those lessons we have yet to learn.
Beyond his tender ballads of love and loss, his storytelling skills were of such magnitude that the Canadian Broadcast Corporation commissioned Lightfoot to write and perform “Canadian Railroad Trilogy” for the centennial celebration of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1967. Shortly afterward the Canadian folk artist drew attention from the U.S. with his song “Black Day in July” following the violent 12th Street Riots in Detroit –- a message that holds the same significance today as it did more than 50 years ago. And one cannot think of Lightfoot without “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” coming to mind, a song about the tragedy that took the lives of the ill-fated freighter’s crew in a stormy Lake Superior and endeared him to the crews’ family members.
As I waited for my brother to arrive, I sat outside my tent and let the emotions Lightfoot’s music provoked just “be.” It occurred to me that perhaps the reason I prefer 20th-century music is because it had influential storytellers like Lightfoot. So, that begs two questions. What would you teach us today, Mr. Lightfoot? And who do we Lightfooters turn to when we look to understand the “Wherefore and Why” of the 21st century?
Please share your thoughts of who our 21st-century storytellers are and your favorite Lightfoot song/story with our readers.
McStellar is a music and space enthusiast who digs blending and balancing the creative side of work and life as a hand-poke tattoo artist. Parent to a wild-child toddler, McStellar is a two-time MSU graduate and northern Michigan native.
