Article about concert:
http://www.roanoke.com/extra/wb/204170
Concert review: Minstrel's voice altered, but legend endures
By Seth Williamson
Special to The Roanoke Times
Stephanie Klein-Davis | The Roanoke Times
Gordon Lightfoot visited Roanoke for the first time in 32 years Friday night.
Gordon Lightfoot, the septuagenarian Canadian troubadour who may be the greatest living songwriter in North America, visited Roanoke for the first time in 32 years Friday night.
Dressed in a red bolero jacket and black jeans, the extremely thin singer told the crowd at the Roanoke Performing Arts Theatre, which was about 80 percent full, "Sorry I took so long."
Fans who have kept track of the singer's most recent albums know that his voice has changed radically.
But anyone who is familiar only with the virile baritone of his biggest hits of the 70s and 80s, still in high rotation on American pop stations, may have been shocked by how hoarse he sounded Friday night.
Though he was in better voice after an intermission, in the first half of the show he was having trouble hitting and holding high notes. By the end of the first half of the show, his vocal trouble was obvious.
The ravages of age aside, traces of the old Lightfoot were there from the beginning in the singer's phrasing and vocal mannerisms.
And the songs! Lightfoot is one of that tiny number of artists who can do an entire show with nothing but certified classics and still not cover every one.
Among the songs he and the other four members of his band did in the first half were "Cotton Jenny," "Minstrel of the Dawn," "A Painter Passing Through" and "Beautiful."
"Carefree Highway," said Lightfoot, was a phrase he saw on a highway sign out West -- and the song became one of his biggest hits. "Hangdog Hotel Room" was the fruit of three sleepless days and nights spent carousing with Jerry Jeff Walker and fiddler Doug Kershaw.
After a 20-minute intermission, Lightfoot returned to explain the circumstances of another classic, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." Sounding as if he had gotten over he worst of his hoarseness, Lightfoot continued with "Alberta Bound," "Christian Island" and "Don Quixote."
Near the end of his concert was the song that catapulted him from folkie status to pop star, "If You Could Read My Mind," which was the last number this reviewer heard before leaving to make a deadline.
The applause for each number in the last half of the concert was successively bigger, and it was clear that the mainly baby boomer audience was happy to make his acquaintance again, hoarse or not. He has earned the status of legend, and his fans sounded like they are ready to turn out if he puts Roanoke on his schedule again.
Seth Williamson produces "Back Roads & Blue Highways" on public radio station WVTF (89.1 FM) in Roanoke.