More than three years after Gordon Lightfoot’s death, his music filled St. Mark’s Anglican Church in Niagara-on-the-Lake as a sold-out audience gathered to celebrate the Canadian icon through the voices and instruments of musicians who knew him — and, in one case, shared his family name.
Classic Lightfoot Live brought the music of the late Canadian singer-songwriter to fans who packed the pews of St. Mark’s on Saturday for the seven-piece tribute band’s performance.
The set includes hits such as “If You Could Read My Mind” and “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” along with songs that never made the radio.
Touring Ontario since 2014, the band features members of Lightfoot’s family and musicians connected to his longtime band.
Their work has taken on a deep significance since Lightfoot’s death. He died in May 2023 at the age of 84.
Bassist Steve Eyers is the son of Beverly Lightfoot Eyers of Orillia, Gordon Lightfoot’s sister, who managed her brother for a period in the 1970s.
Lead guitarist Eric Kidd, a music teacher from Barrie, studied with Red Shea, Lightfoot’s original lead guitarist.
Lead vocalist John Stinson lived next door to Shea and to Terry Clements, Lightfoot’s other longtime guitarist, while raising his family in Aurora. Stinson has been staging a full Lightfoot theatre show since 2011.
The band’s musical director, Bob Doidge, produced Lightfoot records at Grant Avenue Studio in Hamilton, including “A Painter Passing Through” and “Harmony.”
Stinson told the audience “Rainy Day People” was the last song Lightfoot sang in front of a crowd, in October 2022.
Stinson also introduced a song he said Lightfoot wrote in the late 1960s for the film “Cool Hand Luke.” The song went unused, he said, and sat unreleased until it appeared on a 1999 collection of older material.
Lightfoot saw the band himself in 2016, when he watched Stinson sing at Lake Country Grill in Orillia during Lightfoot Days. After the set ended, Lightfoot shook Stinson’s hand.
Kathy Chamberlin, 71, of Niagara-on-the-Lake, has listened to the singer-songwriter’s work for decades.
“Gordon Lightfoot is Canada to me,” she said. “The way he wrote about the country, the lakes, the trains, he really understood it in a way it feels like he’s your next-door neighbour.”
Bill Weidemann, 76, of St. Catharines, said he grew up listening to mostly American radio stations, but Lightfoot felt closer to home.
“We had plenty of American music coming from the stations over the border — then there was Lightfoot singing about places we knew,” he said.
Weidemann said that history is why he thinks the late songwriter’s records still need to be played.
“We don’t just back down,” he said. “There’s value in the music, and we’re gonna keep listening and playing it even after he’s gone.”
Classic Lightfoot Live plays next at the Gibson Centre in Alliston on Aug. 27.
