LIGHTFOOT, WHO LOVES ‘THE BARGE,’ PLAYED HERE ONCE — AND IS INVITED BACK BY GOOD BROTHERS FOR THEIR 30TH SHOW
Mark Clairmont | MuskokaTODAY.com
ORILLIA — Terry Whelan and Gordon Lightfoot didn’t make the cut for the first Mariposa Folk Festival in 1961.
“They said we sounded too much like the Everly Brothers,” Lightfoot joked on the weekend as he was added to Mariposa’s hall of fame.
But “We played the Barge in Gravenhurst,” Lightfoot told afterwards.
I knew that because my dad, Hugh, who booked Barge shows the first couple decades after the Barge was built told me so. I was a teenage stage hand for more than a decade myself.
“I remember Hughie Clairmont,” Lightfoot said Saturday.
They played together when Clairmont was on trumpet and drums in Orillia with the Charlie Andrews Band.
When Lightfoot joined the band as a singer they had to have him do more than sing every song.
So between numbrers he sat in on drums and my dad taught him a few riffs so he good go up front on trumpet.
Lightfoot and I often run in to each other at Mariposa or Massey Hall when he plays his annual shows there.
He’s been to our family’s Bay Street home — like many top Canadian musicians who have jammed in our basement with my dad and me.
We’ll reminisce about sax man George Snache of Rama — who was in my dad’s trio the Sandsmen — and whom Lightfoot recalled as having “the best A-flat in the business.”
Lightfoot starts touring again tomorrow — five two-week outings between now and Christmas — his missus Kim Hasse told me.
But he’s always “welcome” back at the Barge, says good friend Brian Good, who led a rousing celebratory rendition of Lightfoot’s Alberta Bound at Sunday night’s induction ceremony.
Good and his brothers the Good Brothers will be back to as usual to end the summer Barge season in August for their 30th time.
And he says Lightfoot is always “welcome” back.
Could he be there?
“You never know. He’s always invited, he knows that. You never know if he’s not touring, he just might be there,” Good said.
Lightfoot has a habit of popping in unannounced. This could be a great year to do it again.
Fred Schulz, who books the shows now and last Sunday marked a 50-year association with the Barge, is a huge fan going down to Massey Hall to see him often with the Marrins of Bracebridge.
He’d be glad to have him back.
Lightfoot has lots of fans in Gravenhurst and Muskoka, many of them who were down to see him on the weekend, where he played a record 14th time.
They can never get enough of the legendary Canadian folk star from neighbouring Orillia.
Brian Good says his friend Gordon Lightfoot is ‘welcome’ back at the Barge for the Goods’ 30th anniversary show in August.
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