Slip Away On That Carefree Highway With Gordon Lightfoot

So, here comes part two of the huge Lightfoot retrospective I recently started. Disc Two of A Life In Song, this time covering most of Gordon's prime period, from 1971 to 1976. Same deal as the first disc: I'll run through the albums and from time to time explain why I picked the tracks I picked. Overall, Carefree Highway is probably the most consistently listenable of the three volumes, due to Gord widening his commercil and popular appeal and opening up his sound. Having three of his biggest smashes - "undown", "Carefree Highway" and "The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald" on here - doesn't hurt either. So, let's check what's going on on this Carefree Highway, shall we? 

Don Quixote is the last album of Lightfoot as a tried-and-true folkie. Orchestrations or not, up until this album his songs were still esssentially acoustic folks songs. That would change withh the following album, when for the first time Lightfoot would employ a drummer, as well as upping the country instrumentation, notably making the pedal steel a fixed part of his instrumental repertoirse. Don Quixote is also one of Gord's best, a thoroughly enjoyable record without a weak track on it, which made picking songs for this comp difficult. The classic title song and his ode to the area of his childhood (and summer sailing trips) "Christian Island -Georgian Bay)" were obvious picks. I have always loved "Looking At The Rain", a classic Lightfoot ballad that was written around the time of the Sit Down Young Stranger/If You Could Read My Mind album a year before and sounds like it. Which leaves essentially one spot for another track. I'm sure many would vote for the jaunty "Alberta Bound" with Ry Cooder's mandolin playing, but my pick is "Brave Mountaineers", a song that summarizes what early Lightfoot was about. A lilting, memorable melody and chorus, uncluttered instrumentation, even some whistling during the outro - this song could have easily come from any of the albums preceding it, being a nice capper to that first phase of Lightfoot. 

Old Dan's Record is a conundrum in Lightfoot's discography, and especially in the context of the albums surrounding it. It is the great lost Lightfoot classic, an album long out of print and essentially forgotten. I knew it existed, thanks to the inclusion of the title track on Gord's Gold, but could never find it, so when Rhino issued it on CD for the first time in the early 2000's I had to get it just out of pure curiosity. And you know what? It's totally unfairly buried deep in his discography, as it's one of his best. It's also, as hinted above, a precursor of things to come, notably a more modern, radio-friednly sound. But what's relly striking about Old Dan's Records is the country influence. It's essentially Gord's country record, as you can easily see in the four picks of the album. I'd have more to say about it, but strongly consider posting the whole thing on here some day, so I'll just leave it at that, merely pointing out that "It's Worth Believin'" is one of my favorite Lightfoot songs and that "You Are What I Am" is a weirdly neglected charting single, never making any Greatest Hits package. 

And then of course Lightfoot hit it big with Sundown, the song and the album. "Sundown" the song is of course an improbable number one hit song - it has an amiable acoustic shuffle and a singalong chorus, which no doubt helped propel it to the top spot, but it's a very weird singalong - the lyrics are surprisingly dark, even menacing ("you better take care if I find you been creepin' 'round my back stairs"), ostensibly about Lightfoot's jealousy while in a relationship with groupie Cathy Smith - and the sweaty, nervy atmosphere Lightfoot evokes is almost unpleasant, yet couched in Gord's friendly, folk-pop sound it sounds like an upbeat song of some sort if you're not taking care what you are singing or humming along to. "Carefree Highway", the follow-up single, also became a top ten hit. Lightfoot's seafaring classic "High & Dry" has to be here, and the last selection from the album, "The Watchman's Gone" , is an underrated classic from the period and captures the wanderlust theme that underlies about half of the album. It has one of Lightfoot's most memorable melodies, yet has never been put on a compilation of any kind. Weirdly, Lightfoot only put a scant three selections from Sundown on his Songbook box set, essentially relegating his biggest seller to the status of a minor album. 

Lightfoot had all the career momentum in the world, so it was too bad that he couldn't really back it up with another quality batch of songs, as I would say that 1975's Cold On The Shoulder is one of his weaker efforts. Sounding fine while it plays, it simply isn't very memorable. "Rainy Day People" became an adult contemporary number one hit, based on Lightfoot's charts momentum, and I like the melody of "All The Lovely Ladies", even if the arrangement drifts a little too much into adult contemporary. The secret classic, or at least my secret classic, of the album is "The Soul Is The Rock", a more ambitious and epic song than most of its brethren. It is certainly odd, both in its possibly religious undertones ("live like a sheep, die like a lamb") and the weird allegories it uses. Slightly repetitive it might be, but it's hard to get the song's melody out of your head. 

After a decade of recording, Lightfoot compiled his first 'official' hits package, the double LP Gord's Gold, as United Artists had continued to throw 'Best Of's' of his five album-tenure there on the market, as soon as "If You Could Read My Mind" made him a star, and Warner/Reprise decided it was time to counter that. Rather than licensing songs from United Artists, Lightfoot took the package as a way to reinterpret and re-imagine his early recordings in his then recent folk-pop style, giving these songs fuller arrangements that the earlier, folkier work didn't have: drums, steel guitar, orchestration. Some purists might hate these remakes, but since this is essentially (at least for me) Lightfoot's signature sound, I love them and prefer a number of them to the originals. And that is why you get "For Lovin' Me" in the 1975 version, as well as the medley of "I'm Not Sayin'/Ribbon Of Darkness". And despite the song being featured on Vol. 1, you'll also get the 1975 remake of "Canadian Railroad Trilogy". It's an interesting case study in 'same but different'. Arrangement and lyrics are the same, but the song's slightly slower tempo, the addition of whining steel guitar and Lightfoot's by this time weathered voice give an entirely different feel to the song. While the original with its enthusiastic acoustic strumming and Lightfoot's youthful voice seemed to emphasize the pioneering spirit and wonder of achievement present in the song, the version from eight years later seems to emphasize the losses and loneliness of the endeavor, sommething the ever-touring, slididng into middle-age Lightfoot would know a thing or two about.  

While Cold On The Shoulder had been only so-so, Lightfoot struck back a year later with his last classic album, and one of his all-time best, Summertime Dream. Not only did it have his last big chart hit, and best story-telling song, "The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald"  (already discussed at great lengths here). But a set of well-written songs and committed performances, for his most consistent album since, arguably, Don Quixote. There are, in fact, so many quality songs here - and I still had to drop antiwar song "Protocol" - that the Summertime Dream songs will spill over onto Vol. 3, but you get a trio of great songs: opener "Race Among The Ruins", a wonderful, weirdly underrated song, the album's sprightly title track, and of course "Edmund Fitzgerald" as the moody album closer. 

A Life In Song Vol. 2 - Carefree Highway covers Lightfoot's commercial zenith as a folk-pop crossover star, and it has a ton of classics that yiou should either add to your collection, or relisten to again. Whether you are a Lightfoot neophyte or afficionado, getting on that carefree highway to listen to some of the most beautiful music of the 1970s should in either case be your next destination...