My name is Martin Tielli, and for a long time I was in a group called the Rheostatics. Once, spontaneously, we covered the amazing Gordon Lightfoot song, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” We tried to make it wilder – do it in a more modern style, and sonically ruminate more on the story – and we put it on the end of our record Melville. Was it legal? We put out the word and Gordo did not care.
Did he ever listen to it? I don’t know, but if he did, he didn’t like it.
Later, after listening to a current album of his, we sent out the word that we would volunteer our services for his next effort as a backing band.
Nothing. No response.
I wish this would’ve happened. It would have been an amazing collaboration. But I think that part of why I like Gordon Lightfoot is that he would never do anything like that.
Martin Tielli is a Canadian singer-songwriter. Gordon Lightfoot plays Massey Hall November 18 – 21.
Michael Kaeshammer performs at Glenn Gould Studio last year.
Just for fun, we’re trying something a little different with the Buzz this week: you’ll still get a weekly dose of all the good stuff, just packaged in a shiny new format. We’ve got show highlights and announcements, and we’ll also let you know about awards, news items, and other inside scoop details about the artists and presentations at the Halls. Let us know what you think!
**JUST ANNOUNCED**
C. R. Avery is coming to Glenn Gould Studio on Thursday, February 25. This guy is something else: his bio calls him a “one man hip hop beatbox blues harmonica americana iconoclast,” and when Tom Waits gave C.R. a listen he said “blowin’ my mind.” Avery impressed this year at the Hillside Festival in Guelph and a new album, The Great Canadian Novel, is due out in 2010.CONTINUE READING >
I was a bit of an odd one. In the late 70s and early 80s most teenagers listened to New Wave, punk or the last vestiges of 70s heavy rock. I did too, but supplemented these with a steady side-diet of acoustic singer-songwriters: Bruce Cockburn, John Prine, Harvest-era Neil Young, early Dylan, and Gordon Lightfoot. I started playing guitar during summers at camp, and when we weren’t playing bluegrass or working through an epic version of “Hotel California,” those were the musicians whose songs we played. They were halcyon years, when the unspoken signs, signals, and understandings between two, three, and four people playing acoustic instruments was a really key thing for me.
So, you can imagine the sense of occasion I felt arriving for one of Lightfoot’s legendary March Break shows at Massey Hall: seeing the instruments arranged on the dimly-lit stage; scanning the room looking for (and even finding) familiar faces; the feeling of awe as the lights dropped and Gord strode out carrying — quite probably — the old Gibson twelve-string. CONTINUE READING >
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