The Lightfoot Band keeping Gordon’s great music alive

Hamilton guitarist Carter Lancaster says some nights on tour it feels like Canada’s great songwriter is in the room. Shows are coming to Hamilton and Burlington.

There are moments when Carter Lancaster has been playing his guitar during this year’s tour of The Lightfoot Band and it's felt like the late great Gordon Lightfoot has been singing from his rightful place at the front of the stage.

“My goodness, you close your eyes some nights at these concerts and you'd swear Gord's in the room,” he says.

There are a few reasons for that. Singer and guitarist Andy Mauck, who is fronting these shows, sounds remarkably like Lightfoot in timbre and style. But it’s also because Lancaster, who lives in Hamilton, was Lightfoot’s lead guitarist for 13 years and the singer-songwriter was a larger-than-life presence both on-stage and off.

“He's not there, but there are nights you can feel the spirit, you really can. It's just crazy. And that's why I think that the fact that we're carrying on with this music is such a good idea, because the world is just not ready to let it go yet. And I'm not ready to let it go either. I mean, these are great songs.”

The Lightfoot Band (aside from Mauck) are the musicians who recorded and toured with Lightfoot for decades –  Rick Haynes on bass, Barry Keane on drums and percussion, Mike Heffernan on keyboards and Lancaster, who joined when longtime guitarist Terry Clements died in 2011. 

Collectively, the band has a staggering 160 years of playing alongside Lightfoot, one of Canada’s greatest songwriters, who died in hospital in May 2023.

‘Privilege to perform with Gordon’

Lightfoot was humble, didn’t like to talk about himself and didn’t seek the limelight off the stage. But he lived for performing, says Keane, who played alongside Lightfoot since 1976.

So there is healing in this tour, says Keane, which began with a show at the fabled El Mocambo in Toronto in January. It has included a special stop in May at Massey Hall for “Celebrating Gordon Lightfoot,” which featured Blue Rodeo, Geddy Lee, Tom Wilson, Serena Ryder, Kathleen Edwards and William Prince, among many others.

“It was always such a privilege to perform with Gordon, to be part of his creative process and continuing it on without him,” says Keane. “We consider it a privilege to be able to continue to perform Gordon songs the way he wanted them performed.”

Keane thinks Lightfoot would be pleased to see his songs still finding life on stage, though there is no doubt he would have suggestions about setlists and arrangements.

“He was never shy about letting us know what he liked and didn't like.”

‘Enormous amount of pressure’

Lancaster began playing with Lightfoot in 2011. He had been working on a solo album at Hamilton’s famed Grant Avenue Studio. He stopped in one day to talk to studio co-founder and producer Bob Doidge and found him on the phone.

“I had no idea who he was on the phone with, and I just poked my head in, just to let him know that I was there. And his eyes went as big as saucers, and his jaw pretty much hit the desk, and he said to the person on the phone, ‘I think our answer just walked in the door. I have to call you back.’”

It turned out that Lightfoot’s longtime guitarist Terry Clements was ill and it wasn’t known if he could perform in an upcoming TV special. Doidge wrote down the names of eight songs on a piece of paper and asked Lancaster how long it would take to learn them.

“I said, ‘Oh, Bob, these look like Gord Lightfoot songs. I could probably get through most of these right now.’ And he said, ‘No, you have to be able to play them like you've been playing them for 40 years. And I said, OK, then I need a day per song.’”

From there, Lancaster did a phone interview with bass player Rick Haynes. Passing that test, he talked to Lightfoot next.

“So Gord called me and invited me to his house for a rehearsal. And I went there, and it was an enormous amount of pressure. You know, first of all, his house was about 100 degrees, and it was summer, and nobody told me that it was going to be 100 degrees. So I was, I was wearing jeans, I think, and I was just burning up. I was just sweating like crazy. And of course, Gord wanted to hear every single note I was playing, right? So he had me sitting in a chair, and he stood over me so that he could be in complete control. And when I say, stood over me, he was six inches, maybe a foot from me. He listened to absolutely every single note that I played and it was kind of surreal.”

But in the meantime, Clements’ health improved and he did the TV special. It was another year or so before Lancaster was summoned again. Clements was ailing and he died in early 2011.

Lightfoot asked if Lancaster wanted to tour and he rehearsed with the band four or five times over the next six months before hitting the road.

He says Lightfoot encouraged him to take the best guitar parts from both his original guitarist Red Shea and from Clements and then “Carterize” the arrangements to make them his own.

Lancaster’s first performance was in Greensboro, N.C. He had some notes taped to the stage to remember the number of verses and choruses to a few songs he hadn’t had as much time to prepare.

“And I put it down by my amplifier so that only I could see it. And that night, when we walked off stage, Gord noticed it. And he called me into his dressing room, and he said, ‘What is that piece of paper?’ And I said, ‘They’re notes. I didn't have time to prepare.’ And he said, ‘No more notes on my stage.’ And he said, ‘I'd rather you make a mistake once, because if you make a mistake once, I bet you'll never make it again. So I said, ‘OK, alright. So I didn't have any more notes.’”

The bandmates had a routine when they arrived in a city on their chartered jet. Lightfoot and Haynes would immediately head to the venue because Lightfoot liked to get to know the stage and the acoustics and linger over a soundcheck and meticulously tune his guitars. Lancaster, Keane and Heffernan would go to the hotel with the luggage and get everyone checked in.

“When I got to the venue, I always went to Gord’s dressing room, and I would say, ‘We're all here, man.’ And he would always go, ‘Right on.’ Or he'd say, ‘Thanks, man.’ Every single day for the 13 years that we worked together I would do that.”

When Lightfoot died, Lancaster says it felt like a bad dream until the funeral.

“I walked up to the casket and I said, ‘We're all here, man.’ And he didn't move. He didn't say thanks, man. He didn't say anything. That's when I knew it was real. It was final.”

‘His greatness was just overwhelming’

Lancaster was in grade 9 or 10 when a boy in his class brought in the Sundown album. The cover features a cross-legged Gord in jeans and sandals sitting in front of a 12-string sunburst Gibson guitar.

“I remember listening to the album in school and saying to myself, ‘I could do that. I could do that.’ And I remember that very first day that I went to Gordon's house, that guitar on the cover of that album was sitting in the corner. It was sitting right there,” he says, the awe of the memory evident in his voice.

“When you're in Gord’s presence, and he starts playing some of these songs that you've heard a thousand times on the radio, and you realize that this is the guy that sang it, played the parts, wrote the parts, wrote the songs, had the inspiration for the songs. I mean, it's just overwhelming. His greatness was just overwhelming.”

He was also the hardest-working musician Lancaster ever saw.

“When I would wake up in the morning, if we were on tour, Gord would already be working. We'd be on the plane. I'd be reading my magazine. Gord would be working on the set list for the show that night. He just never stopped,” he says.

Lancaster was born in London, Ont. and raised in Burlington. He now lives in the St. Clair neighbourhood in central Hamilton with his wife and three kids.

It will be a full-circle moment for Lancaster when he takes to the stage at the Burlington Performing Arts Centre on Oct. 25. In a home that once stood on that site, Lancaster took guitar lessons for years.

“I learned how to play guitar, become a professional guitarist, travelled the world with Gordon Lightfoot and now I’m coming back home to where I first started learning how to play guitar in that very same hallowed ground. It’s very special for me.”

The Lightfoot Band concerts include the greatest hits – “Sundown,” “Carefree Highway,” “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” “If You Could Read My Mind,” and “Early Morning Rain” – but also delve into songs that haven’t been performed in a long time, including “Canadian Railroad Trilogy,” and deep cuts like “Summer Side of Life” and “The Circle Is Small.”

An Oct. 31 show in Lightfoot’s hometown of Orillia will be particularly emotional. The next day, the band will take part in two workshops for Lightfoot Days in which they’ll talk about the evolution of songs, working with Lightfoot and how they came up with arrangements.

After each show on tour, the musicians make a point of coming out to the venue’s lobby to meet fans.

“I think it's been even better than any of us had imagined it could be, to be honest,” Keane says of the tour. “It is such a privilege to carry the torch of Gordon Lightfoot songs and present them to his great fans.”

The Lightfoot Band will play the Burlington Performing Arts Centre on Oct. 25 and The Westdale in Hamilton on Nov. 2 before the tour wraps up for 2024 on Dec. 11 in Columbus, Ohio.