Why does it take the eulogy to say "I love you..."?

My friend Alan Stout posted last night that he was sitting on his deck with a beverage, listening to Gordon Lightfoot. Surely he wasn't the only one, he said. He wasn't. Because that's what I was doing as well. How many others?

Today? I’m back at it. I might stay here forever.

We keep losing our masters, because time is relentless and she doesn't care how many great songs you've written. Time has no sentiment. And she never listened to the radio. A pity really.

I'm part of the last generation that did. It contained everything. For better or worse. When I first heard songs like "Sundown" or "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald", all I could think about was hearing them again. And then again. You could sit in front of your radio and wait for the next DJ to spin it, or you could go buy it. It so quaint to suggest this now....as I'm sitting on my deck tapping these words while listening to "The Pony Man", thanks to my Iphone and my Spotify account. But those were our options. Honest.

When you actually bought records, your world changed. It became personal. You started to make connections with the people who wrote and played these songs. You could pick and choose who to spend your time with. So yea, even if I wasn't being invited to the cool kid parties, I still had "Gord's Gold" to hang out with. And you know what? I have no idea where the cool kids are these days. But I still have "Gord's Gold".

And let's face it. Canadians are not like us. I'm trying to be delicate here but....well.....fuck it. They are better than we are. They tolerate us Yanks with bemused smiles, secure in the knowledge that most of the shit we're still working on they've already figured out. Americans think everybody wants to be just like us. Don't get me wrong. Canadians wish us well. They are wonderful neighbors. They may pop over the border for a visit and some of them are even Boston Bruin fans, but I've never heard a Canadian say, "you know, I sure wish I lived in Texas".

Which is to say that we Americans don't have our own Gordon Lightfoot. We don't culturally embrace our own the way Canadians do. We had Elvis and have Dylan, unapproachable weirdos hiding behind shades. The idea of sitting down and having a beer with Dylan is too bizarre to ponder.

There's a charming YouTube video of Lightfoot doing a live feed from his front porch during the Covid lockdown, his mask hanging like a chin-strap. He's looking like a wizened wizard. Can anybody imagine Dylan doing such a thing? Does anybody even know where Dylan lives? For all we know he might reside in a Motel 6, with his tour bus parked outside in case he needs to send his manager to the store.

But Lightfoot is family. He's like a favorite uncle sitting in the same chair every Sunday. Canadians are too nice to argue with us about it, but they know that while Lightfoot might not have broken as much ground, he wrote much better melodies than Dylan, and at his best was his absolute equal as a lyricist. Dylan has a massive ego. Contempt for his contemporaries was (and is) never far from his surface. But while he sneered at others, he treated Lightfoot as an equal. Always.

Hell....I'm a huge Dylan fan but if you offered me a trade I just might take it.

And you know what? If we called him “the American Gordon Lightfoot”, he might take that too.

Especially now. Because diving into this music all over again is absolutely thrilling. And I loathe myself that it took his passing to get me here. Why does it take the eulogy to say "I love you?"

I'm an American with Canadian envy. I wish he were ours.

So yea. I'm still out here. "Race Among the Ruins" and "Summer Side of Life" and "Don Quixote" and "Ghosts of Cape Horn" and "Oh So Sweet" and "The Circle is Small" and "I'll Tag Along" and “Hi’way Songs”. It's been hours and each song is like turning the page of a great book that you hope never ends. I might sit out here all day.

Just for now I'd like to rest
In the shade of a maple tree
To the blue Canadian sky
I'll say a prayer for the world out there
When I stand on my own sod
It feels so good to be home, by God

In a bit...

--tf