‘Picking up the Pieces’ a tribute to Gordon Lightfoot’s legacy
By Al Beeber - Lethbridge Herald on March 22, 2025.
Courtesy Ivy Jane Photography
'Picking up the Pieces - The Songs of Gordon Lightfoot' will be presented at the Yates Theatre March 31.LETHBRIDGE HERALDabeeber@lethbridgeherald.com
When Gordon Lightfoot died at the age of 84 in 2023, he left a monumental musical legacy behind.
The quintessential singer/songwriter, the Canadian cultural icon earned 16 Juno Awards, was nominated five times for Grammys and was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame.
After two years attending a Los Angeles music college in the late 1950s, the Orillia, Ont.-born Lightfoot returned to Canada and made it his home until he died.
During his career, he recorded many songs that became staples of radio including perhaps his most well-known song “Sundown” as well as classics including “Carefree Highway,” “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” “If You Could Read My Mind” and “Cotton Jenny.”
John Hewitt remembers seeing Lightfoot walking down the street while he lived in Toronto and to this day, the musician who is now based in Edmonton regrets not mustering the courage to introduce himself to say hello.
The 35-year-old Hewitt wasn’t even alive during the heyday of Lightfoot’s career in the 1960s and ’70s but has a massive respect and admiration for his work.
And on March 31 at the Yates Centre, Lethbridge audiences will get an understanding of that admiration when Hewitt presents “Picking up the Pieces: The songs of Gordon Lightfoot” featuring 25-year-old Benjamin Williams, who has been studying the work of Lightfoot since he was 12.
Williams, whose repertoire includes folk music and rock from the 1960s and ’70s, has an extensive knowledge of Lightfoot’s work, says Hewitt, who is producing the show.
If Lightfoot wrote 500 tunes, Williams knows 480 of them, said Hewitt in a phone interview.
“It’s amazing the amount of Lightfoot knowledge he has. He tends to bring out a few new songs that even we haven’t heard of Lightfoot’s catalogue and sort of connects to either the town we’re in or something that’s gone that makes him feel like playing a certain tune. And Lightfoot, much like Dylan and Cohen and Joni Mitchell, has a really large catalogue of music. He was a true songwriter.”
Hewitt, whose personal Lightfoot favourite is “Canadian Railway Trilogy,” says the audience can expect to hear all the big Lightfoot hits and deeper cuts during the show which will be divided into a pair of 50-minute segments with a break in between.
A musician in his own right, Hewitt says he was inspired to put the Lightfoot show together because of Williams’ interest in his work.
“We’re both huge Lightfoot fans and the way that Benjamin Williams can play a Gordon Lightfoot song, I sat down with him one day and said I think this is something we should seriously consider putting together,” said Hewitt.
“He likes to say that he didn’t really get Lightfoot when he was younger but he got him when he turned 12.”
Hewitt and Williams are both stuck in the 1960s and ’70, said Hewitt, who is more of a Bob Dylan and Tom Petty guy while William is more of a Lightfoot/John Denver person.
Lethbridge is just one stop on the show’s tour, which includes Okotoks, Airdrie, Red Deer, Grande Prairie, Athabasca, Stettler and Hinton.
Audiences tend to be older but Hewitt and the show’s cast like to reach out to schools to put on a show to introduce the music to a younger audience.
“Oftentimes with how much music is being released nowadays, a lot of stuff gets lost in translation. There’s too much out there and certain icons and legends like Lightfoot, I believe, should be celebrated and can definitely be considered an education piece for young audiences,” said Hewitt.
“It really makes you respect him even more as a songwriter when you hear something you don’t know but it feels just as good as the stuff you do know.”
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