When Gordie Lightfoot died, I pulled out his first vinyl recording and played it for the first time in years. As I listened, I read the album notes and found that the album had been dedicated to me and to the rest of the small crowd who had braved a terrible ice storm to make it to the Village Corner, a tiny coffee house in Toronto’s Yorkville District.
Joining Gordie was Terry Whelan. They billed themselves as the Two Tones.
Gordie wrote in the liner notes: To those who braved that Saturday night of Jan. 20, 1962, to attend the session of the Two Tones at the Village Corner, we dedicate this album.
Then, I was a teenage freshman at Western University. As often as I could, I would board the train to Toronto to stay with Jill, my high school sweetheart. Jill would meet me at Union Station and we would walk the few blocks along King Street to her apartment across from the St. Lawrence Market.
One of our favorite venues for a night out was the Village Corner. That weekend we had circled Sunday night because the Two Tones were going to make a live album there.
We took the subway north before battling through heavy winds and ice rain to reach the club. A friend of ours had kept us a couple of seats near the small stage.
The two sound techs sat with the headsets on adjusting levels on a table behind us. The organizers had been afraid that there would be a poor turnout because of the weather, but as Gordie says on the liner notes, “Everyone was packed in like matchwood ... The air was hot and sticky ... the coffee machine was working overtime. The smoke hung over everything like fog.” After a fairly long delay, Gordie and Terry climbed on stage with Howie Morris, their standup bass player. Gordie and Terry were playing four-string tenor guitars. We, the live audience, cheered loudly as they opened with ‘We Come Here to Sing’.
Most of the songs they played that night were familiar folk tunes like ‘Kilgarry Mountain’ and ‘Copper Kettle’. The only song actually written by Gordie was ‘This is My Song’. Gordie’s singing made that cut stand out from the traditional fare. You can still find it on Youtube. On my next visit to the Village Corner, I picked up the Two Tones vinyl album.
It had been a memorable night. Gordie worked hard over the next four years until his first solo album, called simply ‘Lightfoot’, came out with hits like ‘For Lovin’ Me’, ‘Ribbon of Darkness’ and ‘Early Morning Rain’.
Ever since then, he has been one of our greatest singer/songwriters, a towering figure. As much as we all feel his loss, we are fortunate that we still have his music.
Listening to his Two Tones album, I find myself reliving that night. The subways had already closed by the time we left the Village Corner, and Jill and I had to walk all the way down to King Street, but even the icy rain could not dampen our spirits.
Gordon Lightfoot died May 1 at the age of 84.
Colin Hayward is a writer in Sudbury.
