Now that hes over 70, his frame and voice a good deal frailer than they were in his prime, its easy to forget that, for decades, the Canadian folk legend Gordon Lightfoot defined what it meant to be a man. He was handsomely hirsute, wore a lot of denim, drank dark-hued booze, chased hot skirt, lived in the wilds of Ontario, chopped his own wood, killed wild boar with his bare hands, fished with a spear, raced a team of sled dogs, arm-wrestled competitively, wore Skin Bracer aftershave, and built his own forested cabin from log and rock, like that old guy on PBS. Even if he didnt do all that (and we have no proof that he didnt), he still wrote Sundown, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, Carefree Highway, and If You Could Read My Mind. Thats more than enough. MIKE SEELY
Fri., Nov. 5, 8 p.m., 2010
