Singer-songwriter Jory Nash co-founded a concert series called "The Way We Feel" in 2003. Jory agreed to a guest blog for the Canoe Dossier on Gordon Lightfoot's 70th birthday.

On a Saturday morning in the St. Lawrence Market in Toronto, beside the line-up in front of the St. Urbain Bagel there’s a leathery-looking man with a weathered old guitar and a feather-like voice singing folk-ish songs to passers-by for small change. He’s there almost every week, like the balloon clown man at the front and the mustard sample lady on the east side and the bow-tie guy downstairs. Last week the guitar man sang Lightfoot. Today he’s singing Lightfoot again.

I know that song he’s singing; I’ve heard it before. Even tried to sing it once though I couldn’t get the lyrics down just right. Lightfoot songs are like that: Elliptical, atypical, unpredictable. Just when you think you’ve got the chorus worked out the words change ever so slightly. Now why would Lightfoot go and do that? No one else writes a song that way…

When I met Gordon Lightfoot for the second time he hadn’t been onstage for several years due to a much-publicized illness. We were backstage at the Mariposa Folk Festival in Orillia and I had just got offstage where I’d sung Early Morning Rain at the closing night tribute to the Man. And then there he was, loitering alone against the backdrop, looking lean and edgy, a little lost and found. I asked him how he was. I told him I was a fan. I wondered when he thought he might be able to play onstage again. And he looked at me, directly, for the first time, smiled once and said…”Uh…I think…right after…THAT guy!” And he pointed onstage where someone else was singing another one of his master songs. And when that fellow was done Gordon Lightfoot walked up the steps to the stage, borrowed some lucky dude’s guitar, was introduced by the host as someone quite “appropriate” to play Lightfoot songs at a Lightfoot tribute concert, and for the first time in over 2 years started to play.

I hear Gordon Lightfoot on the jukebox in the bar of the Highwayman Hotel in Orillia, Ontario. I see Gordon Lightfoot on the wall of a lunch café in Squamish, BC. He’s on the Trans-Canada highway two trucks in front of me. He’s on the radio two cars behind me. I think about him when I write and I listen to him when I can’t.

Gordon Lightfoot’s turning 70 now; he’s a year older than my father. My father, who sold me on Lightfoot’s music when I was 5 years old, and took me to Massey Hall to see Lightfoot when I was 9. My father, who bought me my first real guitar. Who doesn’t recognize much these days but still, somehow, knows Early Morning Rain. Just like the guitar man singing songs at the St. Lawrence Market for passing change. And just like me.

"The Way We Feel" tribute concert series has featured some of Canada's most dynamic folk, roots, blues, country, rock and pop artists paying tribute to Gordon Lightfoot. TWWF is hosted by Canoe.ca Editor-in-Chief David Newland. Currently, there are three shows scheduled for January at Hugh's Room in Toronto.