Eric Elison started performing Gordon Lightfoot’s catalog in 2019, and the timing — Lightfoot died in May 2023, ending a career that stretched from the early 1960s to within a year of his death — has given the tribute a different urgency. “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” “If You Could Read My Mind,” “Canadian Railroad Trilogy”: songs so embedded in the folk canon that it sometimes takes a live performance to remind listeners what they actually contain. Elison, a Colorado-based singer-songwriter known as the Lightfoot of the Rockies, has been making that case in theaters and arts centers across the US, Canada, and internationally ever since.
About the Show
Elison brings “Celebrating Lightfoot” to the Riviera Theatre on Friday, April 2, at 7:30 p.m. He performs with what those who have heard him describe as a rich, vibrato-laced baritone reminiscent of Lightfoot in his prime, accompanying himself on six- and 12-string acoustic guitars. His backing band is not incidental: the musicians hold credits alongside the Nelson Riddle Orchestra, Charley Pride, and Weird Al Yankovic. The set covers Lightfoot’s full catalog, drawing from “Early Morning Rain,” “Sundown,” “Carefree Highway,” “Alberta Bound,” “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” “Canadian Railroad Trilogy,” and more. Certain numbers, including “Rainy Day People” and “Beautiful,” are built around audience participation; the evening also includes selections from Elison’s own catalog. Before the tribute work took over, Elison served as a Navy aviator while continuing to write and perform, releasing his own EP, “Westside Cafe,” in 2017. The tour that followed has since taken him to venues across the USA, Canada, Germany, Austria, New Zealand, and Antarctica. As for the question of whether Elison captures something real: Chuck Mitchell (Joni Mitchell’s former husband and someone with direct knowledge of what Lightfoot sounded like) heard Elison perform and said, “You are channelling Gordon Lightfoot. Trust me I know what Gordie sounds like.”
Venue & Logistics
The Riviera Theatre is at 67 Webster Street in North Tonawanda, in western New York. Elison typically meets with audience members after the performance to discuss Lightfoot’s music, a notable offer for those who spent years with these records and have questions about the man who wrote them.
Tickets
All seats are $20. Riviera subscriber presale begins September 1 at noon; the public on-sale opens September 4 at 10 a.m. Buy tickets