Songwriting, despite a cottage industry of demystification and guidance, remains elusive. Sometimes it takes weeks or even years to finish a single tune — and it still might not be good (yet).
Steven Page has naturally run into this issue in his nearly 40-year songwriting career. But one of his most famous and best songs came, by his own account, “spilling out” of him.
“A song like ‘Brian Wilson,’ that probably came right out of me,” Page said of the 1992 hit with his former band Barenaked Ladies. “I always think that if I’d taken time to edit it, there’d be things I like better about it now. But I sing that song every show and I don’t get sick of it.”
Even though he left that band more than 15 years ago, Page will surely sing “Brian Wilson” at the Smith Opera House in Geneva on April 26, where he’ll perform with his trio: Craig Northey on guitar and Kevin Fox on cello.
It’s one of two shows this weekend that center Canadian songwriters on stage in the Finger Lakes region. The other is the Lightfoot Band, made up of the musicians that backed up Canadian folk legend Gordon Lightfoot before his death in 2023. They’ll hit the Theater at Innovation Square on April 27, performing cuts from Lightfoot’s deep songbook.
Canadian music has long transcended the nation’s borders, making waves on radio stations in nearby states like New York and throughout the larger Great Lakes region. These two gigs falling on the same weekend is a coincidence, though it does reveal how strong the ties remain. (Toronto’s Tragically Hip tribute act The Hip Experience plays at Water Street Music Hall on May 10; Buffalo’s The Strictly Hip appears at Photo City Music Hall on May 31.)
Though Page and Lightfoot are a generation apart, both are members of the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, and for good reason. “Brian Wilson” may be Page’s most indelible composition, give or take “One Week,” the quasi-rapped No. 1 hit from 1998, or cheeky love song “If I Had $1000000.”
At this point, Page said, playing those tunes is automatic. It’s the new ones from his more recent solo LPs that throw him.
“Any of the stuff that’s been in my repertoire for 10 to 40 years, [I] barely have to think about it,” he said. “If you do think about it, that’s when you get yourself into trouble.”
To prepare, Page — a native of Toronto suburb Scarborough who now lives near Syracuse — doesn’t really rehearse. He’s performed as part of the trio for 10 years. By now, Fox’s cello fits snugly into the new “Brian Wilson” arrangement, and Northey’s electric guitar accents Page’s song structures.
They could obsess over performance details ahead of a tour.
“But then, of course, the magic might be gone,” Page said.
That magical element was likewise present a half century ago at Eastern Sound Studios in Toronto. Drummer Barry Keane had settled into a session with Lightfoot — in his mid-1970s commercial peak and akin to a Canadian Bob Dylan — who kept strumming a song about a shipwreck.
But Lightfoot didn’t think it was ready yet. The recording engineer told the band to give it a go anyway.
“We come to the third verse. Gord looks at me in the drum booth and gives me a nod,” Keane recalled. He led off with a drum fill then played the rhythm straight through.
The song, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” ran 6:30 in total, a long folk epic about the real-life sinking of a freighter in Lake Superior in November 1975. It became one of Lightfoot’s defining compositions, reaching No. 1 in Canada and No. 2 in the United States.
“That very first take, the very first time any of us had even heard the song, that’s the record,” Keane said.
Bass player Rick Haynes, who also played on the track, said Lightfoot had the ability to capture emotionally resonant tales through his music.
“Gord was a prolific storyteller,” Haynes said. “Early on, I pictured him as the sort of medieval troubadour in modern times.”
Few musicians knew Lightfoot’s body of work as intimately as Haynes and Keane, who played with him for 55 and 47 years, respectively. The other members of the Lightfoot Band — keyboardist Mike Heffernan and guitarist Carter Lancaster — also performed with Lightfoot before his death.
Naturally, their star’s passing in May 2023 presented some questions: did they want to keep going without him? And if so, how would they do that? The group assembled at a restaurant in Mississauga, Ontario and decided to continue on with a new singer that Haynes suggested, a guy named Andy Mauck who played six- and 12-string guitar, like Gord.
“He knows more Gordon Lightfoot songs than I do,” Keane said. “It just seemed and he checked all of the boxes.”
As for Haynes, he’s ready to keep the celebration of Lightfoot’s work going as long as they can.
“I like to tell people old musicians don’t retire,” he said. “They just look for more work.”
Page, for his part, approaches his job with a similar enthusiasm. He knows the audience comes to hear the songs from their youth that moved them and continue to mean a lot, and he’s happy to perform them.
“But if you play your cards right,” he said, “they’re also there to catch up with you like you’re an old friend.”
Steven Page Trio performs at Geneva’s Smith Opera House at 8 p.m. on Saturday, April 26. Ticket info here.
The Lightfoot Band performs at the Theater at Innovation Square at 3 p.m. on Sunday, April 27. Ticket, location and parking info here.
Patrick Hosken is CITY’s arts reporter. He can be reached at patrick@rochester-citynews.com.
This article appears in Dec 1-31, 2024.
