The Wreck Returns

If there should ever come a time when you need a warm welcome and a hearty hug from a couple of thousand middle-aged enthusiasts, a few simple steps will do it for you.

1. First, change your name to Gordon Lightfoot.
2. Then, travel to the DECC auditorium in Duluth.
3. Finally, sing The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald in Gordon's fluid style.

No matter the level of your need for appreciation, it will be overwhelmed as the house rises up as never before.

Here's Early Morning Rain.

Sunday night was the last stop of the year for Lightfoot and his astonishingly long-serving backup players, and the enthusiasm he brought Duluth was fully reflected by his appreciative audience.

Many, including Bob Dylan, regard Lightfoot as one of the best of current composers and writers and even a partial listing of his songs supports that view. Among them:

• If You Could Read My Mind
• Sundown
• Don Quixote
• Summer Side of Life
• Me and Bobby McGee
• Rainy Day People

For a touching word-painting of the Lightfoot experience, see Peter Zeller's guest report over at Power Line on his front row experience in Minneapolis the night before.

The Edmund Fitgerald sank in 1975 on Lake Superior with the loss of all 29 crewmembers after 17 years as an ore carrier. The most generally accepted theory of her loss is that she capsized after being hit by the third in a series of rogue waves, the result of a massive winter storm. The Fitzgerald rests with her crewmembers in 530 feet of water.