POP MUSIC REVIEW : Lightfoot Concert an Echo of the Past

If you wanted to write a song about the folk concert Thursday night at the Celebrity Theatre in Anaheim, you might call it “The Wreck of the Gordon M. Lightfoot.”

Perhaps that’s overstating things a bit. This venerable Canadian vessel didn’t sink. But at 54, he looked badly weathered, sounded markedly diminished and gave a too-sedate performance that left his music becalmed. The rotating stage at the Celebrity, no place for an intimate folkie, didn’t help.

Lightfoot’s voice was firm and resonant when he sailed to prominence in the folk-era ‘60s and the soft-rock ‘70s, but now it’s a wan echo of that.

His delivery was wizened and nasal, and while he performed purposefully, he often sang as if he couldn’t get enough wind in his bellows to power a song along.

Even thus diminished, Lightfoot had enough left to carry his graceful melodies. A warmly receptive audience hailed a large sampling of new songs from his appealing new album, “Waiting for You,” along with such catalogue nuggets as “If You Could Read My Mind” and “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”

Whatever erosion his voice has suffered, Lightfoot hasn’t lost his ability to write attractive, evocative and thoughtful songs.