Canter Bridge

Back in the 70s, Dan Fogelberg’s lyrics were written into the pages of college yearbooks and his emotive sound pencilled onto the hearts of the students who read them. Today he is regarded with a kind of what-were-we-thinking (?) morning-after cringe.

No reason to worry. His music is as good now as it was back then. Don’t follow the herd. Just listen up.

Fogelberg’s enigmatic lyrics are slightly less impenetrable on this album than on, say, Nether Lands. His unmistakable voice is well complemented by largely acoustic instrumentation with strands of country laced with a more straight-forward folk sound.

His theme is relationships. Over and over again he returns to the topic, the dynamics that make the splendid dance of a man and a woman both terrible and blissful, sometimes simultaneously.

Fogelberg’s lyrical touch is occasionally masterful, as in the CD’s eponymous track five:

Here Is A Poem
That My Lady Sent Down
Some Morning While
I Was Away.
Wrote On The Back Of
A Leaf That She Found
Somewhere Around Monterey.

And Here Is The Key
To A House Far Away
Where I Used To Live
As A Child.
They Tore Down The Building
When I Moved Away
And Left The Key Unreconciled.

And Down In The Canyon
The Smoke Starts To Rise.
It Rides On The Wind
Till It Reaches Your Eyes.
When Faced With The Past
The Strongest Man Cries…Cries.

And Down In The Canyon
The Smoke Starts To Rise.
It Rides On The Wind
Till It Reaches Your Eyes.
When Faced With The Past
The Strongest Man Cries…Cries.

And Here Is A Sunrise
To Set On Your Sill.
The Ghosts Of The Dawn
Moving Near.
They Pass Through Your Sorrow
And Leave You Quite Still…
Sitting Among Souvenirs.

Such wistfulness is the stock-in-trade of Fogelberg the songwriter. He seems to have written many of his pieces out somewhere in the mountains. Yet he never stops thinking of the women who have blessed the ephemeral seasons of his life.

‘The Long Way’ is splendid in its delineation of love’s confusion, the kind where one looks back and wonders what happened and whether it might have ended differently, less finally, less painfully, less separately:

She Was Lost
And I Thought I Was Found
Even So I Tried
To Bring Her In…

She Was Young
And I Had Just Begun
To Learn That Even
Losing Men Can Win.

We Went The Long Way
We Went The Long Way
We Went The Long Way…
Or Maybe Just The Wrong Way
I’ll Never Know.

Overnight
We Were Shown The Light
Neither Of Us Knew
To Look Away…
So We Burned
And Far Too Late We Learned
That Lifetimes Can’t Be Lived Out
In A Day.

We Went The Long Way
We Went The Long Way
We Went The Long Way…
Or Maybe Just The Wrong Way
I’ll Never Know.

So, Goodbye
At Least Me Made The Try
Something Can Be Said For
Love That’s Pure.
If And When
We Ever Try Again
One Thing Will Be Known To Us
For Sure…

We’ll Go The Long Way
We’ll Go The Long Way
We’ll Go The Long Way…
Or Maybe Just The Wrong Way
I’ll Never Know.

Sometimes, Fogelberg remembers so well and with such penetrating feeling that an offering of his rings as poignantly three decades after the fact as it ever did when a novelty.

This is the case with Souvenirs’ final track, a piece worthy of the finest poetry of passion:

There’s A Place In The World
For A Gambler
There’s A Burden That Only
He Can Bear
There’s A Place In The World
For A Gambler,

And He Sees
Oh, Yes He Sees…
And He Sees
Oh, Yes He Sees…

There’s A Song In The Heart
Of A Woman
That Only The Truest Of Loves
Can Release.
There’s A Song In The Heart
Of A Woman.

Set It Free
Oh, Set It Free
Set It Free
Oh, Set It Free
Set It Free
Oh, Set It Free.

There’s A Light In The Depths
Of Your Darkness
There’s A Calm At The Eye
Of Every Storm.
There’s A Light In The Depths
Of Your Darkness.

Let Is Shine
Oh, Let It Shine
Let Is Shine
Oh, Let It Shine
Let Is Shine
Oh, Let It Shine.

Let It Shine

Fogelberg did let it shine, with a transparency and blind eye to convention that has for some turned him into a symbol of cringe-worthy excess.

A pity, that. He was and is a fine musician, following as he did the faint imprint of the heart’s path.