Mike Fornes: The Gordon Lightfoot Tribute*

Black Box Theatre

Saturday November 1st, 2025
7:00 PM

Tickets- $25 in advance, $30 at the door

The links between Canadian-born singer Gordon Lightfoot and Michigan are many. Mackinaw City’s Mike Fornes plays the role of the Canadian minstrel in a Michigan way, a sincere attempt to portray the troubadour as if you are seeing Lightfoot live in concert. A member of the Historical Society of Michigan and the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society, Fornes combines storytelling with Lightfoot’s hit songs to bring the music, poetry and culture of the folk-icon to Great Lakes audiences.
Lightfoot wrote “The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald,” the epic story of the 1975 Lake Superior shipwreck tragedy that claimed 29 lives. The ship’s bell is reverently displayed at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point, Michigan. Fornes performs annually at the annual bell-tolling ceremony for Fitzgerald’s lost souls. His relationships with the crew’s surviving family members, and Lightfoot himself, generate many first-hand accounts of the tragedy and the writing of the iconic song.

*Beer and wine will be available for patrons 21 years and above.