Like the tragic story it’s based on, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” has a knack for getting stuck in people’s heads and haunting its listeners. That’s essentially what happened to Jeremy Messersmith last week and prompted him to craft his own unique version of the song in just five days.
“The idea has been oddly, blessedly all-consuming,” the prominent Twin Cities singer/songwriter said Monday after posting his rerecording of Gordon Lightfoot’s epic 1976 classic — just in time to make Monday’s 50th anniversary of the deadly shipwreck the song is based on.
Messersmith’s version is an ambient, lightly electronic update of the song that adds a certain cinematic and ghostly element to it. He was so quick in creating it, he has yet to get the recording up on the usual music-streaming sites and instead released all eight minutes of it to social-media channels, including TikTok and Instagram.
Fresh off his annual Halloween gig at the Fitzgerald Theater (no relation), the prominent Twin Cities singer/songwriter was back to work on his own new songs last week when local news outlets began spinning stories of the 50th anniversary. And that’s when Lightfoot’s sweeping melodies started spinning in Messersmith’s head.
“Just before bed on Tuesday night I had the idea to do a droning version of the song,” he recounted. “I quickly mapped out the tune, played with key and tempo to find a sweet spot for my voice and just wrapped it up [Sunday.]”
Even in that short timeframe, Messersmith was able to track down a real audio sample of the sunken ship’s steam whistle from the Lake Superior Maritime Visitor Center in Duluth, and he used it on the recording (pitched down an octave). “I wanted the tune to feel like the soundtrack to a short film so there’s some real-world elements,” he explained.
Do we need another version of such a landmark song? Judge for yourselves. If nothing else, the fast and compulsive way Messersmith made his version is a testament to the gold struck by Lightfoot in the original tune.
