If you could read his mind, what a tale his thoughts could tell.

In almost 40 years of performing, Gordon Lightfoot has sung of heartache and romance, tradition and change, all in his inimitably resonant voice. The 63-year-old singer-songwriter shared the highlights of his works with a sold-out audience at the Maine Center for the Arts in Orono on Saturday night.

It was the stuff of “Gord’s Gold,” with a touch of silver.

The years have made Lightfoot’s baritone a little more gruff, but the spark behind his hits from the ’70s and ’80s is still there. Dressed in jeans, a white button-down shirt and cowboy boots, Lightfoot opened with “Sea of Tranquility” and chatted with the audience about Maine’s geographic relation – west of New Brunswick – to his native Canada.

His band – guitarist Terry Clements, bassist Rick Haynes, keyboardist Mike Heffernan, and drummer Barry Keane – perfectly complemented Lightfoot’s alternating acoustic guitars. They will appear on Lightfoot’s next album, slated for a 2003 release. Clearly, the man and his band are unstoppable.

After a strong opener, Lightfoot captivated the audience for about an hour, before pausing for a 20-minute break. He returned in black jeans, black patent-leather shoes and a black T-shirt for a reflective second half that lasted a little more than an hour.

His epic “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” about a ship that sank in Lake Superior, drew the crowd in, and he held them with a rendition of Bob Dylan’s “Ring Them Bells,” sung in Dylan’s typically undecipherable style.

“If You Could Read My Mind,” which may be the saddest song ever written, drew monstrous applause. But his “Canadian Railroad Trilogy,” which has all the elements of a classic story – turmoil, travel, industry and a way of life changed forever – was the true crowd favorite.

The romance of travel bound Lightfoot’s songs together like a silken cord, from the steel rails in the trilogy to a shining jet in “Early Morning Rain.”

The whole show had a romantic, nostalgic feel to it, though – “Just like a paperback novel – the kind the drugstores sell.”