Interview parts
(transcribed by John de Vet)
1 - Denberg
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John Hiatt may not be a household name in every home, but his songs, songs like Have A Little Faith In Me, Riding With The King, and Thing Called Love are part of the fabric of American musical life. And artists ranging from Bob Dylan and Iggy Pop, from Willy Nelson to Bonnie Rait, have performed John Hiatt's work. And now Mr. Hiatt offers up his latest collection The Tiki Bar Is Open. Eleven electric rock songs that reunite him with his band The Goners. I'm Jody Denberg, and we'll go Inside the Tiki Bar with John Hiatt in a moment.
3a - Denberg
- The time has come, The Tiki Bar Is Open, as the title of John Hiatt's new album tells us.
John, your last album was Crossing Muddy Waters. That was an acoustic record. The new album begins with some strumming, but then all hell breaks lose. You start rocking.
What made you plug back in and reunite with the Goners?
- Hiatt
- Well I got back together with those guys, the summer of 99. And I called Sonny on a whimp. And I said, you kown, the century is coming to a close here buddy. Should we give it another go? Either knock it on the head or play some more.
And they were all up for it, so we got together, did a couple of shows. You know it's like getting back on a bicycle, you know. It's so wonderful, the feeling. And that summer we started recording this burger.
- Denberg
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But you really only made one album with The Goners, Slow Turning.
And yet, they've kind of become mythical in your discography if you will. Tell me who The Goners are and what makes this band different from other bands you've played with like The Nashville Queens?
- Hiatt
- The Goners are Kenny Blevins on the drum kit, Dave Ranson on bass, and Sonny Landreth on slide guitar and singing. It's one of those magic quartets, the four of us together make a certain kind of racket that you can't get anywhere else.
3b - Denberg
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I wanna go inside the Tiki Bar and listen to the first single, which is called My Old Friend. Great rock and roll references in this song, since you had that line about "yellin' to the kids in the backseat bangin' like Charlie Watts". When I heard the song, I thought that maybe reuniting with an old friend reminded you that you like to see the world through music coloured glasses, is that?
- Hiatt
- Well that was sorta the idea. I think it had a lot to do with my kids, they're getting in their teenage years now. And I've watched them kind of progress through music much the way I did. You know, they started out with whatever was on the radio. Then they discovered rock-n-roll. And my daughter Lilly, who's seventeen, I mean, she listens to everybody from Pearl Jam to Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and the blues a little bit. I just see how important music is to them and it just kind of reminds me of how ... , you know, there's always been a soundtrack running to my life.
You know, so I'm always running into these people, you know, from the old days, and inevitably these women, even though they're into their fourties now, they look fabulous, or else they are very successful, or married well, or whatever. And I just feel like the same old [schmole?], so it's a little about that too, I guess.
5a - Denberg
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That was My Old Friend. It's the first single from John Hiatt's new disc The Tiki Bar Is Open. References to Jethro Tull and Neil Young and the song friendship theme, My Old Friend is gonna strike a chord with a lot of people. When you wrote your most popular songs, did you have an inkling at the time that they were the ones who would have staying power?
- Hiatt
- Not at all. I mean, when I'm writing it's all about the work, you know. The results are never even ... I'm clueless as to what is even gonna happen to these things. I get so involved in writing these songs, and then making the records, that I don't really ... You know it's great when they connect. It's great when the audience says, man I love that song. Or this song means so much to me and my wife. You know, that's the pay-off. But I think if you start thinking about that, you know, how somebody is gonna take something. It's kinda like when you're in the studio and you start thinking about what you're playing, the next thing you know you're not really making music, you're showing off.
5b - Denberg
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What about when Riding With The King, which is almost about 20 years old, suddenly became the title track to a double platinum collaboration between Eric Clapton and B.B. King. Did it make you feel that songs have a life of their own?
- Hiatt
- Getting that song recorded after all those years, I just kept remembering what my mom said "hang in there, don't ever give up". You know, all the old cliches. Because it's true, I mean, that's a great example for any kids out there writing songs or struggling with your music, hand in their man. It'll come to light, it pays off if you just put the effort in. That was a real thrill to get that thing recorded.
I got a platinum award for that record. I've gotten a few, I've got one from Bonnie Rait and a couple of other people. And I've never put one up on a wall anywhere, but this one I put up in my race shop. I was pretty proud.
5c - Denberg
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Isn't it odd that there are one hundred versions of your various songs, and yet you said you don't sit down and write for other people.
- Hiatt
- I've tried to write for other people, but the results have been pretty bad, most of the time.
Yeah, I just write you know. I think that's what other artists connect with. They know they're just getting a John Hiatt song and whatever my particular skew is, you know, musically or my slant lyrically.
- Denberg
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Yeah cause I've wondered what makes them feel they can get inside of your songs. Maybe because they're universal but they're personal at the same time.
- Hiatt
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Well I think they're simple.
You know, I've always tried to be simple.
But I'm always looking for that little sick twist, you know.
I mean, that's sorta what appeals to me.
So I'm always looking for a little, just a little twisted way of saying the same old thing, really
- Denberg
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There's a sonically smashing number that opens The Tiki Bar, Everybody Went Low.
Now that phrase must have some twist to you, because I don't know what in the heck you're talking about.
- Hiatt
- I just remember when I was a kid, and we'd sit around and talking about life, you know.
There was a phenomenon that I started to notice, that if you got a certain group of people together, they can talk each other into being bombed out, you know what I mean.
And so, I was kinda talking about that I guess.
Just that phenomenon. And then by the end of the song, lyrically the girls pulled through and the guy wants to jump in the same life boat she's in, and get the heck out of there, you know, tired of being bombed out.
7a - Denberg
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Everybody Went Low begins The Tiki Bar Is Open.
It's John Hiatt's new release, and we are Inside The Tiki Bar with the man himself in his adopted home town of Nashville.
And John, you actually live outside of Nashville.
Does that rural existence smack of where you grew up in Indiana?
- Hiatt
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You know it does and I'm a city kid.
And I was born and raised in Indianapolis.
But when I was a kid my granddaddy had a little single-block cabin up on a lake at about 70 miles north of Indianapolis, and we went there every summer when I was a kid.
My daddy would stay in town and work all summer and he'd send mom and the seven kids up to the cabin. Man I just loved it up there. And it was just funky, I mean, it was single-block, one room and pretty rugged, but I just loved it.
So I've always sorta been drawn to the woods and greenery.
I guess that's what drew me to Tennessee so many years ago.
- Denberg
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Still you're close enough to be here in Nashville on a regular basis.
What does it mean to you as a musician to be in Nashville?
- Hiatt
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I just fell in love with this town first time I slept in a park here when I was 18. The first couple of nights I spend in Nashville I slept in Centennial Park under a park bench.
Came into town with a buddy of mine, and I was kinda get a some-kinda-something goin musically, you know.
It just had a great feel and it still does even as much as the town has grown, yu know in the last thirty years.
- Denberg
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What does it mean to you to be so close to Nashville and the "music business"?
- Hiatt
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I'd be honest with you, I don't get too involved in the business here, you know. I just like it more just for the feel of the place.
And there's always been a music scene, a musical subculture in Nashville. And it's still here, you know. There's all these great players, you know, kind of the underbelly. They're not the top-pay-line session guys, making whatever that is they're making on music [row?] these days. And there's a scene, there has always been a scene within a scene here, and I think it's just a great place.
- Denberg
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When you came here, you were sleeping in the park, like you said, and 18 years old. I think we're talking about 1970.
- Hiatt
- 71, yeah
- Denberg
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Did you ever think you were gonna be a lifer?
- Hiatt
- A music lifer? I must have, because I picked up a guitar when I was eleven, and then that's all she rode.
Ever since then it's been the thing I do.
So I think I had a sense I was in for the long haul even back then.
- Denberg
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And your first job you were working for a music company.
What was your first hit song?
- Hiatt
- Well the first thing that made any noise, well the first cut, which was a big thing for me, wasn't a hit, but Tracy Nelson did a song of mine called Thinkin' Of You.
And that was a song I wrote the year I moved down here, so when I was seventeen. And that was exciting, just getting a song that you wrote, getting the record, taking it home, putting it on. Oh my god, that's my song. The first success was a song called Sure As I'm Sitting Here, which I had recorded on my forst album on Epic. Three Dog Night appearently heard it and cut it and had like a top-15 hit.
7b - Denberg
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We're gonna here a song in a moment from Tiki Bar, I Know A Place.
This song reminds me of when I see you on stage and John Hiatt is in total abandon, your face and body are getting twisted up.
God John you get the blues in a real way. Are you sure you're not an old blues guy from Chicago in the body of a singer/songwriter?
- Hiatt
- Well I've always connected to that music. I've never thought you'd have to be a certain colour or from a certain place or even to be a certain style of music to understand the blues. I think it's pretty universal.
But I really connect with that particular structure, that music structure, three chords and something to get off your chest, you know, or off your mind, or out from under. You know, someone must've been breaking your heart, and that whole, that [cathoradic?] kind of quality that singing the blues has, I subscribe to that whole-hearted.
9a - Denberg
- The Tiki Bar Is Open is John Hiatt's latest offering to our thirsty years. And we're drinking up inside the tiki bar with John. After hearing I Know A Place I now know why you are a part of B.B. King's blues festival, this year. Cause I was thinking at first that, okay, B.B. King, Buddy Guy, John Hiatt seemed like an odd pairing.
- Hiatt
- I just accepted the invitation, because I'm gonna be the youngest guy on the tour. [laughs] And that's unusual.
- Denberg
- Would you play a different set on this tour than you would ordinarilly might?
- Hiatt
- No, I don't think so. I mean, we've only got about an hour, I think, so it's gonna be compact. You know, I won't have to go deep in my catalogue just to find a bunch of stuff that certainly draws from the blues, if not is the blues outright. So I see the connection personally.
- Denberg
- So, who gets to sing Riding With The King?
- Hiatt
- My dream, of course, would be that we get to sing it with BB. Eh, Buddy, BB and myself. Who know what's gonna happen, but that's my fantasy.
- Denberg
- The song I Know I Place sounds like it's recorded live. How was Tiki Bar produced, spontaneously, and was it kind of a live deal for a lot of it?
- Hiatt
- You know it was very much live, and I've made, what is this, my 18th record, and I've kind of established that as sort of my approach. You know, I'd like to go in and just capture a moment. I Know A Place was a hundred percent live, and it sounds like a jam. And all my little asides in there, like 'alright Sonny, tell 'm about him', that's what I do on stage if I wanted to take a solo. Adn 'bringing it down' with Kenneth later on. I mean, Jay Joyce, who produced it, great guy and a great musician, he's from Cleveland, so we sort of connect on that mid-west knocklehead level. And he would set the stage typically, like either come up with some goofy damn loop, and what is this put you, you know, and then we played it out and something would come out. I know the first song on the record, we recorded it faster than you hear it and in a different key, and we slowed the tape down, and it's still pretty fast. Just a couple of little tweaks like that.
9b - Denberg
- Your last album, Crossing Muddy Waters, nominated for a Grammy for best contemporary folk album, pretty simple, productionwise. How do you decide whether one of your songs is gonna get an acoustic setting or an electric setting?
- Hiatt
- You know, with that record we set up the project. It was really me and Ken Blevins and my manager sitting around going, well what kind of record shall we make, hey how about an acoustic record. I'd never really done that, and I like the idea of making it with no drums, becuase I'd actually made shows with Davey Faragher and dave Immerglück, the two guys who made the record with me. We'd actually played as a trio, so it was an opportunity to catch that band on tape lie that, in that style.
- Denberg
- The next song I wanted to play from Tiki Bar sounded to me like it could have actually been on Crossing Muddy Waters if you gave it a different reading, All The Lilacs In Ohio.
- Hiatt
- Yeah, a lot of these things are interchangable, yeah it could have just as easily been a folk song.
11a - Denberg
- We are Inside The Tiki Bar with John Hiatt and the song you've just heard All The Lilacs In Ohio. It's from a brand new album called The Tiki Bar Is Open. John, I couldn't tell if that song was a character study or a first-person remembrance.
Is it okay with you if the listener doesn't get the song right away?
- Hiatt
- Oh sure, you know, it's fiction, this stuff. I like the idea that, I think
 Flannery O'Connor, the great author said that the idea behind fiction is to open up the possibilities. It's not to pinpoint anything, it's to open up all kinds of possibilities. So yeah, it can mean different things to diferent people. I actually swiped the title from one of my favourite movies, Lost Weekend. I don't know who the director was [Billy Wilder], but Ray Milland was in it. He was trying to write the great book, which I also mention in the song. The great love story, and his character, he was a drunk and a writer - what an odd combination. The movie was about his struggles with the bottle and his muse. But at one point he's talking to Joe the bartender, and he says "you know Joe, you're trying to write about love and it's so hard because you gotta get the details right. Like she's gonna meet you for lunch one day and she can't make it, but she sends you a note for grad and it smells like all the lilacs in Ohio."
- Denberg
- No wait a minute. You said this stuff is fiction, cause I thought that every word in every John Hiatt song was straight from you man?
- Hiatt
- No, I'm in there, my friends are in there. Be careful Joe, you might be in there. It's like I collect shrapnol. I'm taking hits, being alive, you know, as we all do. And it seems like when you write these songs, the music kind of shakes loose one or more pieces of that shrapnol. And then you have a story all of a sudden.
- Denberg
- Well, speaking about the music, we have to file All The Lilacs In Ohio, at least in this rendition under Punk-Blue Grass.
- Hiatt
- Ha ha, Swamp Class is what we called it.
- Denberg
- And Sonny Landreth is playing some sort of Chinese guitar.
- Hiatt
- Is that wacked or what? Yeah, he went off man. He was playing my Telecaster on that song. If you listen, it's really like that accordeon music from that Cajun stuff, just on hyper-speed and played on electric guitar.
- Denberg
- It's frantic. And so I'm feeling you like weren't creatively stifled by the corporate music bullies.
- Hiatt
- There weren't any of them guys around.
- Denberg
- I mean you outlived at least a couple of your former labels.
- Hiatt
- Yeah, there's more than one that's going down the tubes since I've been around. But they always seem to surface with another company.
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11b 3:03 - Denberg
- But now, you're with the independent label Vanguard.
- Hiatt
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13a - Denberg
- How did you feel being on the other side of the microphone when hosting the PBS TV show Sessions at West 54th?
- Hiatt
13b - Denberg
- What were the experiences that lead you to writing The Tiki Bar Is Open?
- Hiatt
16 - Denberg
- Jody Outro: The Tiki Bar Is Closed!
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Inside The Tiki Bar - promo cd
