Considering that artists as diverse as Bob Dylan , Iggy Pop, Emmylou Harris, Bonnie Raitt and even Jewel have all sung John Hiatt 's songs (and praises) at one time or another, John Hiatt is no stranger to high-profile cover requests. But the personal call from the guitarist some still call "God" was another matter entirely. "When I got the call, I thought it was a joke," Hiatt laughs when asked about the fateful call from Eric Clapton in regards to Hiatt's song "Riding with the King." Clapton wanted to cut the song for his duet album with blues legend B.B. King, but he asked Hiatt to tweak the lyrics a bit so there would be no confusion as to whom the "King" in question was. "It was really nice of him," commends Hiatt. "He was real intent on having my input. It took five minutes -- I just changed the bridge."
The revamped version of the song ended up being the title track and lead single to the Clapton/King album, which debuted at No. 3 -- the highest album chart ranking of King's legendary career. Hiatt's "Thing Called Love" became similarly linked with Bonnie Raitt's triumphant comeback when she recorded it on her Grammy-winning Nick of Time album eleven years ago. But finally Hiatt can boast about his own sales record; Crossing Muddy Waters, Hiatt's first acoustic album in his twenty-five-year career, debuted on Billboard's Top Internet Album sales at number five, beating out new releases from David Bowie and Aaron Carter . It also came in at No. 3 on the blues chart, two spots down from Riding with the King.
Recorded in just four days, Crossing Muddy Waters has a spontaneous, Sunday session on the back porch feel, and Hiatt has never sounded better or more relaxed. Without a drummer, his gravelly voice is allowed room to breathe and seep into previously unexplored corners. Throw in a recent successful season hosting Sessions at West 54th (he says the show wants him back) and a new tribute album, Rolling Into Memphis: The Songs of John Hiatt, and it becomes clear that Hiatt's not just riding with the king these days - he's getting the regal respect that he deserves.
A couple of years ago, you announced plans to record a new album with your old band the Goners. What happened to that?
We'd been making a rock record with the Goners with Capitol, and it became apparent that the further along we got with the record, that they were not nearly as enthusiastic about what we were doing as we were. So my manager (Ken Levitan) and I said, you know, I don't think this is the right label for us! It took about three months of negotiating, but we own that record. We're going to finish it in January. Once we became free agents, Emusic.com said "we'd love to put something out just over the Internet," and then Vanguard got involved and said we could put out the hardware version in stores.
So whose idea was it to do an acoustic album first?
Since we could do whatever we wanted, it was the first thing that came to mind. It's not exactly on the tip of a major label's tongue when you're talking about your next album. You know, "Hey! Why don't you make a folk record! They're selling like hotcakes!" So it wasn't exactly encouraged.
All the same, it's kind of hard to believe it took you so long to do one.
Yeah, people would say, "It seems like you would have done one along the way!" I'm just not very bright. It was sort of like most good things in my quirky little career over the years; it was just an accident that turned out for the better.
A lot of the album is about break-ups. Surely they're not all autobiographical . . .
It's not true at all! I'm happily married. I was wondering about that, why I was writing all this stuff. I'm thinking of a song, like "What Do We Do Now," and my inspiration for that was thinking back to when we were five years married and all of the sudden, we hit a wall, and neither one of us could articulate what was wrong. But, all of the sudden, seemingly out of the blue, the big "D" was actually uttered, which scared us both to death. And we worked our way through it and lived to tell the tale. That's the kind of stuff you can draw from the longer you stay married. It's a good thing.
"Take It Down" starts off as a bittersweet love song, but then, at the end, you talk about South Carolina, and it takes on the quality of a subtle protest song about the Confederate flag.
I don't know how it happened. I was writing this song about a relationship falling apart, and all the sudden, it kind of jumped over to a whole other issue. I thought that at the end of the day, taking the smaller issue of things falling apart, and then all of the sudden jumping into a larger issue was kind of OK. It's a divisive thing in my humble estimation, taking nothing away from tradition and history of the Confederate States. Robert E. Lee himself said, "The war is over; it's time to put down the things of war." And that's a thing of war in my opinion. Why would you fly something that a large part of the population finds offensive? They've since taken it down from the South Carolina courthouse, but they've moved it to a less conspicuous place. Progress not perfection!
You're an Indianapolis native, but you drove South a long time ago and stayed there. Do you feel Southernized?
Yeah, it's home. It felt like home the first time I got down there. I [originally] stayed in Nashville for about five years, and although I was writing for a publishing company, I wasn't writing anything that they could get recorded. But at the same time, there was a folk-rock music club called the Exit Inn where we all played in those days. People like Guy Clark, Jimmy Buffett , Townes Van Zandt, John Prine and Kris Kristofferson -- he'd already made it and was a big star, but he'd still come around. It was a pretty cool scene. I was definitely living the dream life, as far as I was concerned. I made a couple of records during that time for Epic, and things sort of fell through around '75. But I met a booking agent through a small agency in Wisconsin, of all places. He said, "Hey I can get you gigs around the country." So, for the next two years, that's what I did. I toured around solo and played a lot of college gigs and little folk clubs. It was brutal. Character building though!
How exactly did it change you?
I used to be very shy, and I was scared to perform. I used to sit down when I sang, and I couldn't look at the audience. It was a gig with George Thorogood and his Delaware Destroyers that got me going. We were both on this bill at a folk club at the Oxford hotel in Denver. I'd been doing gigs out there and had kind of built up a little thing. Nobody had ever heard of George Thorogood, so he was opening the show. He started the show sitting down, knowing that I'd have to follow him. He didn't want to get too raucous or rowdy, but about half way through the first song, I don't know if it was part of the show, or if he just couldn't stand it anymore, because he kicked the chair out from under him, and stood up and just burned for the next hour! So in between his set and mine, I'm going, "How am I going to follow this guy?" I determined that if I had a chance in hell, I'd better stand up. I think I had to borrow a strap from him because I didn't have one. So that was the first time I ever stood up for a performance. It was a big deal and a big step for me, and I have always been thankful to George for that.
MARIAN MONTGOMERY
(October 14, 2000)