Rhythm and wit. That’s always been the essence of John Hiatt for me, never more so than after hearing him live recently for the first time. Interviewed recently in Acoustic Guitar Magazine about his most recent album, “Same Old Man”, Hiatt compares his current recording approach to his first demo tapes:

“…this record reflects the same approach I had almost 40 years ago - two guitars, bass, drums and a vocal. There’s not much else going on. “Same Old Man”, indeed.” (Acoustic Guitar, October 2008)


- which is to say it reflects the live show, but there’s plenty else going on. Basic ingredients, to be sure, but it matters what you do with them, and this show really cooked. Hiatt is all wirey energy and intellect. He was joined by Doug Lansio on guitars (and everything else), Kevin Blevins on drums and Patrick O’Hearn on bass. The latter two are also on the album. O’Hearn in particul

I’m not finding a lot of video yet from this tour, but here’s one of the album songs done on Craig Ferguson:

Love You Again

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… and a bit more from the show I caught:

I Just Want to Go On With You

This show was the larger half of a double bill with Joan Osborne, who’s set I wrote about a few weeks ago. So it was great that she came out to join Hiatt on one number:

The Way We Make a Broken Heart

Since I think of Hiatt first as a song writer, I thought it was interesting to read how much he sees writing as hard work. From the Acoustic Guitar article again:

“The initial experience of writing a song is just working and just doing, and that’s just really not fun. The fun comes when you get a hold of something….When the muse shows up and some stuff starts to get going, then it can be positively orgasmic. You can really get up into the stratosphere with the wonderful feelings. I’ve cried after I’ve written something. I go out in the back pasture and walk around talking to some kind of god, thanking that being for letting me do this.”

And that’s also part of what makes his performances so effective. Some singers sell it by being totally lost in the song. Hiatt always give the impression, no matter how involved he is in the moment, part of him is also looking on and asking, why me? As he says at the show, “we take the music seriously, not ourselves”

And closed with one of the best songs ever written:

Have a Little Faith in Me

(download show (flac files))
(buy album)

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