John Hiatt

Throughout the 1990’s, Hiatt recorded a series of well-received and commercially successful albums and toured widely. Chart position by now became perhaps less relevant to Hiatt's career: he was developing a consistently supportive audience; he was nominated for Grammy awards. By the end of the decade, Hiatt was releasing albums on independent labels and achieving consistent success outside mainstream commercial structures. In this 2003 concert, Hiatt is joined by Sonny Landreth on guitar, David Ranson on bass, and Kevin Blevins on drums – the tight and virtuoso combo Hiatt dubs the Goners; these musicians had played on "Slow Turning", and "The Tiki Bar Is Open", as well as on "Beneath This Gruff Exterior", Hiatt's most recent album when this concert was recorded.

In the midst of a global pandemic, John Hiatt walked into Historic RCA Studio B to record a record. Hiatt teamed up with multi-grammy award winning artist and producer, Jerry Douglas and his band, The Jerry Douglas Band. The result of those sessions would be the album, Leftover Feelings. There's no drummer, yet these grooves are deep and true. And while the up-tempo songs are, as ever, filled with delightful internal rhyme and sly aggression, the Jerry Douglas Band's empathetic musicianship nudges Hiatt to performances that are startlingly vulnerable. In life, leftover feelings can remain unresolved. Explicated in a place of history, a place of comfort. A sacred place, if you believe the documentation of human expression to be a holy thing. Here are Hiatt and Douglas, creating love songs and road songs, sly songs and hurt songs. Their songs, and now our songs. Leftover feelings that edify and sustain.

Since John Hiatt and the major labels decided to go their separate ways around the turn of the century, his approach to record making has been direct and organic; most of his albums have sounded as if Hiatt and his sidemen put them together without a lot of fuss, placing the emphasis squarely on Hiatt's dependably strong material and tough, flinty vocal style. But 2011's Dirty Jeans and Mudslide Hymns is a more polished and ambitious affair than Hiatt has delivered in years. The sessions were produced by Kevin Shirley, who has previously worked with Aerosmith, the Black Crowes, Dream Theater, and Journey, and though his approach isn't especially intrusive, the sound of this record is certainly more luxurious, with the guitars sounding bigger, the drums booming a bit louder, and strings and keyboards decorating several tracks and the arrangements, gaining a greater sense of drama along the way.

Hiatt's fifth album and his first for Geffen, his third record label, was given a somewhat inappropriate big-gloss production (all shimmering keyboards and filtered vocals) by Tony Visconti, known for his work with David Bowie. What counts with Hiatt, though, is the songs, and this album contains "I Look for Love," as knowing a dissection of the dating scene as anyone has yet attempted.

Indiana-born John Hiatt is an unlikely but enthusiastic champion of the Midwestern work ethic - he's been making records since 1974, but 2010's The Open Road is his sixth studio effort since the dawn of the new millennium, and it sounds like the work of a man who isn't about to stop doing this work anytime soon. Like 2008's Same Old Man, The Open Road was recorded at Hiatt's home studio, and while he and his road band (Doug Lancio on guitar, Patrick O'Hearn on bass, and Kenny Blevins on drums) conjure up a lean, soulful groove on these sessions, the mood is easygoing and almost casual, which easily suits the bluesy tone of these songs.

John Hiatt's highest-charting album yet is a step down from the dizzy heights of Bring the Family and Slow Turning, as he abandons his more acid commentaries and turns in a self-deprecating set full of promises of reformation and celebrations of marriage and family life. But the observations remain acute, and Hiatt's singing (so much camouflaged in his early days) is becoming his secret weapon.