John Hiatt can sum up his strengths in just five words, as befits a long-celebrated songwriter whose credits include such memorably titled gems as “She Loves The Jerk,” “Sure Pinocchio” and “My Edge of the Razor.”
“Three chords and an attitude,” Hiatt said, playing off Nashville music legend Harlan Howard’s classic definition of country music as “three chords and the truth.”
Happily, Hiatt’s songs can also be tender or sultry, as evidenced by “The Way We Make a Broken Heart” and “Thing Called Love,” which became major hits for — respectively — Rosanne Cash and Bonnie Raitt.
His songs can be hopeful, as evidenced by “Have a Little Faith in Me,” which was recorded by everyone from Joe Cocker to Mandy Moore and former San Diego troubadour Jewel.
And his songs can be celebratory (“Riding with the King,” a joint hit for B.B. King and Eric Clapton), rapturous (“Something Wild,” memorably covered by Iggy Pop), or wrenchingly poignant (“Across the Borderline,” co-written with Ry Cooder and Jim Dickinson, and recorded by Cooder, Willie Nelson and Freddy Fender, among others).
That the musical and emotional range of Hiatt’s songs exceeds three chords and attitude is undeniable.
This point is further underscored by “Leftover Feelings,” his fetching, bluegrass and country-flavored new album with the Jerry Douglas Band. So is the fact that Hiatt’s range reflects a life marked by tumult, tragedy and a slow but steady climb to redemption.
Transcendent music
Hiatt was only 11 years when his older brother died, a tragedy he explores on his mournful new song, “Light of the Burning Sun.”
His father died when he was 13. Twenty years later, Hiatt’s first wife committed suicide, making him a single dad to their then-1-year-old daughter, Lily.
It was then that Hiatt kicked his debilitating drug and alcohol habits, which had sent him into a downward spiral for much of the previous decade.
“I’ve operated from a limited palate, intentionally,” said Hiatt. “So, it’s three chords and a story — and how many stories can I tell within that very limited palate.”
He let out a knowing chuckle.
“I’m probably lazy, too,” Hiatt, 69, said, speaking from a tour stop last month in Pennsylvania. “I probably could have learned a lot more on guitar. It always goes back to songwriting. I can get a hell of a racket going, but it’s pretty basic. I think what I play is distinguishable; I have ‘a thing.’ But I ascribe to what my father once said to me: ‘When you’re getting people to work with, make sure you get people who are better than you are.’ ”
It’s an approach that has paid artistic dividends for Hiatt, whose 1985 album, “Bring the Family,” saw him heading a band that featured guitar great Ry Cooder, drum legend Jim Keltner and bassist Nick Lowe. The four of them made a standout album in 1992 under the band name Little Village, which Hiatt hopes will be reuniting soon for a second go-around.
His 1979 band featured future Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers’ bassist Howie Epstein, while his late 1980s band, The Goners, served as a launching pad for slide guitar ace Sonny Landreth.
Hiatt’s latest collaborators, the award-winning Jerry Douglas Band, set the bar even higher.
“Jerry and his band are pretty sophisticated players, and I’m a decidedly primitive player,” Hiatt said. “With these guys, there’s a lot of bopping and weaving, which makes for a fascinating bit of music. So, I’m sure that — vocally — I’m just another one of the dancers.
“I look at Jerry and his band like having duet partners. Christian (Sedelmyer) does amazing things on fiddle and Mike (Seal) on guitar is just incredible. And Jerry, as James Taylor once called him, is the ‘Muhammad Ali of the dobro.’ I met Jerry in 1989 when we both played on The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s ‘Will the Circle Be Unbroken: Volume Two’ album. We crossed paths after that, but we were kind of in two musical worlds.”
In fact, it’s difficult to think of any musical world in which dobro and lap-pedal steel guitar master Douglas does not sound right at home.
A 14-time Grammy Award-winner, Douglas has performed on more than 1,500 albums. His musical partners have ranged from Alison Krauss, Phish and The Chieftains to classical piano superstar Lang Lang, Elvis Costello and India’s Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, who performs on a 19-stringed guitar.
“Every few years I sit down with my manager, Ken Levitan, to talk about ideas for my next album,” Hiatt said. “Ken asked me if I’d thought about recording with Jerry Douglas, and I thought: ‘What a great idea.’ I called Jerry and he was really game to do it.”
The resulting album, the 11-song “Leftover Feelings,” offers an understated trove of new and recent songs. It also features a new, more delicate version of “All the Lilacs in Ohio,” which Hiatt wrote and first recorded for his 2001 album, “The Tiki Bar is Open.”
“Lilacs” is a stirring love song that sounds at least partly autobiographical but isn’t. Hiatt cites the classic 1945 Billy Wilder film, “Lost Weekend,” as its inspiration.
“The film tells the story of a drunken writer, so it resonated with me,” Hiatt said. “Ray Milland plays a drunk guy named Don Birnam, who can’t stop talking about love being the hardest thing to write about, because you have to capture the way sunlight plays off a metal garden fence, or the way you keep a letter (a woman) wrote on office stationary, because it ‘smells like all the lilacs in Ohio.’
“That line struck me and I stole it. I’m kind of recreating the story from the film. For me as a songwriter, inspiration comes from so many places — a movie, something you read in a newspaper article, an interesting term you heard.
“The song ‘Keen Rambler’ on the new album was inspired by this guy in the U.K. He described his friend who likes to walk all the time — which I also do — as a ‘keen rambler.’ I just came back from a walk this afternoon with two lines I may use in a song: I like it when you go away/ I like it when you come back home.
A song born of abuse and pain
John Hiatt’s song, “Hurt My Baby,” was featured on his 2008 album, “Same Old Man” and paints a grim yet tender portrait. Its empathetic lyrics ring much more true than listeners might expect from a man writing about an abused woman, as demonstrated by such lines as:
She’s developed all these nervous ticks, to prove she’s still alive/ Does 90 down to 0 (and) back in overdrive/ Her sleep is just a nightmare state, she really gets no rest/ Till someone has come forward, till one of us confess
Somebody hurt my baby/ Somebody hurt my girl
Somebody hurt my baby/ Somebody hurt somebody in this mean old world
Asked to comment on “Hurt My Baby” and its inspiration, Hiatt offered a startlingly candid response.
“I haven’t played that song in so long,” he said. “But there were seven kids in our family and I was the last boy, at home with my three sisters. My father was gone and I’d like to think that was a period for me of development and empathy for the female being.
“And, also, I was abused as a kid — sexually abused — by an older brother. There were two predators in my family and my sisters were abused by them, and my brother as well. So, all that, together, would have made it possible for me to write that song.”
