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Songwriter, Recording Artist and Performer John Hiatt

Oct 30, 2013 03:33PM ● By Brian O
Story by Phil Reser

Over the past three decades, John Hiatt\ has emerged as one of America\u2019s most inventive songwriters, covering\ rock, blues, acoustic, folk and new wave. 

With 11 Grammy\ nominations and 24 albums to his name, he was inducted into the Nashville\ Songwriters\u2019 Hall of Fame in 2008.

In the late 1980s, both\ Jeff Healey (\u201cAngel Eyes\u201d) and Bonnie Raitt (\u201cThing Called\ Love\u201d) hit platinum with Hiatt-penned tunes, and more recently, Eric\ Clapton and B.B. King chose Hiatt\u2019s \u201cRiding with the King\u201d\ as the title track for their Grammy-winning CD.

Born and raised in Indiana,\ Hiatt turned to music at a young age. 

\u201cI first\ picked up a guitar at age 11, and within 6 months, I started a band with two\ other kids in my school,\u201d he says. \u201cI started to write songs right\ away. While my buddies were up learning Jimi Hendrix solos, I was sitting\ up in my room writing songs. My early writer influences were pretty much song\ writers. Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen were my two favorites initially. I locked\ myself in my room for a year and listened to \u2018Visions of Johanna\u2019\ over and over. Mississippi John Hurt was a big influence on me, that country\ blues thing and there was TajMahal. Through the English groups, oddly enough,\ such as the Yardbirds, I started to get into more electric blues, Muddy Waters,\ the Chicago stuff. I also loved Mitch Ryder and the pop rock records of the\ day.\u201d

At age 18, Hiatt packed up his Corvair and\ drove south to Music City. He was hired by a publishing company as a songwriter\ for $25 a week and wrote 250 songs over the next five years.

\u201cIf I\u2019d been a country songwriter, I would have learned a\ lot more, and quicker, but I was kind of a round peg in a square hole. But\ I learned a lot, and I fell in love with Nashville pretty much immediately.\ It was a whole other world. It was only 300 miles south of Indianapolis, but\ culturally it was just completely different.\u201d

His\ first successful composition was \u201cSure As I\u2019m Sitting Here,\u201d\ which Three Dog Night took to the Top 20 in 1973. 

Over\ the course of the next decade, Hiatt experimented with a number of styles,\ from folk to country to New Wave rock. 

About\ his writing, he says, \u201cThe music dictates the melody and the melody will\ hopefully pry something loose that resembles a lyric. Whatever\u2019s sort\ of floating around in my head tends to get shaken loose. Sometimes there\u2019s shards of about 20 different stories that you kind of put together. And because\ I\u2019m a songwriter, rather than a hotshot lead guitar player, I\u2019ll\ get a chord structure or a little riff or something and then I\u2019ll start\ singing something to it.\u201d

The biggest turning\ point in his career came in 1987, when he went into the studio for only four\ days with a group that consisted of Ry Cooder on guitar, Jim Keltner on drums\ and Nick Lowe on bass. The sound was a stripped-down and seamless blend of\ country, folk, blues and rock. The resulting album, \u201cBring the Family,\u201d\ has since been hailed as a roots-music classic. It includes some of Hiatt\u2019s most enduring songs, including the piano-driven ballad \u201cHave a Little\ Faith\u201d and the galloping \u201cMemphis in the Meantime.\u201d His next\ album, \u201cSlow Turning,\u201d was almost as well-received.  

Since then, he has ventured into bluegrass and pure blues, and has\ contributed songs to tribute albums to Muddy Waters and Mississippi John Hurt.

At the same time, more musicians began coming after Hiatt\u2019s\ extensive song catalog. 

In concert, Bruce Springsteen\ occasionally plays \u201cAcross the Borderline,\u201d which Hiatt had written\ for the 1981 movie \u201cThe Border.\u201d And, Dylan covered his \u201cThe\ Usual\u201d on the soundtrack of the movie \u201cHearts of Fire.\u201d

Last year\u2019s release of his CD, \u201cMystic Pinball,\u201d marked\ his fourth CD in four years.

After 40 years, Hiatt\ seems to be aging like a proverbial wine, getting better as time passes.

\u201cI still love playing so much,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s like the three legs of a stool for me: songwriting, recording and performing.\ I will do this as long as I\u2019m able to.\u201d \u2022


An Acoustic Evening with John Hiatt and Lyle Lovett at Laxson Auditorium\  

November 14 

www.chicoperformances.com