{"id":4334,"date":"2011-11-13T23:19:09","date_gmt":"2011-11-14T06:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=4334"},"modified":"2011-11-13T23:19:09","modified_gmt":"2011-11-14T06:19:09","slug":"john-hiatt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2011\/11\/john-hiatt\/","title":{"rendered":"JOHN HIATT"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>JOHN HIATT<\/h2>\n

Have a little faith in him\u2014this prolific elder statesman is still cranking it up<\/h2>\n

John Hiatt just can\u2019t understand the way some acts make albums. \u201cYou get a group like U2, who rent a place in Berlin for 10 grand a week,\u201d he says. \u201cYou can\u2019t write songs somewhere else? You\u2019re gonna get the flavor of Berlin? What is that<\/em>?\u201d By contrast, the veteran singer-songwriter chose to record his new Dirty Jeans and Mudslide Hymns<\/em> at Ben Folds\u2019 studio in Hiatt\u2019s home base of Nashville. With the help of his trusted road band, Hiatt laid down 19 songs in 10 days\u201411 of which appear on the completed album.<\/p>\n

Hiatt credits producer Kevin Shirley with making the process quick and relatively painless. \u201cWe work well together,\u201d he says. \u201cHe\u2019s a great facilitator. To me the first order of business to make music is to get your instrument out of the way\u2014that\u2019s what Miles Davis said. So many musicians get hung up on their instrument, and so many producers get hung up in the gear. He doesn\u2019t. He\u2019s not precious about it. He works so seamlessly that it\u2019s not in the way.\u201d<\/p>\n

At 59, with 20 albums in 37 years to his credit, Hiatt says that songwriting comes easily to him. \u201cI pick up the guitar\u00a0pretty much every day,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s just a habit that I\u2019ve had since I was 11. While my buddies were all learning Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton licks, I was writing songs. That\u2019s what I do and it\u2019s what\u00a0I\u2019ve always done, since I knew how to\u00a0play two chords.\u201d His approach to record-making is just as straightforward.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I have 10 or more good songs, I\u00a0record them,\u201d he says. \u201cBut I\u2019ve been cranking it up because I\u2019m getting old. I\u00a0know I\u2019ve got fewer years left than\u00a0I\u2019ve already lived.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hiatt was more than a decade into his career when he finally attracted a sizable audience with 1987\u2019s Bring the Family<\/em>, which included much-covered songs like \u201cHave a Little Faith in Me.\u201d He remains proud of his earlier music, yet rarely listens to his old records unless he\u2019s prepping for a tour. \u201cI love that stuff and I love playing it,\u201d he says. \u201cI have a pretty fair back catalog, so I can afford to do different things. But I always want to play the new stuff. For me it\u2019s important. I\u2019m foolish enough to think my best work is\u00a0in front of me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Jeff Tamarkin<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JOHN HIATT Have a little faith in him\u2014this prolific elder statesman is still cranking it up John Hiatt just can\u2019t understand the way some acts make albums. \u201cYou get a group like U2, who rent a place in Berlin for 10 grand a week,\u201d he says. \u201cYou can\u2019t write songs somewhere else? You\u2019re gonna get […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[297,2823,2615,10156],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4334"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4334"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4336,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4334\/revisions\/4336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}