THE DYNAMIC
Music legends John Hiatt and Jerry Douglas have combined talents for the first time on the new album, Leftover Feelings.
DUO! I
t’s a collaboration that seems so natural and logical it is surprising it has not happened previously. One legendary songwriter and one legendary musician, both residents of Nashville and living within walking distance of each other. Though they first met more than 20 years ago it took a manager’s suggestion for John Hiatt and Jerry Douglas to come together for an album. The resultant 11-song set, Leftover Feelings, produced by Douglas and recorded at Historic RCA Studio B in Nashville, is a roots music feast with Hiatt’s entrancing writing and Douglas’s equally brilliant Dobro playing in front of his own band. With more than 20 albums under his belt John Hiatt has every right to be considered an American song writing treasure. His songs have been recorded by an incredible array of other legends including Bonnie Raitt, Emmylou Harris, Aaron Neville, Linda Rondstadt, Buddy Guy and many more. Of course, not only did Eric Clapton and BB King record Hiatt’s ‘Riding With The King’ they named an album after it! Hiatt’s own recordings have been acclaimed and had occasional brushes with success. It took him until his eighth album, the classic Bring The Family in 1987 (with Ry Cooder, Jim Keltner and Nick Lowe) to reach the Billboard Top 200 album chart and, while its follow-up Slow Turning in 1988 cracked the top 100 in Australia, Hiatt achieved much more chart success with other people recording songs from the album! While most of his albums have nudged the upper reaches of the charts that is hardly the measure of a musician who has produced consistently good albums populated by often great songs. His 2018 studio album The Eclipse Sessions, the occasion for our last interview and this latest album proves that, as a songwriter, Hiatt remains a master craftsman.
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Brian Wise caught up with both music icons to talk about their collaboration.
Jerry Douglas, as a 14-time Grammy winner, has established his legend in another area: his playing, especially on the Dobro, for which he has his own signature model created by Beard Guitars. Not only has Douglas played on more than 1600 album sessions he has spent years recording and touring with Allison Krauss and Union Station. He has also fronted his own band and the Earls of Leicester, with whom I saw him give an absolutely stunning display of his prowess at the Country Music Hall of Fame during Nashville’s Americana Festival in 2019. “We met during the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band sessions for Will the Circle Be Unbroken Part Two, and I’m guessing it was about ‘88 or ‘89, somewhere in there,” recalls Hiatt of his first encounter with Jerry Douglas. “I was singing a song I wrote. It was a duet with the Roseanne Cash and Jerry was in the house band that was playing on all the recordings.” “The next time was, I saw him at the Newport Folk Festival right after he’d finished the Little Village tour,” recalls Douglas, “and, we sat down and just sat down on a picnic table backstage and talked for about an hour. That was the longest we’d ever spoken until this project was mentioned. It turned out that he had just moved into my neighbourhood. So, that made it easier. We talked about doing the records and using my band, which was really surprising to me that they gave me that latitude but he’s loving it and we’re loving it. It should have happened a long time ago, but I’m glad it’s happening now.” “He’s pretty scary,” says Hiatt about Douglas’ playing, “he’s really, really, really, really a great musician. Wonderful sound. And he’s a pretty decent human being to boot.”
“In the last year and a half, unbeknownst to myself, I moved into Jerry’s neighbourhood,” he adds. “We can walk to each other’s house. But, you know, we’d cross paths over the years, but he’s become a really good friend over this process, over this last year and some change. So, that’s kind of nice, actually. Whereas I don’t know if we’d have been tight friends for all these years. We might’ve worn it out by now.” It was Hiatt’s manager who suggested that he and Douglas team up while they were sitting around kicking around ideas for a new album. “I got all excited about the prospect,” says Hiatt, “and I think the second thing I said was: no drums. Absolutely nothing against drummers. I love them.” James Taylor once said that Jerry is the Muhammad Ali of the Dobro. “He did indeed,” agrees Hiatt. “I call him Cassius.” Originally, they intended to go into the studio in April 2020 but that got delayed due to the pandemic. Then Douglas suggested that they use his group as the studio ensemble: Christian Sedelmyer (fiddle), Daniel Kimbro (bass) and Mike Seal (guitar). They decided to use the historic RCA Studio B in Nashville, where Elvis, the Everly Brothers and Dolly Parton – amongst many others – recorded numerous hits. In fact, there is a story that while running late for a session one day Parton ran her car into the side of the building leaving a scar that is still visible. Hiatt confesses that he hasn’t heard that story but he certainly recognised the historic nature of the studio. “You can’t help but feel the ghosts of all the wonderful music that’s been made there over the years,” he says, “and it isn’t a large room,
it’s a good size. The large room is Studio A , of course, where Dave Cobb [currently Nashville’s hottest producer] is currently ensconced. But Studio B…..it’s a peculiar old American recording studio. The way they used to build them, they weren’t acoustically perfect necessarily, but they offered some sort of character that perhaps you couldn’t get if you were in another room somewhere. That used to kind of be the idea back in the day. So, you’re capturing not only the sounds of the musicians with your microphones, but you’re capturing the character of the room as well.” Surprisingly, for someone who has recorded on hundreds of albums, Douglas had only ever worked in Studio B before, when he recorded a jam session with Chet Atkins for TV. “I had never really recorded there other than just what I recorded there with Chet,” he says, “which is fitting if you’re going to record in that room. But the room is amazing to play in. It’s got a sound all the time and it’s on so many records. You’re listening to The Everly Brothers with that reverb in it, that’s on their voice. That’s partly the room, just itself, doing that. It’s just, it’s magic. The place is magic and, the ghosts come in and watch over you at night while you’re recording there.” “It’s like, you can almost smell the cigarette smoke because I imagine every one of those guys is smoking in there, and that room would fill up with smoke,” continues Douglas. “But the floor is a tile floor, and it’s so hard that it’s so reflective and it plays a part in the recording. No matter how far you get the microphone from that floor you’re going to hear it. So, it’s part of it. I loved that sound. So, it was designed to record in, and it was the only studio in Nashville that was designed to just to make records in. >>> 39
