WAYSIDE STORIES

>>> Then Owen Bradley had a place called Bradley’s Barn, and it was just a Quonset hut, a sort of half round building. But that’s where he cut all the Patsy Cline and all of those kinds of things. But Chet’s playroom was RCAB. That’s where we did this record in, and the ghosts do come out at night.” Hiatt and Douglas had four days in Studio B to record the album, which is a relatively short time, but although it was the first time they had worked together it sounds like they have been collaborating for years. “Well, in essence, Jerry and his band, of course, had been playing together for about the last five years,” says Hiatt. “So, they knew each other very well and they’re very song oriented which was great. The arrangements came together pretty quick once we got the chord structure. I don’t think we ever did more than two, maybe three, takes on the song before we had one that we thought we liked.” “He gave me the songs that he wanted to record, and we started talking about the instrumentation,” says Douglas of the recording process, “and, he wanted to keep it grounded in that he didn’t want it to be a rock and roll record. He wanted to keep it grounded and keep it kind of acoustic. I’m naturally going to bring this bluegrass element to it. When you start using Dobro then it’s going to take on a different flavour. So, we worked with the songs. But it was much easier than it should have been.” “He loved my band, and we decided not to use the drums,” continues Douglas, “and it left the band to work. It was the perfect combination for these songs. So, they gave me a lot of latitude with it, and I threw a lot of curve balls to John, but he, for the most part, he loved them.” Does the absence of a drummer present a different dynamic for Hiatt? “I did a record called Crossing Muddy Waters, that had no drummer,” replies Hiatt, “although Davey Faragher, the bass player, put a mic on his foot, which was very effective. But we were joking that most stringed instrument players were all frustrated drummers anyway. Anyway, there was a tremendous groove.” “John’s got great timing,” says Douglas, “maybe from playing with all those great drummers in the past - Jim Keltner and the like. There was no flailing about or anybody flying out of the groove: we set up a groove and it stayed there. A lot of people that play solo for a while, it’s hard for them to get to play with a band or to fit into a band, but we just surrounded him, and his timing is excellent. So, there was no problem at all of that. The groove happened easily.” That groove was propelled by Douglas’s dobro which stands out like a beacon on every song. “I had two of them there,” he says when I ask him about the instruments. “My road dog guitar, the war horse, was on most of the tracks but I was switching between two of the exact same guitar. I’m a lover of old Dobros, the ones that were built in the twenties and thirties, but there’s just a sound when you’re playing, especially with a rhythm section, even though we weren’t this time, it just has more, it creates more voices, different voices you can get.” Douglas is happy to talk about the history of the Dobro, invented in America by Slovakian immigrants, the Dopyera brothers, and featuring an outward facing resonator cone which creates more volume from the guitar body. (National developed a Tricone version and a metal body which became famous through the blues players who used it). One of Douglas’s major influences was Mike Auldridge who released the album Dobro back in 1972 on John Fahey’s Takoma label and also recorded the album Three Bells with Douglas and Rob Ickes. “He was a huge, huge influence on me and then I got to know him too and actually record with him a few times,” says Douglas. He was a sweetheart of a fellow and a wonderful musician and a great artist. He was an inspirational guy.” “The main thing you have to be really careful about is your pitch,” explains Douglas about playing the Dobro which is held flat in front of the standing player. “You have to be in tune, yet you can’t draw attention away from the singer or just be the sour sounding thing in the mix. That’s the main thing with the Dobro guitars is being in tune and your tone and everything. There’s so many things: it’s more like playing the violin. If you have to compare instruments, it’s hard like trying to play a violin. That’s what I would say. There is a definite difficulty factor, and you can really alienate a lot of people if you don’t play well.” Leftover Feelings is a great sounding album, thanks to Douglas, his band and his production. It brings John Hiatt back to the classic sound of some of his most revered albums. “I liked the swashbuckling John Hiatt,” says Douglas, “where he’s kind of like just really beating his guitar, but he’s got great guitars and he’s a great guitar player, even though he says he’s not a good guitar player. I really disagree. He’s a wonderful guitar player.” “I’m on acoustic guitar,” says Hiatt when I ask him about his instruments. “I played the same guitar throughout the proceedings - one of two little Gibson LG-3s. I’ve got one from 1940s and one from 1954. I played the one from 1947.” When I ask Douglas about Hiatt’s song writing he is even more complimentary, mentioning the inspiration for the song, ‘All The Lilacs in Ohio,’ as being the 1945 Ray Milland film, The Lost Weekend. “He just files things away,” says Douglas. “I said, ‘What’s that about? I’m from Ohio. I don’t remember any lilacs. I don’t remember any of that stuff. He filed that away and he puts that in the song. I went, ‘Man, how do you do that. I don’t even see the file cabinet. I don’t think you have a file cabinet anywhere to keep stuff like that.’ But he just remembers everything much like John Prine. I think the two of them are a lot alike. John wrote about things that happened to him about things that happened to him in a very goofy way. So does John Hiatt. John Prine was a great friend of mine, and God, we miss him, but they remind me of each other. I’m just so glad that we have John Hiatt. We have still have one of these great American guitar playing songwriters around. He just contributes so much to the American psyche with his music.” “If you’ll remember he’s there in New York city,” says Hiatt in talking about Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend when I ask him about some of the songs on the album. “He’s a drunk who wants to be a writer - not a new story - or a writer who wants to be a drunk. I’m not sure which but he goes to meet her and she, she can’t make a date, the pre-assigned date, but she sends a letter down (on hotel stationery) and he says as he opens it that it smells like all the lilacs in Ohio. And I just started, it’s just beautiful. So, I had to write something with that.” “You’d be amazed how many places you can look for inspiration,” says Hiatt when I ask where he gets the inspiration from his songs, “the start of the day, a beautiful good looking human or a not so goodlooking human with a broken heart or something you read. It comes from anywhere.” “I never feel that way,” he replies when I ask if he feels that he is always improving as a writer. “You always have the same sensation when it’s got a hold of you. But I always am overwhelmed by the same feeling when it comes time to write a lyric and the feeling is, ‘You’ve never written a song in your life. How in the hell would you know how to do it?’ It never ceases to amaze me and I’m always so grateful when I get one, get one in the boat, so to speak.” We are speaking a week after Bob Dylan’s 80th birthday and I wonder if he is an inspiration as Hiatt approaches his 70th year. “Absolutely,” he agrees. “It’s why we keep going, we keep doing what we do. He’s way out of my league - that guy’s untouchable. I can hear ‘Murder Most Foul’ and just go, ‘Oh my! We’ll never catch up and never catch up - he’s that kind of writer. God bless him. I’ll miss him. But I’ve done it since I was 11 and I don’t know what else to do and it’s not really even a job. It’s just what I do. So, I’m hoping I’ll keep doing it.” So, after all these decades of writing what are the leftover feelings that give the new album its title? “Well, a life well lived, maybe, I don’t know, just are adventures over the years” replies Hiatt when I ask him about the album’s title and whether they are his leftover feelings. “Who hasn’t had leftover feelings? They do kind of look like a plate full of scraps.” One of those feelings from years ago must have been about Hiatt’s late brother, the subject of ‘Light Of The Burning Sun.’ “It was just time to write it,” explains Hiatt, who says he wrote in 2019. “Of course, anyone who’s dealt with a death by suicide of family, close friends, it’s a particular kind of lingering grief and mystery about it and difficult to get over, difficult to know what to do with really, some of the emotions that come up. So, it’s been years and years for me. I was 11 and my oldest brother took his own life. He was 21 and so I’ll be 69 in a couple months. So, it was just time, through all the stuff of talking to people and therapy groups so many years. It just came out and I was relieved and it was kind of cathartic in a way.” One song that brings Hiatt into the 21st century in terms of hIs imagery is “Long Black Electric Cadilac.’ It arrived just after I was remarking to someone that no-one will ever write a song about an electric car.

“Well, there you go,” laughs Hiatt when I mention my observation. “It’s wishful thinking. I’m hopeful that GM could make me such a beast in the not-too-distant future. There’s something about that seamless acceleration I could get. I could get very soulful about it. You know, there’s no lag. There’s no gear changing. It’s just pure trust - and if that isn’t what every car manufacturer in the world, wasn’t after at least here in America, I don’t know what it is. So, I’d say it’s pretty, pretty romantic stuff. I’m thinking of ‘Maybelline’, Maybelline, when that Cadillac came over the hill and not the far behind, like it was made out of lead.” Finally, I mention the many music memoirs I have read over the past year and wonder if Hiatt has been tempted to write one, given his rich history. “The short answer is no,” he replies, “but someone’s written a book about me that’s coming out. I haven’t read it but people I know have read it and they think it’s okay. So, I don’t know. I get nervous about all that kind of stuff. I don’t mind telling my story. As far as starting a book, I don’t know. I’m a songwriter, not a book writer.”

Leftover Feelings is out now through New West Records.