Most years, John Hiatt going on tour wouldn’t be a big deal. Dude’s been a road warrior since he was in the band White Duck during the early 70s.
But this year is different.
In September, Hiatt, 71, fell while hiking in South Cumberland State Park in Tennessee. He suffered a concussion and a skull fracture along with lacerations and bruises. “My wife said right before we fell, ‘You know, we forgot our hiking sticks,’” Hiatt recalls now. “This is an example of why you take your hiking sticks.”
In the wake of the accident concerts were postponed and music was largely on hold as Hiatt underwent “three and a half, four months of all different kinds of rehab and neural stuff.”
Now, however, he’s back, continuing a career that includes nearly two-dozen albums, membership in the all-star band Little Village and lifetime achievement honors from the Americana Music Association and Broadcast Music, Inc. And Hiatt’s songs have been covered by the likes of Bonnie Raitt, Joe Cocker, Bon Jovi, Gregg Allman and many more.
So it’s a prolific career Hiatt is resuming, starting quietly with a solo acoustic tour that stops Tuesday at the Kent Stage in Kent, but with plans for more playing and recording in the future…
How are you feeling?
Hiatt: I’m doing pretty good. It’s been a long road back, but I feel good — outside the usual stuff of a practically 72-year-old guy. I’ve been just focusing on getting my health back together and going out to play.
You’re re-starting with a solo tour. Do you have a preference between that vs. being out with a full band?
Hiatt: No. I think they both have their attractions. The solo thing you can kinda put down a little bit the dancing dog aspects of entertainment and just go out and tell the stories of the songs, as they were written. I think people appreciate hearing it that way. And the band, of course, is so thrilling ‘cause you get to play with other wonderful musicians. Besides the interacting with the audience as you do solo, with the band you’re all interacting on stage, too. So they’re kind of two different things, and I like ‘em both.
This year mark’s 50 since your first solo album, “Hangin’ Around the Observatory.” What’s that feel like?
Hiatt: How ‘bout that, huh? I didn’t even think about that, to be honest. I was scared to death; I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. The songwriting was not really formed; I just knew I wanted to do it. I didn’t know who I was vocally, and I was only 10 years out of picking up a guitar. So for me I was still chipping away. I wasn’t one of those guys that came fully formed out of the gate. I had to kind of do it in public.
Was that good in a way? You didn’t come in having established a lane, so you had the opportunity to morph and change.
Hiatt: I definitely wasn’t stuck in a genre, which was a plus and minus. It was hard to say, “What does he do, really?” I write songs, I know that, and try to sing ‘em. It’s just been a huge learning curve for the last 50 years, for sure — learning how to find the music, how to do it better.
What have been the most profound lessons?
Hiatt: I think maybe simple is good. One of the things I had in mind was I didn’t want it to be complicated. I learned a few chords and I started writing songs, and I thought, “That’s enough.” That’s the rock ‘n’ roll model. You can argue that I kept myself willfully ignorant in terms of music. If I added a chord I wanted it to really mean something in terms of my depth of perception, writing-wise. It’s a primitive palette, I like to say. It’s “How many chords can you write with three chords and have ‘em come out with different melodies and different feelings and so own, and have them mean different things to different people?”
