For me as a songwriter, inspiration comes from so many places - a movie, something you read in a newspaper article, an interesting term you heard. I’m kind of recreating the story from the film. “Ray Milland plays a drunk guy named Don Birnam, who can’t stop talking about love being the hardest thing to write about, because you have to capture the way sunlight plays off a metal garden fence, or the way you keep a letter (a woman) wrote on office stationery, because it ‘smells like all the lilacs in Ohio.’ “The film tells the story of a drunken writer, so it resonated with me,” Hiatt said. Hiatt cites the classic 1945 Billy Wilder film, “Lost Weekend,” as its inspiration. “Lilacs” is a stirring love song that sounds at least partly autobiographical but isn’t. It also features a new, more delicate version of “All the Lilacs in Ohio,” which Hiatt wrote and first recorded for his 2001 album, “The Tiki Bar is Open.” The resulting album, the 11-song “Leftover Feelings,” offers an understated trove of new and recent songs. “Ken asked me if I’d thought about recording with Jerry Douglas, and I thought: ‘What a great idea.’ I called Jerry and he was really game to do it.” “Every few years I sit down with my manager, Ken Levitan, to talk about ideas for my next album,” Hiatt said. 16 to perform at the Balboa Theatre as part of “My Bluegrass Heart,” an all-star tour that features banjo wiz Bela Fleck, former San Diego violinist Stuart Duncan, guitarist Bryan Sutton, bassist Edgar Meyer and mandolin great Sam Bush. His musical partners have ranged from Alison Krauss, Phish and The Chieftains to classical piano superstar Lang Lang, Elvis Costello and India’s Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, who performs on a 19-stringed guitar.ĭouglas will return to San Diego on Dec. In fact, it’s difficult to think of any musical world in which dobro and lap-pedal steel guitar master Douglas does not sound right at home.Ī 14-time Grammy Award-winner, Douglas has performed on more than 1,500 albums. We crossed paths after that, but we were kind of in two musical worlds.” And Jerry, as James Taylor once called him, is the ‘Muhammad Ali of the dobro.’ I met Jerry in 1989 when we both played on The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s ‘Will the Circle Be Unbroken: Volume Two’ album. Christian (Sedelmyer) does amazing things on fiddle and Mike (Seal) on guitar is just incredible. “I look at Jerry and his band like having duet partners. So, I’m sure that - vocally - I’m just another one of the dancers. “With these guys, there’s a lot of bopping and weaving, which makes for a fascinating bit of music. “Jerry and his band are pretty sophisticated players, and I’m a decidedly primitive player,” Hiatt said. Hiatt’s latest collaborators, the award-winning Jerry Douglas Band, set the bar even higher. His 1979 band featured future Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers’ bassist Howie Epstein, while his late 1980s band, The Goners, served as a launching pad for slide guitar ace Sonny Landreth. The four of them made a standout album in 1992 under the band name Little Village, which Hiatt hopes will be reuniting soon for a second go-around. It’s an approach that has paid artistic dividends for Hiatt, whose 1985 album, “Bring the Family,” saw him heading a band that featured guitar great Ry Cooder, drum legend Jim Keltner and bassist Nick Lowe. I think what I play is distinguishable I have ‘a thing.’ But I ascribe to what my father once said to me: ‘When you’re getting people to work with, make sure you get people who are better than you are’.” I can get a hell of a racket going, but it’s pretty basic. “I probably could have learned a lot more on guitar.
“I’m probably lazy, too,” Hiatt, 69, said, speaking from a tour stop last month in Pennsylvania. “So, it’s three chords and a story - and how many stories can I tell within that very limited palette.” “I’ve operated from a limited palette, intentionally,” said Hiatt, who performs at the Belly Up Monday and Tuesday with Douglas and his band. It was then that Hiatt kicked his debilitating drug and alcohol habits, which had sent him into a downward spiral for much of the previous decade.Įven so, the Indiana native at least partly deflects any suggestion that his work has more layers than his minimalist description offers. Twenty years later, Hiatt’s first wife committed suicide, making him a single dad to their then-one-year-old daughter, Lily. Hiatt was only 11 years when his older brother died, a tragedy he explores on his mournful new song, “Light of the Burning Sun.”
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