What got you in the mood to do an acoustic record?
HIATT Well, we
were making a rock ’n’ roll record last summer with [Sonny Landreth
and] the Goners and we got into a situation with Capitol Records
where they weren’t quite digging it as much as we were digging
it [laughs]. So that put that record on hold and threw
us into this process of trying to get out of [our commitments
at] Capitol and take that record with us when we went, which
was a little tricky. We finally achieved that in January and
I became a free agent, for lack of a better term, for the first
time in 13 years. My manager called me up one day and said,
"Hey, you want to make an acoustic record?" And I
said, "Whoa, I’ve always wanted to do that." And he
said, "Well, Emusic would love to do something, and Vanguard
Records would love to do something. You can own the master and
they’ll put it out."
I got back together with Dave Immerglück,
who played on Walk On, and also Davey Faragher, who played
bass with me for about five or six years. I had all these songs,
a bunch of new stuff and some older songs that I’d always wanted
to put on a record and was never able to. It was like Bring
the Family in that regard. That happened under similar circumstances.
I was between labels, and a small company put up the money to
make a little record, which we made in the same amount of time—three
or four days. It seems to be a good amount of time for me.
I hear you recorded the new one sitting in a circle
in Justin Niebank’s basement studio in Nashville.
HIATT Yeah, all
live. Live vocals, live performances. Dave Immerglück,
Davey Faragher, and I just had a kind of communication, musically.
There wasn’t really any rehearsing. I would play them the song
once and they’d get a little feel going, and we’d go, "Right,
roll it" and do a performance.
Who was the producer?
HIATT Aha! There
was none. We just decided to leave that off. We couldn’t figure
out who was the culprit, so we all took the blame.
And it’s material you wrote on guitar?
HIATT Yeah, I
write most stuff on acoustic guitar. Every once in a while I’ll
write a song on electric. But acoustic guitar is my main instrument--has
been since I was a kid. Most of the songs are new, with the
exception of "Lincoln Town"; the title track, "Crossing
Muddy Waters"; and "Only the Song Survives,"
which are all about five years old. Everything else is new.
Did Dave Immerglück and Davey Faragher come
up with their own parts for the arrangements?
HIATT Oh yeah.
We developed a sort of language among ourselves. Our approach
is really instinctual. I’d start playing a song, and Dave would
start playing a rhythm that would embellish what I was doing
on acoustic. And Davey would always have the groove down at
the low end. Davey also played stomp board. We miked his foot
and let that be the percussion.
Metal folding chair was also listed as an instrument
in the liner notes.
HIATT He hit
a metal folding chair on a couple of songs for a little backbeat.
The only overdubs were metal folding chair and the harmony vocals.
Everything else was live. Very hi-tech. This was actually my
first digital recording. I’ve been a tape guy all my life. But
Justin Niebank, the engineer, talked me into recording on this
Atari hard-disk system that he’s quite fond of. It’s a 24-track,
24-bit, hard-disk recorder.
Can you hear the difference from the analog?
HIATT The only
thing missing is the tape compression you can get on analog,
but you can do other kinds of compression to make up for it.
I think it sounds really good. I was kind of surprised. I never
thought I’d hear a multitrack digital machine that I thought
sounded right. I think they’re getting it figured out.
I saw that you’re playing harmonium on the record
as well as guitar.
HIATT Yeah, the
harmonium is the low-end droney stuff. When we were recording,
we kind of visualized the sound. When we’re talking about what
we’re doing, we don’t say, you know, "Play a B-flat in
the third bar of section 32." We don’t know about that
stuff, so we just draw pictures for each other. We imagined
ourselves on the porch making this record. We felt like it was
a real back porch sound, the wood, stomping on those boards
you have on back porches. We imagined that the door was open
and there was just a screen door and there was a thin-lipped,
Presbyterian woman who was the wife of one of the guys playing
on the porch. We were out there carrying on, and every once
in a while she’d hear something she wanted to join in on, so
she’d bring out her little church harmonium and jam with us,
as it were.
Where did you first come across a harmonium?
HIATT I think
the first time I ever used one on a record was Stolen Moments
with Glyn Johns [producing]. He brought one, and we used
it on "Real Fine Love." It’s a little keyboard and
a squeeze-box, sort of a sit-down accordion. You play the keyboard
with one hand and keep moving the squeezer back and forth with
the other. It’s perfect for me because I’m not much of a keyboard
player anyway. One hand is plenty! But it’s got a neat sound.
It’s kind of a cross between an old pump organ, bagpipes, and
an accordion. It can sound really sad, and I like that about
it.
Are you still playing guitar mostly in standard
tuning?
HIATT Pretty
much standard. I always tell myself that I’m going to sit down
and do some tuning. I’ve actually written a couple of songs
in tunings, but I haven’t recorded them. Maybe I’ll drop a D.
I’ve got a tuning I use a lot where I drop the G down to E.
It takes the third out of the chord and leaves a drone in the
middle. It’s the "Drive South" tuning. It’s good on
bluesy kinds of things. It gives you just ones and fives, so
it’s kind of mean [laughs].
How do you go about writing a song?
HIATT It’s almost
always sitting down with an acoustic guitar and just strumming.
The songs are in the acoustic guitar, I think. I’ll play like
a three-fingered C chord, where you don’t play the G in the
bass, and that sounds one way. And then you’ll have a G in the
bass and that sounds another way. I mean, I only play three
chords, for God’s sake! That’s about all I know. So I just put
two or three chords together, and a certain key will bring about
a certain kind of feel. Putting a capo on the guitar makes magical
things happen--moving it up and down the neck, playing the same
fingerings up the neck.
