John Hiatt may not be a household name in every home, but his songs -- songs like "Have a Little Faith in Me," "Riding With the King" and "A Thing Called Love" -- have become a part of the fabric of American music of life. And artists ranging from Bob Dylan to Iggy Pop, from Willie Nelson to Bonnie Raitt have performed John Hiatt's work. Now, Mr. Hiatt offers up his latest collection, The Tiki Bar is Open, 11 electric rock songs that reunite him with the band The Goners.

Q The time has come. The Tiki Bar is Open, as the title of John Hiatt's new album tells us. John, your last album was "Crossing Muddy Waters," that was an acoustic record. The new album begins with some strumming, but then all hell breaks loose.
A Kerblammy….

Q …You start rocking. What made you plug back in and reunite with the Goners?
A Well, I got back together with those guys … summer of '99. I called Sonny on a whim. And I said, "You know, the century's coming to a close here, Buddy. Should we give it another go? Either knock it on the head or play some more." And they were all up for it. So we got together, did a couple of shows. And it was like a -- you know, it was like riding a bike, getting back on a bicycle. You know, so wonderful, the feeling. And that summer, we started recording this record.

Q But you really only made one album with the Goners, "Slow Turning," and yet they've kind of become mythical in your discography, if you will. Tell me who the Goners are and what makes this band different from other bands you've played with, like the Nashville Queens.
A The Goners are Kenny Blevins, on the drum kit. Dave Ranson on bass. And Sonny Landreth on slide guitar and singing. And it's one of those magic quartets, the four of us together. We just make a certain kind of racket that you can't get anywhere else.

Q I want to go inside The Tiki Bar and listen to the first single, which is called My Old Friend. Great rock and roll references in this song. Your best since you had that line about "yelling at the kids in the backseat 'cause they were banging like Charlie Watts." When I heard the song, I thought that maybe reuniting with an old friend reminded you that you like to see the world through music-colored glasses. Is that --
A Well, that was sort of the idea. I think it had a lot to do with my kids. And they're getting into their teenage years now. And I've watched them kind of progress through music much the way I did. They started out with whatever was on the radio. Then they discovered Rock and Roll. And my daughter Lilly who's 17, I mean, she's -- she listens to everybody from Pearl Jam to Bob Dylan, Neil Young. She's getting into the blues a little bit. I just see how important music is to them. And it just kind of reminds me of how it's -- you know, there's always been a soundtrack running to my life.
And also, I'm always running into these people, you know, from the old days. And inevitably, these women, even though they're in their 40s now, they look fabulous or else they're very successful or married well or whatever. And I always feel like the same old schmo. And so it's a little about that, too, I guess.

Q With references to Jethro Tull and Neil Young and the song's friendship theme, I think My Old Friend is going to strike a chord with a lot of people. When you wrote your most popular songs, did you have an inkling at the time that they were the ones that would have staying power?
A Not at all. I mean, when I'm writing, I'm never -- it's all…all about the work. You know, the results I'm never even -- I'm clueless, really, as to what's even going to happen to these things. I get so involved in writing the songs and then making the records, that I don't really … It's great when they connect. It's great when the audience says, "Man, I love that song." Or "This song means so much to me and my wife," or whatever. That's the payoff. I think if you start thinking about that, you know, how somebody's going to take something, it's kind of like when you're in the studio and you start thinking about what you're playing. The next thing you know, you're not really making music, you're showing off.

Q What about when Riding With the King, which was almost 20 years old, suddenly became the title track to a double platinum-collaboration between Eric Clapton and BB King? Did it make you feel like your songs have a life of their own?
A Getting that song recorded after all those years, I just kept remembering what my mom said: "Hang in there. Don't ever give up." You know, all the old cliches. Because it's true. I mean, that's a great example for any of you kids out there writing songs or struggling with your music, hang in there, man. It will come to light. It pays off. If you just put the effort in. That was a real thrill to get that thing recorded. I got a platinum award, you know, double-platinum record award for that record. And I've gotten a few. I got one from Bonnie Raitt and a couple of other people. And I've never put one up on a wall anywhere. But this one I got, I put up in my race shop because I was pretty proud.

Q Isn't it odd that there's been more than 100 versions of your various songs and yet you said you don't sit down to write for other people?
A I've tried to write for other people and the results have been pretty bad most of the time. Yeah, I just write, you know. I think that that's what the other artists connect with. They know they're just getting a John Hiatt song, whatever my particular skew is, you know, musically or my slant lyrically you know.

Q Yeah. Because I wondered what makes them feel they can get inside your songs. Maybe because they're universal but they're personal at the same time?
A Well, I think they're simple. You know, I've always tried to be simple. I'm always looking for that, that little sick twist, you know. I mean, that's sort of what appeals to me. So I'm always looking for a little, just a little twisted way of saying the same old thing, really.

Q There's a sonically smashing number that opens The Tiki Bar: Everybody Went Low. Now, that phrase must have some twist to it, because I don't know what in the heck you're talking about.
A I just remember when I was a kid and we'd sit around talking about life and stuff. There was a phenomenon that I started to notice. That if you got a certain group of people together, they could talk each other into being bummed out. You know what I mean? And so it was kind of like talking about that, I guess. Just that phenomenon. And then by the end of the song, lyrically, you know, the girl's pulled through it and the guy wants to jump in the same lifeboat she's in and get the heck out of there, you know…get tired of being bummed out by all this stuff.

Q Everybody Went Low begins "The Tiki Bar is Open". And we are inside the Tiki Bar with the man himself in his adopted hometown of Nashville. And John, you actually live outside of Nashville. Does that rural existence smack of where you grew up in Indiana?
A You know it doesn't. I'm a city kid. I was born and raised in Indianapolis. But when I was a kid, my granddaddy had a little cinderblock cabin up on a lake. About 70 miles north of Indy. And we went there every summer when I was a kid. And my daddy would stay in town and work all summer. And he'd send mom and the seven kids up to the cabin. And man, I just loved it up there. And it was just funky. I mean, it was cinderblock. One room. I mean, I'm talking pretty rugged. But I just loved it. And so I've always sort of been drawn to the woods and greenery. I guess that's what I -- what drew me to Tennessee back so many years ago.

Q Still you're close enough to be here in Nashville on a regular basis. What does it mean to you as a musician to be in Nashville?
A I just fell in love with this town the first time I slept in a park here when I was 18. The first couple of nights I spent in Nashville, I slept in Centennial Park under a park bench. Came into town with a buddy of mine. And I was going to get some kind of somethin' going musically, you know. It just has a great feel. And it still does, even as much as the town has grown, you know, in the last 30 years.

Q What does it mean to you to be so close to Nashville and the "music business"?
A Well, I'll be honest with you. I don't get too involved in the business here, you know. I just like it more just for the feel of the place. And there's always been a music scene, a musical subculture in Nashville. And it's still here you know. There's all these great players that -- you know, kind of the underbelly. They're not the top A-line session guys making the -- whatever that is they're making on music row these days. And there's a scene -- there's always been a scene within a scene here. And I think it's just a great place.

Q Well, when you came here, you were sleeping in the park, like you said. Eighteen years old. I think we're talking about 1970?
A '71, yeah.

Q Did you ever think you would be a lifer?
A A music lifer?

Q Yeah.
A I must have because -- I mean, I picked up a guitar when I was 11. And man that's all she wrote. I mean, I -- ever since then, it's been the thing I do. So I think I had a sense that I was in for the long haul, even back then.

Q In your first job, you were working for a music publishing company. What was your first hit song?
A Well, the first thing that made any noise -- well, the first cut, which was a big thing for me...it wasn't a hit. But Tracy Nelson did a song of mine called Thinking of You. And it was a song I wrote the year before I moved down here. So I think I wrote it when I was about 17. And so that was exciting, just getting, you know, a song that you wrote, getting the record. You know taking it home, putting it on. "Oh my God, it's my song." The first success was a song called Sure as I'm Sitting Here, which I had recorded on my first album on Epic. And Three Dog Night, apparently, heard it and cut it and had like a top -- I think top 15 hit with it.

Q I Know A Place reminds me of when I see you on stage and John Hiatt's in total abandon. Your face and body are getting' twisted up. I mean, God John, you get the blues in a real way. Are you sure you're not an old blues guy from Chicago in the body of a singer/songwriter?
A Well, you know I've always connected with that music. And I've never thought you have to be a certain color or from a certain place or even to be a certain style of music to understand the blues. So I think it's pretty universal. But I really connect with that particular structure, that music structure. Three chords and something to get off your chest or off your mind or out from under or something that's been breaking your heart. And that whole -- that cathartic kind of quality that singing the blues has, I subscribe to that wholeheartedly.

Q After hearing I Know a Place, I now know why you're a part of B.B. King's Blues Festival this year. 'Cause I was thinking at first that, okay, B.B. King, Buddy Guy, John Hiatt. Seemed like an odd pairing.
A I just accepted the invitation because I'm going to be the youngest guy on the tour. And that's unusual.

Q Would you play a different set on this tour than you ordinarily might?
A No, I don't think so. I mean, we've only got about an hour, I think, so it's going to be compact. You don't have to go deep into my catalogue to find a bunch of stuff that certainly draws from the blues, if not is the blues outright. And so I see the connection personally.
I mean….

Q So who gets to sing Riding with the King?
A Yeah, well, you know, my dream, of course, would be that we get to sing it with B.B. . Buddy, B.B. and myself. I mean, who knows if that's going to happen. But that's my fantasy.

Q The song we just heard, I Know a Place, sounds like it was recorded live. How was Tiki Bar produced? Spontaneously and was it kind of a live deal for a lot of it?
A You know, it was very much live. I mean, we've kind…I've made -- what is this, my 18th record? And I've kind of established that as sort of my approach. You know, I like to go in and just capture a moment. I Know a Place was 100 percent live. And it sounds like it. It sounds like a jam. And you know all my little asides in there, like, "All right, Sonny, tell 'em about it," I mean, that's, that's what I do on stage if I want him to take a solo, you know. And bringing it down with Kenneth later on, you know. I mean Jay Joyce, who produced it, great guy and a great musician. He's from Cleveland so we connect on that sort of Midwest kind of knucklehead level. And he would -- you know, he would set the stage typically. Like, either he'd come up with some goofy damn loop, you know, and, well, where does this put you. And then we'd play to that. And something would come out. I know the first song on the record, we actually recorded it faster than you hear it and in a different key. And we slowed the tape down (laughs)! And it's still pretty fast so. Just a couple little tweaks and things like that.

Q Your last album, "Crossing Muddy Waters", nominated for a Grammy for best contemporary folk album. Pretty simple production wise…
A Yeah, very.

Q How do you decide whether one of your songs is going to get an acoustic setting or an electric setting?
A You know, with that record, we set up the project...It was really me and Ken Levitan my manager just sort of sitting around going, "Well, what kind of record should we…?" "Hey, how about an acoustic record?" I'd never really done that. And I like the idea of making it with no drums, because I'd actually played shows with Davy Farragher and Dave Immergluck, the two guys that made the record with me. We'd actually played as a trio. So it was really just an opportunity to catch that band on tape …like that and that style.

Q The next song I wanted to play from Tiki Bar sounded to me like it could have been on "Crossing Muddy Waters" if you gave it a different reading. All the Lilacs in Ohio.
A Yeah, it's -- a lot of these things are interchangeable, you know. Yeah, it could have just as easily have been a folk song.

Q John, I couldn't tell if that song was a character study or a first-person remembrance. Is it okay with you if the listener doesn't get the song right away?
A Oh, sure. You know, it's fiction, you know, this stuff. So I like that idea. I think Flannery O'Connor, the great author, said the idea behind fiction is to open up the possibilities. It's not to pinpoint anything, it's to, it's to open up all kinds of possibilities. And so, yeah, it can mean different things to different people. I actually swiped the title from one of my favorite movies, Lost Weekend. I don't know who the director was, but Ray Miland was in it. And it was a story of -- he was trying to write the great book, which I also mention in the song. The great love story. In his character was a drunk and a writer. You know - what an odd combination. But the movie was sort of about his struggles, you know, with the bottle and his muse. But at one point he's talking to Joe, the bartender, and he says, "You know, Joe, you try to write about love. It's so hard because you've got to get the details right." He said like, "She's going to meet you for lunch one day and she can't make it, but she sends you a note of regret. And you open it up and it smells like all the lilacs in Ohio." So --

Q Now, wait a minute, you said this stuff is fiction? Because I thought every word on every John Hiatt record was straight from you, man.
A No, it's -- you know, I'm in there. My friends -- you be careful, Jody, you might be in there. You know, it's all -- it's like -- I kind of liken it to -- it's like I collect shrapnel, you know, from being - from taking hits being alive, as we all do. And it seems like when you write these songs, the music kind of shakes loose one or more pieces of that shrapnel and then you have a story all of a sudden.

Q Well, speaking of the music, I think we have to file All the Lilacs in Ohio, at least in this rendition, under punk bluegrass.
A Swamp-clash is what we called it.

Q And Sonny Landreth is playing some sort of Chinese guitar.
A Is that whacked or what? Yeah, he went off. He was playing my Telecaster on that song. You know, it's real kind of -- if you listen, it's really like that accordion music from the Cajun stuff. Just on hyper-speed and played on electric guitar.

Q It's frantic.
A Yeah.

Q And so I'm feeling like you weren't creatively stifled by the corporate music bullies.
A There weren't any of them guys around.

Q I mean, you've outlived at least a couple of your former labels.
A Yeah, there's more than one that's gone down the tubes since I've been around. But they always seem to surface with another company.

Q But now you're with the independent label Vanguard. Does that mean no suits trying to get you to write a hit that sounds like the flavor of the month?
A Well, you know, not to go suit bashing, because I don't think it's really fair. I think these guys and gals are just trying to, you know, get a record on, to use the David Bowie line. And a lot of times, I've gotten good advice over the years. I've gotten a lot of bad advice. It's just the difference of working with people trying to influence you and working with nobody trying to influence you. And for me, at this stage in my musical life, this works so much better to just be able to put out the kind of records I want to put out, when I want to put them out. And it just works out so much better for me.

Q And for a lot of people I think it's a brave new world. Because you can actually make money from a record that doesn't sell six million copies.
A Well, yeah, I mean, part of what happened in the corporatizing of the music business, is that it opened up the door for sort of the smaller concerns. And the artists, the sort of midline, if you will, artists who can go out and sell 100,000 or 200 or 300 or 400. Even up to a gold record, you know, the major labels aren't really interested in, because -- I guess because their overhead and the way they're set up. You know, if you don't sell a million or two, you're not happening. So I think it's created an opportunity. It created a vacuum. That's where all these new -- well, Vanguard's not new but they've certainly stepped up to the plate and been more visible than they have in a while. You know, they were able to step up and fill the vacuum.

Q I think the music lovers benefit.
A Totally.

Q I mean, take a record like "Crossing Muddy Waters", your last record. How many major labels would want to put out a record with just a songwriter and no rhythm section? On "Muddy Waters", it seemed like you were casting your domestic situation in a down cycle. Of course, I know it's all fiction.
A Yeah.

Q And then on "Tiki Bar", there's love songs like Hanging Round Here, Rock of Your Love. It makes it seems like everything's cool with the family.
A Well, I had to write -- I had to come out with this with those up positive love songs. You know my wife was getting ready to change the locks on the door.

Barbara Misle, LBJS's Jeff Carrol, Vanguard Records' Art Phillips, John Hiatt, KGSR's Jody Denberg, Barbara Koonce

Q There's one new song that's somewhere in between. It's called Something Broken in my Heart. Seems to be happy and sad at the same time. Am I on the right track here?
A Well I wrote that song, I was over in Amsterdam. We were doing some shows. It was about '98, I think when I wrote that song. And I was -- we were staying in a hotel for a week and doing shows -- you know, Holland's a tiny country. So we were doing a show up in northern Holland and then driving back and staying -- camping out in Amsterdam. And it was right on Dam Square, which is sort of the red light district. And so there were like drug dealers underneath my window and, y'know...It's all very innocuous compared to the States because nobody's armed. So it's a little different scene. But - so I just kind of got a little dark. For a moment.

Q John, talking to the press has become a big part of a musician's job. And you kind of turned the tables for a while, because you were hosting the PBS TV show "Sessions at West 54th" and interviewing musicians. Did you learn anything about this task we're engaged in right now?
A Well, I totally learned what a tough job it is. I have a complete new respect for you guys in radio that have to do interviews or any journalists, because it's hard. It's hard work. You have to do your homework. You have to know what you're talking about. And yet you never feel like you really do…

Q There was one interview I saw you do on the TV show with Ziggy Marley. And he's speaking of the wonders of marijuana to you. And you're someone who's been a teetotaler for almost a couple of decades. And that brings us to the title of your new album. "The Tiki Bar is Open". First, what is a Tiki bar?
A Well, I think the whole thing kind of -- the song came out of a trip I took last February during speed weeks down to Daytona. I race in a little division called Pro Challenge. It's a scale car. It's a three-quarter size car. They look like Winston Cup cars, but they're three-quarter the size. And they ran us a weeks worth of races at a little track in Belucia County, Florida, which is just about 20 miles west of Daytona. So in February, I drove down with my race car and spent the week down there. And I've never been to Daytona Beach. When I was kid growing up, Daytona, that was like uttered like -- you're talking about going to my sweet Abyssinian home or -- you know, what I mean, Mecca or something. Going to Dayton was like it. And so I got there. I was just so taken with the place. All these little Mom and Pop hotels. Just things from my childhood that were still in tact. Bits of Americana that hadn't been totally neutered out of existence or turned into a "Par Mart," if you know what I mean. So I was really taken with the place.
Also, driving I'm down Interstate 95 going to my hotel the first night. And there's people pulled off to the side of the road. And I'm wondering, what is this all about? And I look up in the sky and the shuttle's been launched. And it was right at sunset. It was the most spectacular sight I've ever seen in my life. I pulled over. I started crying. The only other time I pulled off the road and started crying was when Elvis died. So I was really moved by this whole thing.
Well, so I started writing the song when I was there. Oh, I know! I drove by one of these little Mom and Pop hotels. And there was a sign that said, The Tiki Bar is Open. And I immediately thought, Thank God. Thank God it's not whatever the local chain restaurant, you know. Yes, the Tiki Bar is still open. Thank you very much. We're holding on! Yeah, we've still got the funk and you come on in. And so that's really how it all -- I started singing that line, you know, "Thank God, the Tiki Bar is open. Thank God a Tiki torch still shines." I kept singing that over and over. It was like a gospel chant. And I went back to the room that night and started writing the song. Then I got home -- I came home. I was finished racing two days before the actual Daytona 500, the big race. And I got home, turned on my TV to watch the race and, of course, Dale Ernheart gets killed on the last lap, which broke my heart, along with millions of other people. And so that's the verse about Dale Ernheart in the song.

Q You do deal with your own sobriety in the song. You make mention of it. I was wondering how you deal with the fact that you're someone who doesn't drink and yet you make your living playing in places where they make their money selling alcohol.
A Well, that was sort of the other inside joke of this song. The fact is, yeah, when I was six months sober, I had to go back to work. And you know, guess what? We work in bars, we work around people who take drugs and drink and everything else. So it's just something I've had to deal with. I wouldn't have it any other way. I mean. some of my best friends are drunks, you know, sober or otherwise.

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