John Hiatte Feted by Los Lobos, other Americana artists on Troubadour

“Let’s go to Weho Meanwhile” don’t have the same ring to it, but the legendary singer and the long -lasting Tennessean resident John Hiat returned to their old haunts in LA to be serenaded by a paired of bold admirers Saturday at a benefit exhibition at Troubadour. The combination of classical material and an A-list of artists from several generations would have been enough to melt someone’s icy blue heart, even the chilly woman who was the subject of the old hiata ballad with that name.

The opportunity was American Music AssociationPre-gramy celebration. (Can we call it a Grammy gala? No, legally, probably not.) During most of the last 13 years the event has taken place on Troubadour in the evening to the biggest night of music, and offers an annual chance to experience what is undoubted by a tribute to a legend in the wide open area of ​​what is loosely qualified as American roots music. The Hiatatsaluten followed in the tradition of one given to honor Paul Simon 2024 and shows that celebrating the music from Willie Nelson, John Prine, Loretta Lynn, Lucinda Williams, Emmylou Harris and other Luminaries during the years before it. Sometimes, as in the case of the late Prine, the artist will come in in the evening himself, as Hiatt did in this exemplary case.

The most predictable hiat song for everyone to cover is the circa-1987 ballad “Have some faith in me”, and so phenomenal and potentially move a song as it is, even someone who appreciates the hiata as much as I do Been known to Zone out a bit when someone announces that they are doing so. In the wrong hands, it can only take the excessive wedding song quality. So i’m happy to report it Michael McDonaldHands are not wrong. The once-and-forward Doobie sat down at an electric keyboard to sing the number of solo, the man’s house band, and the transfixed from the moment one, which McDonald used it not completely down-to-earth, benevolent voice for Hiatt’s most famous Redemption Anthem, which throws in A long gospel-piano outro that really made it feel like a belief-based song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US49ba310ns

(And just to reinforce that he had undergone his own redemption arch, resembles the one hied up in one of his earliest sobriety states, McDonald explained to the audience how it was his first time on the troubadour since 1972, and last time he had to get bailed out of van Nuy’s prison to get to the gig.)

Even when McDonald was a prominent among standouts, believe that everyone on the bill would have a chance to shine was rewarded abundantly. The performances started with another example that the house band was not present on stage, in this case so that the entire set up of some performance could begin procedures with “Slow Turning”, the title track for Hiatts “Bring The Family” follow -up in the late 80s. There was a corresponding book moment near the end of the show when the house band gave way to Los Lobos, which performed one of his own songs, “Down on the Riverbed”, but not random – this was a trace of theirs that originally contained contained a distinct , echoing hiat bg vocal. (“Steve said I would be tired of my own songs now,” said Hiat, by explaining his eagerness to jump back to one of someone else’s.)

HIATT has played with some guitar heroes during his time, as a listed association with Ry Cood, so it fit when acoustic instruments were removed on some occasions to go after something that would start the decibel warnings on the participants’ apple bells. Such a moment came when Tom Morello, of Rage Famous, made a version of the ballad “The River Knows Your Name” which ended up not only with extensive solo but with Morello that made a few bars of that sun with his teeth – no false modesty in This audience-speaking moment. It followed a similar electrifying performance by Joe Bonamassa, which made the experienced electric guitar player’s national anthem, “perfecly good guitar”, peeled by Solo’s soulful enough that it really seemed blasphemically to imagine damage that came to his instrument. (In fun, he succeeded as if he were to do something that crushed at the end, as if.)

Hiat has increasingly turned to an acoustic blues feeling in some of his last day albums, so when Bluesman Cedric Burnside took to the stage, you may have assumed that he would cover a song that was already leaning a little. Instead, Burnside performed the night’s most radical exercise in transformation and turned the heart cutter “Icy Blue Heart” from the inside and removed most traces of the melody, until it sounded like something that may have been picked up on a field recording in the 1930s. It felt like looking at a magical action. (Burnside may have attracted some good karma with his thought -provoking treatment of the melody; he won his first Grammy the next day, after playing the Hiat gig.)

It was instructive to see some of the great singer writers in our time make their hold of the hiat. Joe Henry went away, of which the election we can expect him to do by dealing with a country polite -cheat song, “This is the way we Making a Broken Heart”, which somehow never officially released himself but became but became A No. 1 Country Song for Rosanne Cash in 1987. Lyle Lovett, a contemporary that has made co-headlining tours with Hiatt, brought his Texas Lilt to “Train to Birmingham”, a track in 2011. Robbie Fulks tracked the abandon of a “lipstick Sunset, “a lonely number lift from Hiatt’s most famous album,” Bring the Family. “

Many of the artists were close to Hiat’s age or just a little younger, but some represented the next gene fandom. We know that Lilly Hiat comes from the next generation, by virtue of her being Honoree’s daughter; She chose “You must go”, a song by her dad that she previously chose to cover for a record store day 45. Then it was Sarah Jarosz who said “Drive South” had been a favorite song in the car when she was 7 (which, It might be noted, would have been about a decade after it came out). Later, Jarosz was united with her super group, I am with her, whose Sara Watkins noted that the number they did, “Crossing Muddy Waters”, was one of the first songs they ever did as a harmonizing string band trio.

Female artists got lots of chances to add a wail to hiatt songs where it had not necessarily been a shemekia copeland nailed a precursor “Bring the family” song with sensual devotion, “Love like Blood” she had encountered Hiatt on the sidewalk In front and said to him, “You wrote a sexy ass song.” Judy Blume, a singer from the Netherlands whose debut album was just announced by the rounder label, introduced his version of “IS Anywody there” by informing Hiatt (who looked at from the balcony) that his song was in the official school plan back in her home country.

And one of the night’s awards was Nashville-based Belter Maggie Rose-who had just been on stage last night in the center and sang the dead for Musicare’s gala-excavated in one of Hiatt’s most track-aliots tracks, “Riding with the king.” Difference from Eric Clapton/BB King cover, she did not bowdlerized the lyrics.) House band Molly Jenson took the lead on one of Hiatt’s smartest yet most gripping early songs, “She loves jerks,” in collaboration with keyboardist Phillip Krohnengold, finally turned their part of the duet to make the first person’s first person, as ”I Love jokes. ”

For pure delicacy, it was always welcome the vision and sound of milk carton children who covered “one for it.” “If you have earplugs, you don’t need them,” said Harmony duo. “Take out your plugs and put in your hearing aids. This will be the quietest song of the night.” It was it, okay.

After Hans Komo with Los Lobos, Hiat was united by the house band for a closing four of his own, three of them quite well-known (including Ry Cood-recorded Cowrite “across the border”) plus a welcoming deeper cut, “The music was hot” from a newer Album, which did not represent one of his own personal stories without his performance of a less than fully fulfilled mother and housewife living for WSM.

Had Brandy Clark, who was announced late for the set, interrupted? No, she had not-she showed up in the clinic to go with the hiat for a closing duet of “Thing Called Love”, which represents one of the closer things we have to a rising Bonnie Raitt-style figure right now, in her Own way. And the cry of love does not sound at all worrying.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xynq_6d2fou

The Americana event on Troubadour always happens to take place the evening after the annual Musicares dinner, which is also a preferential tribute, and although this is scaled down by about a thousand percent of it, intimacy, it is always always at least as strong in content and assortment. It happened so that this year’s Americana event was also turned into a Musicares benefit, with money from both $ 200 Troubadour tickets and a pay-what-you-can-live stream that went to the Recording Academy Charity’s Fire Relief Studs.

Michele Aquilato produced the event, as always, with an assist from the Americana Music Association CEO (and the show’s host), Jed Hilly. The unchanging house band, many who returned from last year’s Paul Simon tribute, with all the different skills sets required, included music director Daniel Rhine on bass, Greg Leisz (who was also in the house band at the previous night’s music exhaust) at Steel Gutaar, Mark Stepro on Drums, Jim Oblon on guitar, Sara Watkins on violin and vocals, Jenson on vocals and Krohnengold on bass.

The full set list:

“Slow Turning” – Little Feat
“She loves joke” – Molly Jenson & Phillip Krohnengold
“Love like blood” – Shemekia Copeland
“You have to go” – Lilly Hiat
“Is someone there” – Judy Blank
“Lipstick Sunset” – Robbie Fulks
“How we make a broken heart” – Joe Henry
“Icy Blue Heart” – Cedric Burnside
“Have some faith in me” – Michael McDonald
“Run south” – Sarah Jarosz
“Riding with the king” – Maggie Rose
“Perfect good guitar” – Joe Bonamassa
“The river knows your name” – Tom Morello
“Train to Birmingham” – Lyle Lovett
“One for one” – Milk Carton Kids
“Intersecting muddy water” – I’m with her
“Down on the river bottom” – Los Lobos with John Hiat
“Memphis Meanwhile” – John Hiatt
“Over the border” – John Hiatt
“The music is hot” – John Hiatt
“Thing Called Love” – ​​John Hiat and Brandy Clark