John Hiatt teams up with Lyle Lovett in Collingswood
They’re both brilliant songwriters, and both brilliantly witty.
So put John Hiatt and Lyle Lovett together onstage with their guitars, songs and stories, and you’ve got an evening of rare entertainment.
But, Hiatt says, it’s not really a show, at least not in the traditional sense:
“It’s just a couple of guys sitting around, singing songs and telling lies.” And after more than 15 years of performing together, a Hiatt-Lovett pairing translates into an utterly engaging, spontaneous evening of music.
“We have a lot of fun,” the 64-year-old Nashville-based singer-songwriter said by phone last week, adding Lovett’s deadpan sense of humor has resulted in a certain interplay between the two: “I’m basically Ed McMahon to his Johnny Carson.”
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While Hiatt tries to sell the 59-year-old Lovett as the funnier half of this musical duo, a conversation with Hiatt is a total smile maker – he’s laid-back, charming and more-than-quick with a comeback.
Hiatt and Lovett began performing acoustically together as a duo sometime around 2001 – “time in your past life gets a little fuzzy,” he says – but originally began playing shows together, along with fellow alt-country stalwarts Joe Ely and the late Guy Clark, in the late 1980s.
The foursome first went out on the road together as part of a singer-songwriter showcase set up by the Country Music Foundation. The shows’ format had the four musicians performing in the round, with a moderator leading a question-and-answer session with the audience.
“We liked everything about it except the moderator part,” Hiatt recalls, “So we did it the next year without a moderator, and then started doing it once a year for several years.”
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Eventually, he and lifelong Texan Lovett decided do tour as a duo, although Hiatt’s quick to note that Lovett has done duo shows over the years with other musicians, too, including Vince Gill and Robert Earl Keen.
“I only do it with Lyle, but he’ll do it with anyone,” Hiatt jokes, adding, “I’m not jealous, though.”
Over the years, Hiatt’s songs have been recorded by everyone from Bob Dylan to Rosanne Cash to Bonnie Raitt, who brought his “Thing Called Love” to No. 11 on the U.S. charts with her 1989 mega-selling "Nick of Time'' CD.
Hiatt’s most recent album, "My Terms of Surrender,'' was released to raves in 2014.
So, what can fans of these two venerable talents expect to hear at next week's Scottish Rite gig?
Well, Hiatt explains, the evening’s format is basically a non-format: “There is no show; we get up there, we sing, we tell stories.”
It’s “kind of a puzzle” in terms of how each performance plays out, he says, since it’s totally unplanned: “Lyle might sing a song, and I’ll play harmony; or sometimes I’ll sing and he’ll sing along – or he’ll sing and I won’t do anything.”
Hiatt says the intimate onstage vibe harkens back to old-time “guitar pulls” – a tradition unique to country music where several would-be singer-songwriters would gather at a friend's house and take turns singing songs they wrote, or playing old favorites.
“There’s no set list,” Hiatt says, but there is often a “thread that links the songs.” For example, if Lovett does a song about a church, Hiatt might counter with a song about someone who “got killed on their way to church or went to a church to get married.” And, he notes, “there might be the thinnest thread connecting two songs and that thread might be ironic, or juxtaposed, or totally opposed to the theme … it’s kind of a puzzle.”
But, Hiatt says, it’s always fun for both him and Lovett: “Like race car drivers, we’re adrenaline junkies.”
And because there’s no actual plan or set-list, the shows can run quite a while: “Pack some snacks if you need to,” Hiatt jokes.
If you go
John Hiatt and Lyle Lovett perform on Thursday, Jan. 26 at 7:30 p.m. at the Scottish Rite Auditorium, 315 White Horse Pike, in Collingswood. Tickets are: $69.50 to $89.50. Call (856) 858-1000 or visit scottishriteauditorum.com/events