When the first guitar strains of his solo acoustic performance sounded Wednesday evening at the Lexington Opera House, John Hiatt broke into a grin. It was an immediate reaction to another reaction – specifically, the audience verbally and enthusiastically recognizing the intro to “Drive South.” Who knows what was actually darting through Hiatt’s head at the moment, but a likely guess might be a touch of joy over a fanbase immediately cheering on a 36-year old song as if it were greeting an old friend.
Granted, that’s the raison d’etre of any live performance, to discover a kinship between artist and audience. As such, the 19 songs pulled from over four decades of Hiatt recordings to make up the 95-minute concert thoroughly sealed such a bond. Some were whimsical, other starkly vulnerable and a few treacherously dark. But in this solo setting, all of them have aged well, from the summery “All the Lilacs in Ohio” to the decidedly autumnal “What Do We Do Now.”
Much of that had to do with the songs’ narrative flow. That, along with a considerable amount of audience familiarity, sparked such well-established Hiatt works as the domestically euphoric “Slow Turning” and its simple but arresting accessibility (“I always thought our house was haunted ‘cause nobody said ‘boo’ to me”). But Hiatt’s own sense of place in a slow turning world also contributed to how appealing such music sounded at the Opera House.
With his 72nd birthday approaching in August, age played into both the sentiments and physicality of his performance. His vocal tone sounded thinner and more whispery, but not necessarily less frail than in past Lexington concert visits. As with Emmylou Harris’ wonderful outing at the Kentucky Theatre in May, Hiatt used the creases of his voice to accentuate a sagely demeanor for some of his finest songs.
An exquisite example: “Take It Down,” a deep cut from Hiatt’s 2000 album “Crossing Muddy Waters.” It’s a breakup song with stark, devastating imagery (“Take everything that we have, take it and burn it to the ground; some things were never meant to last; take it down, down, down”). On Wednesday, Hiatt’s weathered singing and the song’s deliberate, mournful pace became a startling piece of performance art.
There was also the fact that the Opera House show completed Hiatt’s first concert run after a hiking accident last fall left him with lacerations and a skull fracture. He used an onstage prompter on Wednesday to assist with lyrics, but appeared fully focused throughout the show. The very few instances when lyrics got jumbled, Hiatt let loose with another grin and confidently moved on.
While the bulk of the performance wasn’t that sobering, its most impactful moments came when Hiatt veered off familiar footpaths onto darker side roads, as in “Like a Freight Train,” a fine, forgotten work from a fine, forgotten album (2010’s “The Open Road”). Here, the hurt went far deeper than a busted romance. It portrayed a life of regret expressed in frighteningly dismissive terms. “Was top dead center, baby. Now my motor’s gone soft,” Hiatt sang with world-weary detachment. “I used to roll through here like a freight train. Now my wheel’s come off.”
If all this sounds like a downer evening, be assured it wasn’t. Hiatt’s more affirmative tunes are also his most popular. Still, the sun shone through on these songs from different angles, whether it was the playfully mournful rockers’ lament “Perfectly Good Guitar,” the aptly warm and humid comfort piece “Feels Like Rain” or the two tunes from 1987’s “Bring the Family” that jump started Hiatt’s career – “Thing Called Love” and “Have a Little Faith Me.” Both were served as encores.
In fact, two of the most openly emotive moments in the performance came not from the music, but from between-song stories Hiatt shared about visits with his granddaughter. The first was his impersonation of her discovering how to play harmonica. His reproduced sounds that mimicked an accordion on endless repeat. The second was touching and whimsical, just as so many of Hiatt’s songs are. He recounted how his granddaughter burst into tears when having to leave following a visit to his home. All’s well that ended well, however. “Her folks got her back to the car. She was over it in a heartbeat.”
The Musical Box 