CONCERT PREVIEW
John Hiatt. Opening for Tedeschi Trucks Band. 7 p.m., Sept. 12. $39.50-$79.50. Chastain Park Amphitheatre, 4469 Stella Drive, Atlanta. 404-733-4949, classicchastain.com.
John Hiatt isn’t one of those musicians who works out full arrangements for songs in his head or on demo recordings as he writes music.
As he sees it, too much planning misses the whole point.
“I don’t do demos anymore,” Hiatt said in a recent phone interview. “I sing them into a little voice recorder thing on my iPad just so I can remember them. And then I just wait until it’s time to make a record and record them.
“All I ever hear in my head is the song,” he said. “I don’t really have any kind of, you know, imagined arrangement or how it should go. My whole delight in recording is to see what’s going to happen when people start playing them. That’s the exciting thing to me. That’s what I call making music. … I know a lot of people have symphonies in their heads, but … I don’t want to hear what’s in my head. I want to hear something magic and new and fresh and wonderful.”
For his new album, “Terms of My Surrender,” Hiatt took that spontaneous approach to a new level — to the point that the record started to get made before anyone could call what was happening an album.
It all started when Hiatt contacted his touring guitarist, Doug Lancio.
“I had just written this batch of songs and I was talking to Doug,” Hiatt said. “And Doug had a studio over in East Nashville for a long while, and … I said, ‘How ’bout I come over and we just record some stuff?’ … I said, ‘I’ve got these songs. Let’s get the guys (from the band) over and we’ll just try some.”
After cutting a few songs, Hiatt said, “I said ‘This is good. So let’s just keep going.’ That’s kind of how it happened.”
Lancio ended up taking on production duties for “Terms of My Surrender,” released July 15. Hiatt and his band (Lancio, drummer Kenneth Blevins and bassist Nathan Gehri — plus keyboardist John Coleman on several tracks) created an album that contrasts notably with Hiatt’s previous release, “Mystic Pinball.” That 2012 album primarily featured plugged-in, rocking tunes that made the most of Hiatt’s melodic gifts.
“Terms of My Surrender,” though, is stripped-back and bluesy, with songs anchored around Hiatt’s vocals and acoustic guitar.
A folksier kind of album is nothing new for Hiatt. Along with rocking albums like 1987’s superlative “Bring the Family,” 1993’s “Perfectly Good Guitar” and “Mystic Pinball,” there have been more acoustic, rough-hewn efforts like 1995’s “Walk On,” 2000’s “Crossing Muddy Waters” and 2011’s “Dirty Jeans and Mudslide Hymns.”
Hiatt pointed to “Crossing Muddy Waters” as the album that most closely resembles what he created on “Terms of My Surrender.” But even then, the new album isn’t a repeat of that release.
On “Terms of My Surrender,” Hiatt’s vocals sit decidedly up front in the mix, giving the album an intimacy he’s never quite achieved before.
Hiatt also sings in a lower register than on any previous album. The tone gives these sharply written songs a lived-in quality that makes them feel that much more authentic.
Hiatt said he’s trying to work several new songs into his live shows — something that isn’t easy with a catalog that now numbers 22 albums.
He’s also limited by a shorter set because he’s opening for the Tedeschi Trucks Band when he plays Chastain Park Amphitheatre Sept. 12.
“We worked up a bunch of the new songs and we worked up some stuff we hadn’t played in a few tours. So we want to put new stuff in,” Hiatt said. “It’s a shorter set … so that’s a bit of a challenge. I’ve just got too many damn songs, that’s all.”
