“It kind of came together in a serendipitous fashion,” Hiatt says of his 23rd studio album, recorded during 2017 solar eclipse ,
Aces up Your Sleeve
Hiatt recorded the album in Nashville over the course of just a few days in the summer of 2017, which happened to include the full solar eclipse that took place on August 21st. Never one to ignore the good fortune of a successful recording session, Hiatt titled the album after the otherworldly natural wonder.
Cry To Me
Though Hiatt knew it was nearing time to release new material, he didn’t feel rushed, and went into the recording session with an open mind and a blank notebook. “It kind of came together in a serendipitous fashion,” he tells Rolling Stone Country. “It took me a little bit of time to get to this one. We actually recorded it last summer [2017]. But the way it happened, I was not sure what kind of recording I wanted to do, to be honest with you. I was thinking about doing a solo record, just me and acoustic guitar. So I didn’t really have a plan, in other words.”
All The Way To The River
“It was the day after my
birthday, just coincidentally,” he says. “I hate naming records and
never know what to call them, so I thought, ‘Oh, The Eclipse Sessions.
That’ll work.’ But it seemed to fit the mood.”
Hiatt was joined in the
studio by longtime drummer Kenneth Blevins and bassist Patrick O’Hearn,
the three shooting for a stripped-down trio sound that would accentuate
Hiatt’s vocals and distinct style of guitar playing. They recorded the
album at the home recording studio of Kevin McKendree, with an
engineering assist from McKendree’s musical whiz-kid son Yates. By the
time the group finished a batch of 15 songs, Hiatt knew he had a new
album on his hands.
“They just started sounding
so good,” he says. “I felt like we’d made some really good music. The
songs started hanging together. That’s when you start to feel like it
might be worth other folks hearing, like you’ve got something that can
connect with people. People used to ask Guy Clark, ‘When do you feel
like it’s time to make a record?’ And he’d say, ‘Well, it’s when you
feel like you have 10 good songs.’ So it’s kind of like that. You go in
and you start recording, and when they start falling in place and
hanging together, it starts to sound like a record.
By BRITTNEY MCKENNA - Rolling Stone Counthttp://www.johnhiatt.com/index.html
