Q: The song we just heard, I Know a Place, sounds like it was recorded live. How was Tiki Bar produced? Spontaneously and was it kind of a live deal for a lot of it?

A: You know, it was very much live. I mean, we've kind…I've made -- what is this, my 18th record? And I've kind of established that as sort of my approach. You know, I like to go in and just capture a moment. I Know a Place was 100 percent live. And it sounds like it. It sounds like a jam. And you know all my little asides in there, like, "All right, Sonny, tell 'em about it," I mean, that's, that's what I do on stage if I want him to take a solo, you know. And bringing it down with Kenneth later on, you know. I mean Jay Joyce, who produced it, great guy and a great musician. He's from Cleveland so we connect on that sort of Midwest kind of knucklehead level. And he would -- you know, he would set the stage typically. Like, either he'd come up with some goofy damn loop, you know, and, well, where does this put you. And then we'd play to that. And something would come out. I know the first song on the record, we actually recorded it faster than you hear it and in a different key. And we slowed the tape down (laughs)! And it's still pretty fast so. Just a couple little tweaks and things like that.

Q: Your last album, "Crossing Muddy Waters", nominated for a Grammy for best contemporary folk album. Pretty simple production wise...

A: Yeah, very.

Q: How do you decide whether one of your songs is going to get an acoustic setting or an electric setting?

A: You know, with that record, we set up the project... It was really me and Ken Levitan my manager just sort of sitting around going, "Well, what kind of record should we...?" "Hey, how about an acoustic record?" I'd never really done that. And I like the idea of making it with no drums, because I'd actually played shows with Davy Farragher and Dave Immergluck, the two guys that made the record with me. We'd actually played as a trio. So it was really just an opportunity to catch that band on tape... like that and that style.

Q: The next song I wanted to play from Tiki Bar sounded to me like it could have been on "Crossing Muddy Waters" if you gave it a different reading. All the Lilacs in Ohio.

A: Yeah, it's -- a lot of these things are interchangeable, you know. Yeah, it could have just as easily have been a folk song.

Q: John, I couldn't tell if that song was a character study or a first-person remembrance. Is it okay with you if the listener doesn't get the song right away?

A: Oh, sure. You know, it's fiction, you know, this stuff. So I like that idea. I think Flannery O'Connor, the great author, said the idea behind fiction is to open up the possibilities. It's not to pinpoint anything, it's to, it's to open up all kinds of possibilities. And so, yeah, it can mean different things to different people. I actually swiped the title from one of my favorite movies, Lost Weekend. I don't know who the director was, but Ray Miland was in it. And it was a story of -- he was trying to write the great book, which I also mention in the song. The great love story. In his character was a drunk and a writer. You know - what an odd combination. But the movie was sort of about his struggles, you know, with the bottle and his muse. But at one point he's talking to Joe, the bartender, and he says, "You know, Joe, you try to write about love. It's so hard because you've got to get the details right." He said like, "She's going to meet you for lunch one day and she can't make it, but she sends you a note of regret. And you open it up and it smells like all the lilacs in Ohio." So --

Q: Now, wait a minute, you said this stuff is fiction? Because I thought every word on every John Hiatt record was straight from you, man.

A: No, it's -- you know, I'm in there. My friends -- you be careful, Jody, you might be in there. You know, it's all -- it's like -- I kind of liken it to -- it's like I collect shrapnel, you know, from being - from taking hits being alive, as we all do. And it seems like when you write these songs, the music kind of shakes loose one or more pieces of that shrapnel and then you have a story all of a sudden.

Q: Well, speaking of the music, I think we have to file All the Lilacs in Ohio, at least in this rendition, under punk bluegrass.

A: Swamp-clash is what we called it.

Q: And Sonny Landreth is playing some sort of Chinese guitar.

A: Is that whacked or what? Yeah, he went off. He was playing my Telecaster on that song. You know, it's real kind of -- if you listen, it's really like that accordion music from the Cajun stuff. Just on hyper-speed and played on electric guitar.

Q: It's frantic.

A: Yeah.

Q: And so I'm feeling like you weren't creatively stifled by the corporate music bullies.

A: There weren't any of them guys around.

Q: I mean, you've outlived at least a couple of your former labels.

A: Yeah, there's more than one that's gone down the tubes since I've been around. But they always seem to surface with another company.

Q: But now you're with the independent label Vanguard. Does that mean no suits trying to get you to write a hit that sounds like the flavor of the month?

A: Well, you know, not to go suit bashing, because I don't think it's really fair. I think these guys and gals are just trying to, you know, get a record on, to use the David Bowie line. And a lot of times, I've gotten good advice over the years. I've gotten a lot of bad advice. It's just the difference of working with people trying to influence you and working with nobody trying to influence you. And for me, at this stage in my musical life, this works so much better to just be able to put out the kind of records I want to put out, when I want to put them out. And it just works out so much better for me.

Q: And for a lot of people I think it's a brave new world. Because you can actually make money from a record that doesn't sell six million copies.

A: Well, yeah, I mean, part of what happened in the corporatizing of the music business, is that it opened up the door for sort of the smaller concerns. And the artists, the sort of midline, if you will, artists who can go out and sell 100,000 or 200 or 300 or 400. Even up to a gold record, you know, the major labels aren't really interested in, because -- I guess because their overhead and the way they're set up. You know, if you don't sell a million or two, you're not happening. So I think it's created an opportunity. It created a vacuum. That's where all these new -- well, Vanguard's not new but they've certainly stepped up to the plate and been more visible than they have in a while. You know, they were able to step up and fill the vacuum.

Q: I think the music lovers benefit.

A: Totally.

Q: I mean, take a record like "Crossing Muddy Waters", your last record. How many major labels would want to put out a record with just a songwriter and no rhythm section? On "Muddy Waters", it seemed like you were casting your domestic situation in a down cycle. Of course, I know it's all fiction.

A: Yeah.

Q: And then on "Tiki Bar", there's love songs like Hanging Round Here, Rock of Your Love. It makes it seems like everything's cool with the family.

A: Well, I had to write -- I had to come out with this with those up positive love songs. You know my wife was getting ready to change the locks on the door.

Barbara Misle, KLBJ's Jeff Carrol, Vanguard Records' Art Phillips, John Hiatt, KGSR's Jody Denberg, Barbara Koonce

Q: There's one new song that's somewhere in between. It's called Something Broken in my Heart. Seems to be happy and sad at the same time. Am I on the right track here?

A: Well I wrote that song, I was over in Amsterdam. We were doing some shows. It was about '98, I think when I wrote that song. And I was -- we were staying in a hotel for a week and doing shows -- you know, Holland's a tiny country. So we were doing a show up in northern Holland and then driving back and staying -- camping out in Amsterdam. And it was right on Dam Square, which is sort of the red light district. And so there were like drug dealers underneath my window and, y'know...It's all very innocuous compared to the States because nobody's armed. So it's a little different scene. But - so I just kind of got a little dark. For a moment.

Q: John, talking to the press has become a big part of a musician's job. And you kind of turned the tables for a while, because you were hosting the PBS TV show "Sessions at West 54th" and interviewing musicians. Did you learn anything about this task we're engaged in right now?

A: Well, I totally learned what a tough job it is. I have a complete new respect for you guys in radio that have to do interviews or any journalists, because it's hard. It's hard work. You have to do your homework. You have to know what you're talking about. And yet you never feel like you really do...

Q: There was one interview I saw you do on the TV show with Ziggy Marley. And he's speaking of the wonders of marijuana to you. And you're someone who's been a teetotaler for almost a couple of decades. And that brings us to the title of your new album. "The Tiki Bar is Open". First, what is a Tiki bar?

A: Well, I think the whole thing kind of -- the song came out of a trip I took last February during speed weeks down to Daytona. I race in a little division called Pro Challenge. It's a scale car. It's a three-quarter size car. They look like Winston Cup cars, but they're three-quarter the size. And they ran us a weeks worth of races at a little track in Belucia County, Florida, which is just about 20 miles west of Daytona. So in February, I drove down with my race car and spent the week down there. And I've never been to Daytona Beach. When I was kid growing up, Daytona, that was like uttered like -- you're talking about going to my sweet Abyssinian home or -- you know, what I mean, Mecca or something. Going to Dayton was like it. And so I got there. I was just so taken with the place. All these little Mom and Pop hotels. Just things from my childhood that were still in tact. Bits of Americana that hadn't been totally neutered out of existence or turned into a "Par Mart", if you know what I mean. So I was really taken with the place.

Also, driving I'm down Interstate 95 going to my hotel the first night. And there's people pulled off to the side of the road. And I'm wondering, what is this all about? And I look up in the sky and the shuttle's been launched. And it was right at sunset. It was the most spectacular sight I've ever seen in my life. I pulled over. I started crying. The only other time I pulled off the road and started crying was when Elvis died. So I was really moved by this whole thing.

Well, so I started writing the song when I was there. Oh, I know! I drove by one of these little Mom and Pop hotels. And there was a sign that said, The Tiki Bar is Open. And I immediately thought, Thank God. Thank God it's not whatever the local chain restaurant, you know. Yes, the Tiki Bar is still open. Thank you very much. We're holding on! Yeah, we've still got the funk and you come on in. And so that's really how it all -- I started singing that line, you know, "Thank God, the Tiki Bar is open. Thank God a Tiki torch still shines." I kept singing that over and over. It was like a gospel chant. And I went back to the room that night and started writing the song. Then I got home -- I came home. I was finished racing two days before the actual Daytona 500, the big race. And I got home, turned on my TV to watch the race and, of course, Dale Ernheart gets killed on the last lap, which broke my heart, along with millions of other people. And so that's the verse about Dale Ernheart in the song.

Q: You do deal with your own sobriety in the song. You make mention of it. I was wondering how you deal with the fact that you're someone who doesn't drink and yet you make your living playing in places where they make their money selling alcohol.

A: Well, that was sort of the other inside joke of this song. The fact is, yeah, when I was six months sober, I had to go back to work. And you know, guess what? We work in bars, we work around people who take drugs and drink and everything else. So it's just something I've had to deal with. I wouldn't have it any other way. I mean. some of my best friends are drunks, you know, sober or otherwise.