All songs written by John Hiatt So Not That Music (BMI) Administered by Songs of Kobalt
Produced by Jerry Douglas
Recorded and Mixed by Sean William Sullivan
Mixing Assistance by Neal Cappellino
Recorded at RCA Studio B and The Squirrel Nest in Nashville, TN
Mixed at The Doghouse in Nashville, TN
Mastered by Paul Blakemore
Management by Ken Levitan for John Hiatt and Brian Penix for Jerry Douglas at Vector Management
Booking by ICM Partners for John Hiatt and High Road Touring for Jerry Douglas
Photography: Patrick Sheehan
Art Direction and Design: Jordan Fann and LaRon Stewart
John Hiatt would like to thank: My wife, family and friends. Ken Levitan and Vector, Rob Prinz and all at ICM, Jay Wright, Nikki Wheeler, Brandon Zmigrocki, Everyone at New West Records, All at FBMM, Wes Dooley at AEA. A very special thanks to Jerry Douglas. And thanks to all for listening over the years
Jerry Douglas would like to thank: Jill, Ken Levitan and Brian Penix at Vector Management, Paul Beard at Beard Guitars, Jason DuMont, Jeff Hanna, Lagan Sebert, D'Addario Strings, Donnie Wade at Fender Guitars, Tom Spaulding at Fishman Electronics, Brian Jonas and Frank Riley at High Road Touring, and Modern Music Masters.
A very special thanks to Kyle Young, Peter Cooper, Justin Croft, and everyone at The Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum and RCA Studio B.
Promovideo's Leftover Feelings
John Hiatt with The Jerry Douglas Band - "Mississippi Phone Booth" [Official Video]
John Hiatt with The Jerry Douglas Band - Long Black Electric Cadillac [Official Video]
John Hiatt with The Jerry Douglas Band - "All The Lilacs In Ohio" [Official Video]
John Hiatt with The Jerry Douglas Band - "I'm In Asheville" [Official Video]
John Hiatt & Jerry Douglas live at Paste Studio on the Road: Nashville
Press sheet
In the midst of a global pandemic, John Hiatt walked into Historic RCA Studio B and opened up a lifetime full of leftover feelings.
“I was immediately taken back to 1970, when I got to Nashville,” said Hiatt, who was at the studio to record with Dobro master Jerry Douglas and Douglas’s band. “You can’t not be aware of the records that were made there . . . Elvis, the Everly Brothers, Waylon Jennings doing ‘Only Daddy That’ll Walk the Line.’ But all that history wasn’t intimidating, because it’s such a comfortable place to make music.”
A half-century ago, Hiatt lived in a ratty, $15-a-week room on Nashville’s 16th Avenue, less than a mile away from the RCA and Columbia studios that were the heartbeat of what had come to be known as “Music Row.”
In the ensuing 50 years, he went from a scuffling young buck to a celebrated grand master of song. His lyrics and melodies have graced more than 20 studio albums, have been recorded by Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris, B.B. King, Willie Nelson, Bonnie Raitt and scores of others, and have earned him a place in the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, a BMI Troubadour award, and a lifetime achievement in songwriting designation from the Americana Music Association.
He and wife Nancy live in a nicer neighborhood now, just out of town and within walking distance of Douglas, who reinvented the Dobro and is responsible for bringing the instrument to popular presence in modern times. Douglas has performed on more than 1,500 albums by artists including Ray Charles, George Jones, Alison Krauss, Earl Scruggs, and James Taylor, and none of those works sound a bit like this collaboration with Hiatt.
Leftover Feelings is neither a bluegrass album nor a return to Hiatt’s 1980s days with slide guitar greats Ry Cooder and Sonny Landreth, though Douglas’s opening riff on “Long, Black Electric Cadillac” nods to Landreth’s charged intro to “Tennessee Plates,” Hiatt’s epic tale of heisting Elvis Presley’s Cadillac, a car that was surely purchased with proceeds from some of the 250-plus songs the King recorded at Studio B.
There’s no drummer, yet these grooves are deep and true. And while the up-tempo songs are, as ever, filled with delightful internal rhyme and sly aggression, the Jerry Douglas Band’s empathetic musicianship nudges Hiatt to performances that are startlingly vulnerable. Built when Hiatt was five-years-old, Studio B was designed for music to be made in real time by musicians listening to each other and reacting in the emotional moment. That’s what happened here: Five players on the studio floor, making decisions on instinct rather than calculation.
All this is made possible, of course, by Hiatt’s songs, one of which — “Music is Hot” — mentions the Studio B recording of Waylon Jennings singing “Only Daddy That’ll Walk the Line.” The lyrics are explorations of individual experiences — family, loss, tough redemption, and long-term love — in which Hiatt reveals the universal.
The album answers the question Hiatt posed thirty years ago in “Listening to Old Voices”: “Is it true we are possessed by all the ones we leave behind, or is it by their lives we are inspired?”
The answer is “Yes.”
Those lives are musical ones, as recorded in the studio where he and Douglas gathered to extend a legacy. And they are deeply personal ones, as detailed in “Light of the Burning Sun,” about the suicide of Hiatt’s eldest brother, and the resulting dissolution of his family.
“My father screamed, ‘No,’ and beat on the wall/ Shook the foundations of the house, shook the life out of us all,” he sings, in the most straightforward and sober vocal of his career.
“It’s just the story,” Hiatt said. “With that, the family just blew a gasket. It’s a part of who I am, and part of what I’ve been working through, all these years. Again, it’s just the story. Like Guy Clark said, ‘You can’t make this shit up.’”
Leftover feelings that will remain unresolved, no matter how often explored. Explicated in a place of history, a place of comfort. A sacred place, if you believe the documentation of human expression to be a holy thing.
Here, then, is a meeting of bruised and triumphant American giants. Here are Hiatt and Douglas, creating the meant-to-be: Love songs and road songs, sly songs and hurt songs.
Their songs, and now our songs. Leftover feelings that edify and sustain.
Lyrics Leftover Feelings
Long Black Electric Cadillac
I got a long black electric Cadillac She run a thousand miles on a jump (x2) I'm runnin' subterranean air conditioning And full electron photo array in my trunk
And when I'm headin out west just to see ya Only have to stop twice along the way (x2) Once to get my groceries And once to charge up my engine bay
I been running artificial intelligence Ever since i was a little boy (x2) I been hacked to bits and pieces But they couldn't touch my pride and joy
I got a big black electric Cadillac I can drive from the back to right up front (x2) Electric fireplace sitting on the dashboard Can warm your heart anyway you want
Was talkin to elected official He was saying something so obscene (x2) Had to run it on down to Jackson Just to keep my motor clean (That's what I had to do)
Mississippi Phone Booth
Mississippi phone booth In the middle of the night Bugs flyin' everywhere Crazy in the gas station light
Heart pounding through my t-shirt Pumping change in a call to you Mississippi phone booth Operator could you get me through
Flat black 84 Camaro Run it up from New Orleans Everything south of I-10 I just blew it all to smithereens
I'm somewhere close to Jackson I need Memphis on the line Mississippi phone booth Tell Jesus I'm outta dimes
Quart of vodka eight ball cocaine Not enough to change my mind Mississippi phone booth Please don't hang up on me this time
I'm running straight outta time
The Music Is Hot
Sheets dance on the line White as the clouds gone by Screen door kicking time As kids melt into the shine
And you're making your moves Trying just to stay alive The music is hot
WSM On your transistor radio A song about trains You can hear that whistle blow
Waylon walks the line Merle's mama tries to tell him so The music is hot
You got a story 'bout twenty miles long You got a tune like a number one song You got the sweat like the shirt off my back You got the heart let me open it a crack
Fiddles and steel takin you higher Passed cotton fields and telephone wires Out to the church and the gospel choir And you're gone
Sun going down You're scrounging to feed the dog You're wearing a dress You saw in a catalog
The crickets have started To sing with those old bull frogs The music is hot
You tuck in the kids And think of a nice long bath You notice your mom Staring back from a photograph
Quick as you turn You're pretty sure you hear her laugh The music is hot
You got a story 'bout twenty miles long You got a tune like a number one song You got the sweat like the shirt off my back You got the heart let me open it a crack
Fiddles and steel takin' you higher Passed cotton fields and telephone wires Beyond the church and the gospel choir And you're gone
All The Lilacs In Ohio
You met her there, on a New York City stair You were throwing up on your shoes Tryin' to write the great book, well it really had you shook With a bad case of wintertime blues
So you dragged her down to the ragged side of town Shared a taxi to carry her home Then she left her handkerchief there beside you on the seat As if to emphasize that you were all alone
It smelled like springtime and you were just a boy And all the lilacs in Ohio All the lilacs in Ohio. There ya go. In the city streets and the dirty winter snow All the lilacs in Ohio - hio.
She is the love story you speak of When you talk to Sam at the bar But it's in the details your story often fails Yeah, close, but no cigar
And you might see your own ass in a double whiskey glass But you'll never erase her smile And you'll never write it down, never find her in this town Of phantom dreams and fingernail files
It was springtime, and you were just a boy And all the lilacs in Ohio All the lilacs in Ohio. There ya go In city streets and the dirty winter snow All the lilacs in Ohio - hio
So you pin her handkerchief to clean white linen sheets And you unmake your bed and crawl in You imagine her there and you're tangled in her hair And she smells like flowers again
And it's springtime, and you were just a boy All the lilacs in Ohio All the lilacs in Ohio. There ya go In the city streets and the dirty winter snow All the lilacs in Ohio - hio
I'm In Asheville
I'm in Asheville, I'm sorry I guess I dropped the ball In this game we were playing I thought I'd given it my all
Just to get us back to zero Or on Some scorecard anyhow I'm in Asheville, I'm sorry For throwing in the towel
As sunlight rode the mountain And the rain chased me down I could feel the heat from your face I almost turned around
There's some things you can't come back from If there's some things you won't go through I'm in Asheville I'm sorry I wanted this with you
On a road I never traveled To a place I've never been From these leftover feelings A vision of you comes up again
And your dancin' by the radio In some hotel room in my mind And I'm in Asheville and I'm sorry Forever leaving you behind
I'm in Asheville I'm sorry For leaving you behind
Light Of The Burning Sun
The message was sent The task was done Prayers offered up in the night Faced the light of the burning sun
My brother was dead By his own hand A gun in the glove box 'Cause he carried money For the old man
They say he gambled Friday's payroll Found him in his car In a cornfield Twenty one years old
He wanted to own His own clothing store Dressed like sam cooke With the catholic girls In his Fair lane Ford
Doing his job Doing his best Selling burnt orange And avocado green kitchens All across the midwest
The favored one Me and my brothers all knew My mother loved him more Than she knew What to do
The message was sent The truth to tell The officer tried to catch her As she wept and fell
My father screamed no And beat on the wall Shook the foundations of the house Shook the life out of us all
The priest came by Undeterred There to explain The unexplainable With god's word
The message was sent A family gone The death of a golden child And nothing left To carry on
The message was sent The task was done Prayers offered up in the night Faced the light of the burning sun
Little Goodnight
Jimmy met Mary on the Fourth of July Independence Day you shoulda' seen her brown eyes She came up from behind and stared tugging on his coat uh-huh When his fireworks blew she was pushing like a tug boat
Nine months later they had a little sprite She was pretty as a sunset they named her Little Goodnight Now Little Goodnight she couldn't sleep too well uh-uh Every night half the neighborhood could hear Jim and Mary tell her
They said, go to sleep baby don't cry Count sheep your mother and I Can't keep it up If we don't get some sleep
Good night Little Good night Little Good night
Little good night started staying up a lot With her big baby blues wide open like a rim shot Jim and Mary thought parenthood was 'sposed to be a joy uh-huh Started thinking bad thoughts started acting kinda paranoid
Well they took her to the doctor they took her to the nurse There we potions recommended just like it was some kinda curse Jim and Mary loved Little Goodnight so much uh-huh But without those REMs they felt like they were losing touch
They said, go to sleep baby don't cry Count sheep your mother and I Can't keep it up If we don't get some sleep
Good night Little Good night Little Good night
You'll have school one of these days And children of your own to raise In casual or business dress we have high hopes for you But Little Goodnight first you'll need some rest
Now there's a woman on the street she's dancing on a blanket Clutching a portable tape deck she's just about to crank it She's listening to a song by miss Diana Ross uh-huh Singing "Dreams can come true" Jim and Mary keep their fingers crossed
They said, go to sleep baby don't cry Count sheep your mother and I Can't keep it up If we don't get some sleep
Good night Little Good night Little Good night Little Good night Little Good night
Buddy Boy
Buddy boy Your feet are always headin' west Your mind is lyin' in the weeds Your heart is stompin' on your chest Come down off your high horse Why don't you just give it a rest Buddy boy, buddy boy
Hey buddy boy You just keep doin' what you do You're gonna wake up some mornin' Won't be no one 'round you You'll be talkin to four walls And one be talkin' back to you Buddy boy, buddy boy
Oh buddy boy Don't care how much you know yourself, You can't think your way outta this one You're gonna need some help
Buddy boy Now who is givin' who the slip Love is your destination But your always on some kinda trip
Buddy boy You think she's messin' with your head But you better stop your ramblin' Come home and sleep in your own bed Before she gets tired of waitin' for ya And someone's sleepin' there instead
Hey buddy The river she run up hill You don't think you're gonna make it But I think you will Forget the dreams you wasted Forget the time you killed Hey buddy boy, hey buddy boy
Changes In My Mind
I'm sleeping in a fog and I'm driving a dirty car Through the nightmares in my mind I'm hitting all the puzzle pieces Of the lifetimes you and I have left behind
It's not like I'm goin' somewhere Tracking back cross burned out bridges To become the man I thought i'd be For you and me
I wake up as it clears and I feel to hold you near And in your heart I find Changes in my mind Changes in my mind
If I could not break from all these thoughts that I mistake For things I ought to do Shoot my mouth off, break the levee Sink down twenty thousand leagues into a sea black blue
'Cause everybody knows that I'm a fool But your the only one who knows me better Better to know that better's all we get Baby, you bet.
And as I disappear and I feel to hold you near It's in your heart I find Changes in my mind Changes in my mind
Like a cloud that gets away on one boys endless summer day Well that's how I think of you As I journey out cross hill and dale but it's too late cause all the while you've disappeared view
And in my dream the moon comes up As darkness draws across the valley Like someone's taking x- rays of my heart The broken part
Then morning comes so clear And as I feel to hold you near It's in your heart I find Changes in my mind Changes in my mind
Then morning comes so clear And as I feel to hold you near It's in your heart I find Changes in my mind Changes in my mind
Keen Rambler
He's a keen rambler Walks all over town Walks all over town Mornin' til the sun goes down He's a keen rambler
Two three miles in the mornin' Walking to the early church Walk his children to school Then he's walking to work
Never did care for the buggy Never could ride no horse Never got goin no motorcar Like that natural force
He's a keen rambler Walk all over town Walk all over town Walking this country down He's a keen rambler
Going to get her flowers Walking to the birthday store Sweet to eat like candy Always just a little bit more
She's a sweet little rolla Roll him when the sun go down Wake him up with a coffee cup He rambles all over this town
He's a keen rambler Walks all over town Walks all over town Mornin' til the sun goes down He's a keen rambler
He's a keen rambler Walk all over town Walk all over town Walking this country down He's a keen rambler
Sweet Dream
Eating honey from the Catskills And I thought about you Haven't been in that neck of the woods Guess I'm long overdue
Getting hard to leave this hollow My family's been two hundred years Oh, but let me go a little while Until this sweet dream disappears
I was up on Bear mountain Hitchhiking in the dark Not a headlight for hours Things were looking pretty stark
Now I think about that starry night And my eyes well up with tears Oh let me cry a little while until this sweet dream disappears
Got a ride with a shoe salesman He said I never come this way Every since they built the new road Don't know why I did today
Getting harder to travel It gets harder every year But it only takes a little while until this sweet dream disappears
Slept one time in New Jersey By the side of the road And I thought about your warm heart As I shivered in the cold
Now I've stayed in fancy hotels With crystal chandeliers Let me stay here for a little while until this sweet dream disappears
Eating honey from the Catskills And I thought about you Haven't been in that neck of the woods Guess I'm long overdue
We were a long time together And I've kept your memory near Let me go there for a little while Until this sweet dream disappears
