For the audience, John Hiatt was the obvious choice. He’s an old Indiana boy, and though we were in Kentucky, he was clearly on his home turf. Lots of local in-jokes were made and the audience responded in kind.
A few rounds in and Lyle begins interviewing John Hiatt, who is seated to his immediate left. He begins questioning Hiatt on the song and how he wrote it and so forth. It was very kind of odd. Lyle is normally chatty during his shows, but generally its rambling stories and jokes, to see him so earnestly trying to discuss Hiatt’s music was a little peculiar. For his part, Hiatt answered honestly, but seemed kind of weirded out too.
Another round in and Lyle began opening up the interview questions to the rest of the group, and a clearly annoyed Guy Clark responded with a firm, “Who cares?” Lyle took it on the chin and playfully advised that they all cared about Guy. Then jokingly gave up by saying at least he tried to get everyone talking.
It was interesting to watch the performers when they weren’t performing. They had to remain seated in their little chairs right up front on the stage for a good fifteen minutes between the times they would again perform. Clearly it wasn’t always a comfortable position, even while the music was incredible. Lyle was the only one who always remained rapt with attention while the others would slouch and slump waiting their turn. Clark and Ely would often lay their heads down upon their guitars either listening attentively or napping between songs. I would guess the former, for periodically Ely would snap up and lay down a mean lead guitar lick for the other performers.
They all loosened up well throughout the night, and even grumpy old Guy joked and laughed with the others.
It was a wonderful two hours of music, stories and laughter.
Article comments
1 - Mark Saleski
wow, cool show! i'm not so familiar with Clark as with the others. love Joe Ely. the band i used to be in got some special joy out of playing "Everybody Got Hammered"
2 - Mat Brewster
See I know Clark's stuff pretty well, but only know a couple of Ely's tunes (and he didn't play either) but it was really cool to see all those guys up there, playing songs and having fun.
3 - Mark Saleski
ya, i can't imagine a show involving somebody like Hiatt not being fun.
4 - El Bicho
So where did you post the torrent of the show?
5 - Mat Brewster
Believe me I was looking around for tapers. But it was in one of those nice auditorium type places there were all sort of notices about taping and photographing not being allowed, so those big mics would have been noticed.
I do have a copy of these four performing several years ago you might persuade me to send you. This will, of course, rely on my ability to actually find it in my unorganized collection, and your ability to send the shows you promised weeks ago.
6 - Connie Phillips
Congrats! This article has been forwarded to the Advance.net websites.
7 - Loyal to Lyle
We saw the N.M. round of this show. Agree it was wonderful. But not your remark on Lyle interviewing Hiatt about his song (the horse song, right?). That was hysterical, in a distinctly Lovett, understated way. And Clark wasn't annoyed, just playing the straight guy. How could you miss that?
8 - Mat Brewster
He looked kind of annoyed to me at the time. Maybe you're right and he was just playing along. It was a great show either way.