STARPOLISH: He had heard about you?
LANDRETH: Actually there was an album called Way Down in Louisiana -- it's kind of a story...
STARPOLISH: Wasn't that originally released in 81 and then re-released in the 90s?
LANDRETH: Actually, Blues Attack was 81, Way Down in Louisiana was in '85, and like you said it was re-released a couple times since then. But back then, it might have been the summer of 87, basically a record executive for CBS, an A&R guy, heard the album, he took it to his boss, and they called me and I got to know them and they put me in touch with Ray Benson of Asleep at the Wheel — they had called me in to do the session. And Ray put me in touch with John, because at that point it was the end of the summer and John needed a band to support the Bring the Family album because obviously he wasn't going to be doing it with the stellar group he had put together. So that's how we met. I went out to do this audition in Nashville and I got to the audition and told John, "I've never done this before, but I know the kind of band you want to have." So I told him about Dave Ranson on bass and Kenneth (Blevins) on drums. So he said, "Well, come up and we'll do another audition," because they had already been auditioning a lot of bass players and drummers.
STARPOLISH:So you flew up to Nashville?
LANDRETH: So then we flew up to Nashville, we met in an SIR rehearsal hall, and we kicked off with "Memphis in the Meantime." We finished playing the tune and John said, "Cancel all the other auditions, this is the band right here." Because the chemistry was so obvious right on the spot, and we knew we had something special.
STARPOLISH: It's funny, because I loved the album, but couldn't imagine him going out on the road without Ry Cooder on slide and Jim Keltner on drums, and expected to be disappointed. So when I saw the show with the Goners, I was totally surprised how great the songs sounded live.
LANDRETH: Well, to finish the long-winded answer to your question, from that point it took us out of the bar scene, and the next thing I know we are on an international stage, because we played all over the U.S. and Canada for six weeks, then we flew over to Europe for six to seven weeks. Because of the attention he got with that album... it was very much a critic's darling, and the album was very well received, the journalist all jumped on it. And because of who he had on the album — Ry Cooder, Jim Keltner, Nick Lowe — people were coming out to the gigs just to see who he had [playing live]. It was also very much the thing you said, that people didn't expect much since those guys weren't there, but maybe they couldn't help themselves because they were such Hiatt fans. So they came to check it out. In a way, because of Ry playing on the album, it put more of a spotlight on us, and more of a spotlight on me, and it actually helped me.
Article comments
1 - jorge luis
hola