Bobby Edwards drives tour buses for rock royalty, logging 26 years, 280 bands, and 3.4 million miles on the road.

By Bill Ramsey | April 19, 2012
The Pulse | Chattanooga’s Weekly Alternative

More than 30 years ago, Bobby Edwards was working at Memorial Auditorium in Chattanooga unloading gear for touring bands visiting town. One of those bands, Southern rock titans 38 Special—a particular favorite of Edwards’, who is also a musician—came to perform at the peak of their fame. He was a big fan of the band and remembers his first encounter with lead singer Donnie Van Zant.

“Like any teenager, I was in awe of rock stars,” Edwards says, “so I was very excited about seeing 38 Special and getting the chance to meet them.”

It would not be his last encounter with the “Wild-Eyed Southern Boys.” For almost a decade now, Edwards, a 1981 graduate of Hixson High School, has been the group’s tour bus driver, delivering the band—still “Rocking into the Night” after almost 40 years together—to clubs, fairgrounds and arenas across North America.

“I’ve told that story to Donnie. Of course, he doesn’t remember me from then, but he still gets a laugh out of it,” Edwards says during a brief break during a Chattanooga stop-over from the band’s current tour. “Who would have thought a 17-year-old kid who first met a band in his hometown would be driving their tour bus 30 years later.”

Edwards has been 38 Special’s tour bus driver for eight years, but he’s also driven buses for almost every chart-topping music act in a driving career that spans 26 years and almost 4 million miles. Indeed, Edwards’ driving career-span rivals—sometimes exceeds—the longevity of the bands he has driven.

For Edwards, it’s more lifestyle than business. He is on the road most of the year, crisscrossing the country in one of several custom tour buses, an exhausting but satisfying job he says, that has given him front-row access to some of music biggest stars. With a sterling reputation (not one accident), a massive mile count and an easy-going personality, it’s no wonder the soft-spoken Edwards is an in-demand—and perhaps the most trusted—tour bus driver in the country.

And while he’s one of the many unsung heroes behind the scenes of the music-touring industry, Edwards is also an invaluable asset and even “family” to such bands as 38 Special, who count on his endurance and skills to deliver them safely—and on time—to venues all over the country.

Edwards’ journey behind the wheel of touring music caravans began in the mid 1980s. The son of a musical family, he moved to Nashville after graduating from UTC in 1986 to chase his own dream of a music career. Solid and talented as a bass player, Edwards’ professionalism and reliability (a factor not unnoticed in a world of egos and debauchery) set him apart. Because of his background as a stage hand, he also had enormous respect for the crews who did the heavy lifting. So when the gigs dried up, Edwards was immediately drawn to the less glamorous but better-paying world of tour-bus-driving.

“When I started, there were only half a dozen or so companies with these kind of custom tour buses,” Edwards recalls. “It was a very small pool and you earned a reputation quickly.”

Edwards, a gearhead and custom car fan, took the road and driving like a fish to water and hasn’t turned back. While he doesn’t regret giving up his own music dreams, he still plays and will occasionally sit-in with the bands he drives. “They know I’m a musician, and that makes our relationship much more personal,” he says.

“I love the travel and the people I get to meet,” Edwards says during a brief stop to visit his parents in Red Bank, where I speak to him aboard the 38 Special tour bus parked in the lot of small church whose empty lot easily accommodates the massive bus and trailer he drives. “There’s a freedom to it that’s unrivaled.”

On this long road, Edwards has shuttled a “Who’s Who” of rock royalty, country superstars, at least one jazz legend and more bands than he can remember. At his home on the outskirts of Nashville, the walls of his office are filled with gold and platinum albums from the stars he has served. In the bus on this day are a few he has borrowed from his parents’ home—Alan Jackson’s smash 1991 album “Don’t Rock the Jukebox” among them—but his clients go well beyond the country genre and include Bruce Springsteen, the Rolling Stones, Stevie Ray Vaughn and revered jazz icon Miles Davis. There have also been touring Broadway shows, as well as gigs with NASCAR teams and the occasional run shuttling soldiers from base to base.

And of course there are stories. Many, many stories. In the intimate confines of a bus, Edwards is privy to the most intimate moments of the stars he transports. His observations and encounters are sometimes amusing, sometimes hilarious, often mundane, but a few remain standout favorites.

“I was awestruck in the beginning, but as you get used to being around these people, you begin to recognize they are human,” Edwards says.

Driving skills, endurance and longevity are valued in Edwards’ profession, but perhaps just as valued is the ability to not speak out of school. Edwards does not, but he has plenty of tales he’s ready and willing to share.

One favorite involves notoriously gruff bandleader and jazz legend Miles Davis, who Edwards drove on tour just before his death in 1991. Davis, quite explicitly and not without reason, had a low opinion of white people. He had been subject to such brutal racism for so long, Edwards says, that he quite frankly despised 99.5 percent of the white population. “There were times when he would blow his nose on the first row,” Edwards recalls.

Ever the Southern gentleman—and knowing his place—Edwards completed his assigned role as Davis’ driver with the utmost respect. Davis rarely spoke to the hired help, but apparently took a liking to his young, competent driver.

“We had arrived at our hotel and his tour manager showed me the manifest,” Edwards explains. “Below Miles’ name was mine. After my name, it read: Bus Driver Deluxe. Everyone else, including the musicians, was below me. ‘That means he likes you,’ the manager said.”

Another poignant tale centers around the late Texas blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughn, who Edwards knew at the peak of his fame and new sobriety.

“He put his arm around me once when we were walking back from an AA meeting,” Edwards recalls. “And he said, ‘I’m glad you know me now.’ I said, ‘Why?” He said, ‘You wouldn’t have liked me very much when I had an 8-ball in my pocket. I wasn’t a very nice person.’”

Edwards is fond of his moments with these greats and treasures the experiences, but he recognizes that like the careers of the classic rock stars he often drives, it’s a road that will eventually end. But he doesn’t see the horizon any time soon. “As long as it stays fun, I’ll keep driving,” Edwards says.

And with that—the bus never stops running; it’s cheaper that way—he climbs into his “executive office” and prepares for the long road ahead.

By Bill Ramsey | March 22, 2012
The Pulse | Chattanooga’s Weekly Alternative

If you spend time inCalifornia and drink wine, chances are you are a fan of Two Buck Chuck. In that far-off nirvana where one can freely purchase wine (or any other kind of beer or liquor) at convenience stores, Trader Joe’s is the go-to grocery store for a certain brand of premium wine with Skid Row pricing. I speak, of course, of Charles Shaw wines, which have gained a passionate following in California for their excellent taste and, more importantly, the $1.99 price tag, hence the nickname.

Visit any Trader Joe’s and you’ll find customers carting cases of Two Buck Chuck out the door, stocking up as if a nuclear winter were forecast. Indeed, many live in fear of the day when these award-winning wines’ bargain-basement price will disappear. That’s not likely. Fred Franzia, who along with his brother, Joe, own Bronco Wine, which makes Shaw and other low-cost domestic brands, has for years engaged in a war against the pretentiousness and priciness of his competitors, saying only a sucker would pay more than $10 for a bottle of wine and colorfully taunting other winemakers as “bozos in a glass.”

You won’t find Two Buck Chuck in Chattanooga, since it is exclusively sold through Trader Joe’s, the charming California-based chain of small grocery stores who’ve made their legend by selling a wide variety of high-end products at reasonable prices in stores staffed with knowledegable foodies and wine experts. Tennessee’s arcane liquor laws prohibit the sales of wine in grocery stores, and until this is corrected we’ll likely never experience the joys TBC or Trader Joe’s.

I relate this tale not to rail against the state’s laws (although they deserve to be railed against; but that’s another story), but because Two Buck Chuck reminds me of a time when bargain-priced wine was less about quality and all about bang for the buck. Even wine snobs agree that TBC is actually a very good wine. But it’s the $1.99 price tag that has made it legend and its only competitor in the low-end market prior to its introduction has been a certain stable of wines most connoisseurs would politely call swill. You know them as the flavored, low-alcohol wines that cost less than $5 and would, if consumed quickly enough, produce the desired effect—namely a cheap buzz. I speak here, of course, of Boone’s Farm and Mogen David 20/20.

Ask anyone over 40 about Boone’s Farm or MD 20/20 and you’ll likely be regaled with stories lodged deep within their high school memories. At any high school party in the 1970s or ’80s, these were the preferred beverages of our dates and girlfriends. And because they were both cheap and easy to procure (even for under-age students with bad fake IDs), they remain a nostalgic favorite. But they also occupy different levels in the social strata of teen drinking of which an entire study could be written.

It is my memory that Boone’s Farm appealed to most teenage girls because it did not taste like alcohol and had at least an element of “class.” In the supremely preppy era of my high school years, this rather dubious distinction mattered a great deal. While many girls I knew were eager to party—as eager as any boy, as I recall—they were not so eager to be seen swilling Miller Ponies or a Mickey’s Big Mouth. Sipping a glass of Boone’s Farm (strawberry was a particular favorite) lent a certain degree of sophistication to even the most debaucherous gathering. And if they sipped their way through an entire bottle, as was often the case, chances were the provider of said “fine wine” would be rewarded with some form of carnal pleasure. Rather louche, I know, but consider the time.

Less favored by my crowd’s female population was MD 20/20, the grape-flavored fortified wine we simple referred to as “Mad Dog.” Mad Dog gained its popularity as a “bum wine,” a cheap high without the sting of liquor but with a boosted alcohol content that hit the mark much faster than Boone’s Farm. Indeed, 20/20 originally stood for 20 ounces at 20 percent alcohol, something my friends and I became aware of rather quickly. The girls of my high school years rarely ventured into Mad Dog territory, but it was quite frequently used as a base for an even more fortified punch (mixed with Everclear) that became a popular non-beer option at many parties of my misspent and reckless youth.

The boys, of course, found both Boone’s Farm and Mad Dog to be of sufficient alcohol content to achieve the maximum buzz in the minimum time, which of course was the point when one was 16. And while it was certainly easy to drink oneself sick by pounding ponies, nothing said sicker than a post-party ralph-fest brought on by the sugary sweet aftertaste of strawberry or grape wine.

Nevertheless, there remains an entire cult of devotees who continue to sing the praises of Boone’s Farm long past their high school days. At the Boone’s Farm Fan Club online (boonesfarm.net) pages of testimonials declare the superior taste and value of the brand with vigor and zeal. Consider this high school memory from Sandie, who followed her own son’s post with this: “I remember drinking Boone’s Farm Strawberry Wine in high school while I was a dating a guy named Randy. He drank MD 20/20 while driving. Good times!”

Good times, indeed, and with my 30th high school reunion on the horizon later this year, I suspect a certain group of those attending will fondly recall the fruity beverage of their youth with dewy-eyed nostalgia. Living in a post-ironic era that celebrates Pabst Blue Ribbon and other downscale beers, it’s quite possible Boone’s Farm could make a comeback. But then again, my suggestion at marketing the stuff as the “Official Beverage of High School” will probably never pass muster—it’s just too obvious. After all, I’m pretty sure there’s a high schooler down the street who already knows this, so why ruin the secret—hipster marketing is all about a wink and nod.

Bill Ramsey is the creative director of The Pulse and consorted with many girls in high school who drank Boone’s Farm.

Cult of the Record Bar
A love letter to the mall record store

By Bill Ramsey | Dec. 15, 2011
The Pulse | Chattanooga’s Weekly Alternative

A couple of months ago an obscure music website posted a story under the headline “CD-format to be abandoned by major labels by the end of 2012.” Through the power of the Internet, the just-believable-enough story — which carried no byline and quoted no sources — reverberated across the web with the power of a New York Times blockbuster, at least to the music-buying public, who are so accustomed to downloading and streaming the article seemed altogether likely.

Though not true—while growing fast, digital downloading and streaming are not expected to outpace CD sales anytime soon, with one industry executive claiming 74 percent of all albums sales this year came from CDs—the article did spark a debate among musicologists and fans: If the CD didn’t exist anymore would anyone miss it?

The same story under a different headline was written 30 years ago when Sony offered the first CD (alongside the first CD player), notes New Musical Express music writer Luke Lewis, resulting in pure profits for music labels as we rushed to replace our vinyl collections with new compact discs. The story goes back further; the same apocalypse was sounded when 8-track tapes were introduced, then cassette tapes. In the digital download/streaming era, music fans lament the loss of the CD with less fervor than the death of the vinyl record, but audiophiles have noted the deterioration in quality with each revolution in format.

But that’s another story. Lost in the debate, though not lost on the casual music buyer, is not the format but the delivery method. While the ability to instantly download or stream music cheaply, if not freely, to anyone with a decent Internet connection has been cause for celebration among music buyers, the romance of buying music, as this issue demonstrates, has not. For those born within the last 30 years, this argument will mean almost nothing. If you’ve purchased a CD in a retail store at all, chances are it was either at Best Buy or Walmart, neither of which will ever be the source of nostalgic movies starring the likes of John Cusack or Jack Black.

But for those of us who grew up in the 1970s and ‘80s, buying music meant visiting the mall. Where I grew up in Hixson, that meant Northgate, and the destination was Record Bar. There really was no other choice, at least for mainstream music fans like myself and many of my friends. Back then few of us had developed eclectic enough tastes to bother with the independent record stores, places like the Nickel Bag, which, while offering some paraphernalia of great interest to more than a few of us, reeked of what kids today might call old-school hippie music. No, what we wanted was the latest Springsteen, the new Tom Petty album, the hot Top 40 single (on 45rpm), maybe a poster, a T-shirt, one of those groovy Discwasher cleaning systems.

The Record Bar was no Championship Vinyl, the fictional record store owned by John Cusak in High Fidelity and staffed by quirky geeks with encyclopedic knowledge of music, but for many it was the epitome of hip (who, after all, didn’t want to work in a record store) and for some, a career (there is a Cult of the Record Bar Facebook page where former managers and employees trade memories). It was also, with the possible exception of Spencer Gifts, the coolest store in the mall, a sanctuary and a temple, a gathering place now fondly remembered as less than a retail outlet than an iconic element of the youth of a few generations.

Of course, the Record Bar wasn’t the only store in town. Freestanding music stores began popping up in the late 1970s and preferences, if not allegiances, were formed. Across Hwy. 153 from Northgate, an oasis of cool was birthed in the form of Paradise Records in what then seemed an enormous space devoted entirely to all things music. Wall-to-wall bins of albums, tapes, posters and accessories filled Paradise, along with an impressive collection of non-mainstream records that became increasingly important as our musical tastes evolved. Before the end of the ’80s, Record Bar had become Tracks, Paradise morphed into Peaches, then Cats, before the entire enterprise folded into the megastore, or the big-box outlet. Or whatever.

For me and many of my friends, the memory of the Record Bar (and Paradise, Peaches and Cats) is as strong and personal as the music we purchased there. We combed the bins together, sharing opinions, comparing notes and flaunting our (always) superior musical tastes. In the best-case scenario, we traveled in pairs (who went to the mall alone?), bought our favorites and ran home to engage in a stereophonic battle of the bands. Sure, we loved the music, but it was the records and, to a large extent, the record store that brought us together, even those of us who had nothing else in common.

I struggle to remember the last time I purchased a physical piece of music. I’ve long since liquidated my massive LP collection and largely abandoned collecting CDs. Hell, my iPod mostly sits in a drawer, uncharged and collecting dust. I listen to music in my car and stream it on my computer at work, but there’s no evidence at home that I’m the hardcore fan and collector I was even 15 years ago.

When I moved back to my hometown of Hixson this year after 30 years away and only a handful of visits in between, I was eager to visit my old stomping grounds. As I wandered into Northgate, it seemed impossibly small, nowhere near the palatial plaza I remembered. Gone were my favorite haunts—the Record Bar, WaldenBooks and (from a later age) Mr. P’s—and, like many malls, the place had a faintly decaying air, as if it were hanging on just long enough for me to pay my respects. But as I made my way around the mall, I was pleasantly surprised to find For The Record—an actual record store. In the mall. In 2011. (See Page 8 for a profile.) It’s no Record Bar or, for that matter, a true indie record store, either. But the store gave me hope—for music, for malls, for everything that lives in my ever-more present nostalgia.

At 47, I’m too young to linger long in the past, but old enough to appreciate what made it worthy of nostalgia—and I’m not alone, as I’m reminded each time I mention the Record Bar on Facebook. While my taste in music has changed over the years, I’m pleased, even sentimental at the idea that a store like For the Record exists in my mall after all these years. While the Best Buys and the Walmarts still stock all the hits and more than a few misses, I doubt 30 years hence anyone will recall a memorable moment there, much less devote a Facebook page to the experience.

The Best Songwriter You’ve Never Heard of Drives South to Chattanooga. Don’t Make Him Say ‘Damn This Town’


By Bill Ramsey | Nov. 10, 2011
The Pulse | Chattanooga’s Weekly Alternative

Every two years or so, John Hiatt makes a record that gives music critics and DJs at those few radio stations worth listening to in America something to agree on. Which is to repeat, this time in the words of WUTC-FM’s Richard Winham, “John Hiatt is the best songwriter you’ve never heard of, but you’ve almost certainly heard his songs.” It’s sadly true, but after 40 years, Hiatt has long made peace with this bit of cruel irony.



Hiatt, as he will tell you, tells me, tells anyone, really, doesn’t write songs for anyone else. Never has, never will. John Hiatt writes John Hiatt songs—tough, gritty roadhouse-ready rock and roll and poignant “this-is-what-I’ve-learned-about-love” relationship songs that give you pause and make you think out loud, “Damn, where has this guy been all this time?”

Turns out, he’s been around for a long, long time, and those same songs have caught the ears of others who’ve done with them what he has not—with few exceptions—been able to do: turn John Hiatt songs into hit records.

The short list: Bob Dylan, B.B. King, Bonnie Raitt, Eric Clapton, Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris—hell, even Ronnie Milsap—have covered Hiatt songs and made more than a few hits of them. “Thing Called Love” helped Bonnie Raitt come back from cutout-bin obscurity in the 1980s. “Angel Eyes” dovetailed into perfect harmony with Jeff Healey’s too-short career. Clapton and King built an entire double-platinum album out of Hiatt’s Riding With The King in 2000.

Hiatt shrugs it off, enjoys the royalties and keeps on writing, playing and hitting the road with various versions of the bands who record his music—20 albums’ worth now (if you count live discs and compilations)—that stretches back to 1974’s Hanging Around The Observatory and is now bookended by his latest, Dirty Jeans & Mudslide Hymns.

At 59, Hiatt’s never had a Top 40 hit of his own, but that fact neither haunts him nor deters him. At 21, he wrote “Sure As I’m Sittin’ Here,” a No. 16 charting hit for Three Dog Night that earned him a record deal with Epic and he’s never looked back. The idea that he’d write hit songs has likely occurred to Hiatt many times. At one point he very likely relished the idea, maybe still would. But these days a hit song doesn’t enter Hiatt’s consciousness very often. He is flattered that so many artists, some of them personal heroes he grew up listening to, have covered his songs, but says he was never comfortable writing for anyone but himself.

“I don’t write for other people, never have,” he tells me during a phone conversation. He was speaking from his longtime Nashville home, during a break from his recent tour, before making the short trip to Track 29 for his first Chattanooga performance since he can remember. “I love what I do and I just have a real passion for it. I love writing and recording—hell, I don’t know how to do anything else.”

That’s not exactly true—he’d probably be racing on the Indy circuit (and has) in another career—but modern American music would be much worse off were it not for Hiatt, and songwriting would be devoid of one of its finest craftsman. After years bouncing around record labels where he was variously (and futilely) categorized as new wave, country or blues, Hiatt found his own successful niche with the release of Bring the Family. This 1987 record marked the beginning of a rich, remarkable and uncompromisingly excellent period of songwriting and recording featuring his own flinty, whiskey-and-cigarette-aged vocals.

“I had not had success out of the box,” Hiatt says of his early efforts. “Success gains you freedom at record labels, so they keep intervening. [Bring The Family] was the first record we got to make on our own, independently. I was so screwed up, learning to live without drugs and alcohol, I didn’t know what to do. The producer said, ‘You can just sing in the shower and we’ll release it.’ ”

Sobriety unleashed something. Hiatt released seven albums on three labels prior to Bring The Family. Each had their moments, as Hiatt gathered critical momentum and a solid fan base, thanks to relentless touring in the U.S. and overseas. But mainstream success eluded him. His influences—Elvis (Presley and Costello), Dylan, the blues and country—produced erratic, often critically acclaimed records, but each failed commercially. Nuggets from these years ensconced him as songwriter to the stars. A young Rosanne Cash latched on to “The Way We Make A Broken Heart,” dueting with Hiatt on the song in 1983. The song went unreleased until Cash re-recorded it and took it to No. 1 on the country charts in 1987—the same year Hiatt released Bring The Family.

That seminal record, recorded with a supergroup that included Ry Cooder, Nick Lowe and drummer Jim Keltner (who would together briefly form a side project dubbed Little Village), touched a nerve. Independence—from alcohol, drugs, record labels—marked a turning point for Hiatt, reflected in a song he says he would not mind being remembered for, “Have A Little Faith In Me.” Again, a string of other artists—Joe Cocker, Delbert McClinton, Jewel, Jon Bon Jovi—nabbed the song for their own, but Hiatt’s own voice rose above them all.

Nine successive albums all broke the Billboard 200, including Slow Turning, the follow-up album to Bring The Family that included such hits as “Paper Thin,” “Tennessee Plates” and “Angel Eyes.” But it was Bonnie Raitt’s version of “Thing Called Love” from her 1989 album, Nick of Time, which reached No. 11 that year and helped re-boot Raitt’s own floundering career, that earned him the most acclaim as a songwriter. More records, countless tours and another label (A&M) followed that success.

Not much has changed in the intervening years, Hiatt insists, besides the ability to record and release records on his own. “That certainly helps,” he says of his indie status, “being able to make records that I want to make when I want.” His latest is the ninth since departing A&M after Perfectly Good Guitar.

Hiatt now writes and records his own records in his Franklin studio and leases them to New West Records, with whom he’s had a fruitful relationship since 2003’s Beneath This Gruff Exterior. His prodigious output—more than 700 songs and counting—he says, is simply a matter of occupation, and, he has joked, aging. “I’m running out of time,” he’s said on more than once occasion.

These days, Hiatt consistently releases noteworthy albums that have earned him the sort of high praise—if not multimillions—that those who have recorded his songs are more often associated with. It is not unusual to see the terms “national treasure” and “icon” tagged to his name, though he blanches at such sobriquets.

His music is neither influenced nor tied to moments in time, although you’d get that sense from his most recent album covers, which reflect a “Grapes of Wrath” grit and weariness that echo the nation’s economic plight. Hiatt is not a “message” songsmith in the mold of his fellow Indianan, John Mellencamp. Instead, he deals in the politics of life, family—the joy, the pain and day-to-day moments that underscore his best love songs—and, occasionally, the reckless abandon of his youth.

“All my songs are message songs,” he says, turning my question around. “I’m talking to the people—that is political. Causes and such is not something I deal in. It’s not my thing. There are other people much more knowledgeable than me in that arena.”

Politics may not appeal to Hiatt, but the ravages of disaster, natural and otherwise, pockmark his songs. Dirty Jeans is filled with references to monumentous events from the past few years. From floods and blizzards to remembrance of 9/11, Hiatt brings an emotional resonance—felt if not explicitly expressed—to his songs that form boundaries.

Speaking recently to another interviewer (Hiatt does lots of interviews) he reflects upon the events of recent years, connecting his lyrics to the everyman assessment of life he’s become known for. Not the really big stuff; just the stuff of daily life we all muddle through and can connect to and relate with.

“The 2010 flood in Nashville tore up some of our place and thousands of people lost their homes,” he told one reporter. “It didn’t get much national attention because there weren’t enough lootings—not enough bad news. Then, we did a winter tour and every city we went to got hit by a blizzard. The songs that came out of that were about the impermanence of things—the constant shifts of people and things.”

Even after 25 years of marriage, Hiatt still regards his love affair with similar impermanence, as if it will flutter away with the prevailing winds. His love songs—“relationship” songs, really—chart his comfort levels, affirm his core beliefs and celebrate small tendernesses—but the songs don’t get any easier, he says. “Love songs are still the hardest songs to write because they can become corny so quickly.”

In “I Love That Girl,” he writes of such “corny” affirmations, singing, “And she wakes me with coffee and kisses my head/And starts to explain about something she’s read/I say, ‘Darling, you haven’t heard a word that I’ve said’/And I love that girl.”

You can’t help but find something in common with Hiatt’s scenes from a relationship and I ask him how is wife responds to such valentines. “She likes ‘em for the most part,” he says with a laugh. “She’ll say things like, ‘That’s nice.’”

Unintentionally, it seems, the corniness of Hiatt’s sentiments are the ones the ring most true and he mines the mundane as if these fleeting moments that pass us all by will disappear, unremarked upon. Love, Hiatt, seems to say, is what happens when you’re not paying attention.

Such moments, along with a healthy dose of rock and roll, Indiana-style—hot cars, fast women and nights under the bleachers—and the wicked sense of humor that Hiatt brings to his live show, combine into something he regards as the epitome of his essence. Even for an artist who has lived from eight tracks to digital downloads.

“Nothing beats live,” he says, seeming to anticipate the road shows ahead of him. “You can’t download live and that’s the most exciting part. We’ve got a great little four piece band, it’s rock and roll, the classic setup and we’ve been rocking all over the country—the shows have been a blast.”

John Hiatt’s road goes on forever, it seems. We’re lucky to catch a glimpse.

John Hiatt performs Thursday, Nov. 17, at Track 29.