New Jersey Stage logo
New Jersey Stage Menu



JOHN HIATT AND THE JERRY DOUGLAS BAND

Saturday, September 25, 2021 @ 8:00pm



Mayo Performing Arts Center (MPAC)
100 South Street, Morristown, NJ 07960

Multi-Grammy award winning blues rocker John Hiatt (“Have a Little Faith in Me,” “Slow Turning”) and acclaimed bluegrass singer-songwriter Jerry Douglas (“Gone to Fortingall”) join forces to perform the greatest hits from their distinguished careers and music from their upcoming release Leftover Feelings.

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.




For information on how your event can be listed, click here



 

Advertise with NJ Stage for $50-$100 per month,
click here for info

FEATURED EVENTS

To narrow results by date range, categories,
or region of New Jersey
click here for our advanced search.


Candlelight

Candlelight Concert: Tribute to Queen and The Beatles

Friday, July 11, 2025 @ 7:00pm
Monmouth University - Pollak Theatre
400 Cedar Avenue, West Long Branch, NJ 07764
category: music

Click here for full event listing

 

Damn

Damn The Torpedoes - The Music of Tom Petty

Friday, July 11, 2025 @ 7:30pm
Lizzie Rose Music Room
217 E. Main Street, Tuckerton, NJ 08087
category: music

Click here for full event listing

 

There,

There, There (A Tribute to Radiohead)

Saturday, July 12, 2025 @ 8:00pm
Asbury Lanes
209 4th Avenue, Asbury Park, NJ 07712
category: music

Click here for full event listing

 

Band

Band Infusion Musical Night by GG

Saturday, July 12, 2025 @ 7:00pm
New Brunswick Performing Arts Center (NBPAC)
11 Livingston Avenue, New Brunswick, NJ 08901
category: music

Click here for full event listing

 

Annual

Annual Jazz, Health and Food Truck Festival 2025

Saturday, July 12, 2025 @ 11:00am
Monte Irvin Orange Park
S center and South Harrison Street, Orange, NJ 07050
category: music

Click here for full event listing

 

More events

Event Listings are available for $10 and included with our banner ad packages




 

Advertise with NJ Stage for $50-$100 per month,
click here for info


 

EVENT PREVIEWS

Lizzie

Lizzie Rose Music Room presents Griffin House

(TUCKERTON, NJ) -- Lizzie Rose Music Room presents Griffin House on Wednesday, September 10, 2025 at 7:30pm. Griffin is an American singer-songwriter and storyteller. Touring and making records for over 20 years, House has a discography that includes over 13 albums.



Grammy

Grammy Award Winner Raphael Saadiq to Bring "No Bandwidth" Tour to NJPAC

(NEWARK, NJ) -- Get ready to experience an exceptional performance by Raphael Saadiq at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) on Thursday, October 2, 2025 at 8:00pm. This highly regarded one-person show, entitled "No Bandwidth," will highlight Saadiq's extraordinary talents through a compelling blend of storytelling and musicianship. Attendees can anticipate an unforgettable evening filled with artistic excellence.



Dave

Dave Koz brings his Summer Horns tour to MPAC in August

(MORRISTOWN, NJ) -- Get set for a night of smooth summer jazz and funk with a touch of the sounds of the 1970s when Grammy-nominated saxophonist Dave Koz comes to Mayo Performing Arts Center (MPAC) as part of his Dave Koz & Friends Summer Horns 2025 tour on Wednesday, August 6, 2025 at 7:30pm.



A

A Chat with Jasper Smith of Straight No Chaser Which Brings its "Summer: The '90s Part 2" Tour to STNJ on July 16

Straight No Chaser is bringing its Summer: The '90s Part 2 Tour to State Theatre New Jersey on Wednesday, July 16, 2025. The nine-member a cappella group originated in 1996 at Indiana University in Bloomington and has gone on to sell three million albums, earn two gold records, and amass over 1 billion streams on Pandora.



Centenary

Centenary Stage Company presents Yacht Rock Gold Experience

(HACKETTSTOWN, NJ) -- Centenary Stage Company's 2025 Summerfest Series continues with a one-night-only concert event featuring Yacht Rock Gold Experience on Saturday, July 26, 2025 in the Sitnik Theatre of the Lackland Performing Arts Center at Centenary University. The band celebrates the soft rock and smooth sounds of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Showtime is 8:00pm.




 

Advertise with NJ Stage for $50-$100 per month,
click here for info