John Hiatt

John Hiatt (b. Indianapolis, August 20, 1952 - ) – Guitarist, pianist, singer, and songwriter. In his mid teens, Indianapolis native John Hiatt got his start playing at clubs with local rock bands. At age 16, he moved to Nashville and made $25.00 a week writing songs for Tree-House Publishing. Meanwhile, he played locally as a solo artist and also played with a band called White Duck. Eventually, countless gigs and 250 songs with Tree-House paid off by signing with Epic Records in 1973, about the same time that Three Dog Night charted one his songs (“Sure as I’m Sitting Here”). Although his first recordings were not commercially successful, he put nine consecutive albums on the Billboard 200 starting in 1987 and has recorded over twenty studio albums on various labels including Capitol, MCA, and Vanguard. Furthermore, Hiatt’s songs have been sung by Bob Dylan, Bonnie Raitt (“Thing Called Love”), Paul Abdul, Willie Nelson, and Roseanne Cash. He has been nominated for Grammy Awards on eleven occasions, and he was named Nashville’s Singer/Songwriter of the Year in 2000. Of particular note, he wrote the title track of Riding with the King, a Grammy-winning collaboration of B.B. King and Eric Clapton in 1983. His most most recent nominations came in 2014 with the album Terms of My Surrender in the categories "Best American Roots Song" and "Best Americana Album." John Hiatt still makes it back to the Indianapolis area often to perform, most recently on the 2018 series at the Palladium in Carmel.