The Open Road

[Eric]

Having a good ole' time cranking up the new album...well past 11(eleven) ! I hope the neighbors don't mind...that it's in my cd player & not yet in theirs, that is !! I'm loving this steady blues-rocker from our man. Ya'll caught this one yet ? Anyone having fun w/ his latest ? Another very playful album for the most part. Writing this while giving it my first listen. Lemme' see how loud this stereo goes...be well all you happy people. And for anyone not so VERY happy...listen to The Open Road--it's sure to put a few smiles back where they belong

[Rollergirl]

I haven't got my copy yet. Went to my local record shop yesterday and they told me they'll have it today. Looking forward to listening to it I read great things about it!

[Rollergirl]

I have got my copy and I am dissappointed with the sound quality I must say. Nice songs though

[Cry Love]

Before today Hiatt's new CD had been in the car CD player. After I read your comment I brought it in and put the CD on the NAD CD player and amp and listened to it thru Klipsch speakers (which John has commercially endorsed in the past).

I've gotta agree with you. It is pretty gritty and, to my ears, sounds very digital. If they release it on vinyl, maybe it will be better. Maybe not. There isn't a lot of dimension and presence to the recording, not a lot of space between the instruments. Not a lot of detail, either. Maybe John was going for more of a somewhat lo-fi vintage wall of sound kind of thing.

A couple of thought after listening to the album at least five times -

I do like "The Open Road" much better than "Same Old Man," which wasn't in the play rotation very long. That being said, I do miss Hiatt coming up with more memorable melodies. There is quite a bit of talk/singing along with the chord changes. So far there aren't any killer cuts that really stand out, to me anyhow, that will be future Hiatt classics. As an album it works. The sum of its parts is better than the individual songs. It's an interesting work. It sure seems, with the last two records that John is headed in a different direction. Maybe his rock and roll days are over. Oh well, this is what makes following an artist over the course of their career interesting.

[Rollergirl]

Thanks Cry Love, I was starting to think I was imagining things or that I had dirt in my ears! I am really pissed off about this but if I leave this aside (which I have a lot a trouble doing, but hopefully I will get over it) it's a very nice album!

[numpsey]

i got my download of the Open Road and like it more each time I listen to it. I guess I am not much into the "tech" aspect of it as I am the stories behind the song. I found this artical about the song HomeLand which I thought was pretty neat

Halfway into John Hiatt's new album, The Open Road, there's an unusual song called "Homeland" that I initially thought he wrote about how Native Americans unfairly lost their land, but it's actually a little more personal than that. "There's always been some interesting activity behind our barn," Hiatt told me during a recent interview. "When our kids were little, they wouldn't go back there at night, and when they did with their friends, they'd come running into the house scared, saying they'd seen eyes. And my wife's been scared more than once."

Hiatt called upon some friends who are medicine people. "They came down and we walked the land with them," Hiatt says. "Apparently there had been some kind of bloody battle back there with Native Americans, Englishmen, French trappers and some other people. It's strange because I'd always hear these sounds at night when my wife and I would go to sleep. Our bedroom's on the back of a farmhouse. I'd always heard what sounded like a couple hundred televisions, turned down low, off in the distance. My friend said, 'Well, that's them.'"

Hiatt said he and his friends performed a ceremony to "send them on," which has led to peace on his property. Although it's heavy story, he can't help but laugh when he quotes the epitaph of his friend, producer Jim Dickinson: "I'm Not Gone, I'm Just Dead."

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[JerseyGirl]

Thank you for sharing that background. I was just pondering the lyrics to that song today. John can weave a tale and bring it to life like no other songwriter.

As for melodies, I think What Kind of Man ranks with Hiatt's best. I can't get it out of my head.

[webster]

"Open Road" is definitely a current favourite, especially "What Kind Of Man", "Haulin" (which fully deserves its 1st single status), "Homeland", "Movin On" and "Fireball Roberts".

From what I hear, New West Records has seemingly decided to master the CD for earbud consumption. Earbuds are tiny and technically don't have enough space for the long wavelengths of bass. Hence, bass levels are turned up when an album is mastered for earbuds. It's too bad that it has way too much bass for hifi stereo consumption then. I'd recommend listening to it with the bass levels turned down on your home stereo. When I did that, the album sounded better on mine.
Yet, it's strangely schizophrenic that you have to turn down an album to make it sound good when all you really want to do is turn it up because the music is so good.
There is lots of info to be found on the web on the current era sound quality issues of compression, lack of dynamics and the so-called brickwalling technique. The search term is "loudness wars". Feel free to read about it.

Yet, the recent Kris Kristofferson and Flatlanders albums (also on New West Records) didn't seem to suffer from the problem as much as The Open Road does.

Yet, when I turn up "Haulin" and head for the highway, I don't care about these things much, to be honest.
Thank you John Hiatt for another great album.

[juergen]

It's interesting what other fans wrote about the new The Open Road and the sound! Well I had the opportunity to listen to the new CD long before it was officially released - and what I found out:
- great songwriting and band (thumbsup)
- bad sound (garage sound?) (thumbsdown)

As webster mentioned, too much bass, it was weird what I heard on my sound system (like a bass-feedback) and yes, it was better to reduce especially the bass before you increase the volume to listen loud to the new CD.
Not only that: Especially on track 3 are some distortions in John's voice, I put on my headphones and could not believe it!
Distortions! A CD recorded in 2009 with a good equipement I guess.

I emailed to Doug Sax who did the mastering, I tried to get in contact with New West - but you can guess:
no reply, no reaction, simply nothing from the responsible people.
And Emile also mentioned the low-budget CD cover with NO plastic tray. I agree with him. CDs today seems to be more a product for one-time usage? A disposable product? Dubious