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Cactus moments in time: John Hiatt 1987
A couple months before the “Bring the Family” album would usher in John Hiatt’s comeback from alcoholism and MCA, he played the Cactus Café in front of an audience of which I was about five per cent. One reason there were only 20 on hand was because Richard Thompson, who’d recently been discovered by Austin’s indie rock crowd, was playing the same night at the Back Room.
I just wanted to hear “She Loves the Jerk” and then it was off to the hip show. But I stayed for Hiatt’s entire solo acoustic set and was mesmerized by the soulful sensitivity of his new songs. He opened with “Memphis In the Meantime,” but then got dark and deep with “Stood Up,” a song about how he got to that moment. I think the set ended with “Have a Little Faith In Me,” Hiatt on the house piano, singing it like there was no one there. To this day I’ve never witnessed a more pure moment of musical soul-pleading. All 20 of us were scattered around the room, but we shot up to our feet when the song ended.
Richard Thompson was a letdown.
I’ve never been a student at the University of Texas- there was no money for college in my house- but I’m thankful to this day that UT had a venue that would take such a chance on a singer-songwriter who’d seen better times. That show didn’t change my life, but I learned something about how you can best beat adversity just by being yourself. The show was not profitable by any means, except that 20 people on a Thursday night in Austin somehow found themselves in that most glorious room of sound.
“We’re Texas,” the voice of Walter Cronkite says at halftime of football games. “We change people and they change the world.”
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