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By CURTIS ROSS | The Tampa Tribune
CLEARWATER - The stage set wasn't much to look at – a couple of chairs and tables, speaker cabinets, microphones and guitars.
But that was all John Hiatt and Lyle Lovett required for a two hour-plus performance Friday night at Ruth Eckerd Hall that was by turns rocking and soulful, touching and hilarious.
Both are master songwriters, but where many of Hiatt's tunes are more familiar in versions by Bonnie Raitt, Emmylou Harris and B.B. King and Eric Clapton, Lovett's are so idiosyncratic it's hard to imagine anyone else doing them justice.
Likewise, their personalities were a contrast. But that made for some hilarious between song patter, with Hiatt playing the wry curmudgeon and Lovett the master of deadpan surrealism.
Hiatt began with his rocking "Drive South." Lovett answered, after considerably loopy discussion, with "Which Way Does That Old Pony Run."
The show felt off-the-cuff, with each performer free to respond to the other's song choice with one from his own catalog. And both guys have deep, deep catalogs.
So after drawing laughs from the crowd of 1,674 with banter about the presidential debate, cars and barbecue, Hiatt would break your heart with "Crossing Muddy Water"; or Lovett would do the same with the nostalgic "South Texas Girl."
Both could get a laugh with a song as well, Lovett with "Creeps Like Me" and "She's No Lady," Hiatt by pointing up a line "the little redhead left out" in "Thing Called Love," made famous by Raitt.
Hiatt's lived-in voice has grown even more so, to the point that he was noticeably straining in his upper range. But that added poignancy to the mournful "Icy Blue Heart."
Hiatt and Lovett's performance was akin to a home-cooked meal compared to the fast-food predictability of so many big spectacle-tiny talent arena acts.
Curtis Ross can be reached at (813) 259-7568 or cross@tampatrib.com
