Natalie Maines – Lyric video for her cover of “Free Life”

Natalie Maines and I did a lot of songwriting together with her fellow Dixie Chicks on their “Taking the Long Way” album. Recently we got together for a recording session: she sang harmonies on a couple of songs on my album-in-progress. Then a week or so later, Natalie surprised me by e-mailing me a rough mix of this version of my song “Free Life.” I love what she and her producer Ben Harper did with the song. (I’m a Ben fan, too – it’s exciting for me to hear his voice peeking through on the chorus harmonies.)

Back in the early days of my songwriting, I used to think a lot about John Hiatt. I had admired him as a recording artist (Bring the Family has a lot of great songs on it) who also had a life as a songwriter for others – his “Sure as I’m Sitting Here” was covered by Three Dog Night, for one. And the songs he recorded for his own albums got covered by other artists, too, which seemed really cool to me (“Have a Little Faith in Me” from Bring the Family, for one.)

But generally that’s not the path my songwriting has taken: if I’m writing on an artist’s record, it’s usually a fresh, from-scratch song written with the artist. So it’s especially sweet when an artist I admire, like Natalie, covers a song of mine that I’ve already recorded. It makes me feel like John Hiatt.

Oh, and one more thing – just coincidentally, John Hiatt’s “Bring the Family” album supposedly got its start after a show of Hiatt’s at McCabe’s in Santa Monica, where I’ll be playing on May 18th.