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Grammy-winning song hits close to home for Bonnie Raitt’s bassist
Maui resident James Hutchinson knows firsthand the meaning of ‘Just Like That’

on March 30, 2023 No comments

Jon Woodhouse | For the Maui News

When Bonnie Raitt received the Grammy Award for Song of the Year for “Just Like That” in February, her band’s longtime bass player, James “Hutch” Hutchinson, was watching on TV in Los Angeles. Raitt had earlier won Grammys for Best American Roots Song for “Just Like That” and Best Americana Performance for “Made Up Mind,” which meant her band all shared in the award.

“We were all shocked,” said Hutchinson, who has played with Raitt for 40 years and has made Maui his home for 20 years. “We were up for four awards, three of them in the Americana category. We won the first two and then the third one, Americana Album of the Year, Brandi Carlile won and she got up and said, ‘I can’t believe I won this. I thought Bonnie was going to sweep again.’

*Bonnie Raitt with James “Hutch” Hutchinson 2019* © Maike Schulz /Gruber Photographers

“We were thrilled to win two out of three,” Hutchinson continued. “The performance award is a band award. Then, of course, the icing on the cake was when she won for Song of the Year, which is the award she really wanted because she’s the sole composer of the tune. So it was big, a big deal.”

Heading to the Maui Arts and Cultural Center for a concert on Friday, Raitt has now won 13 Grammys, including some for her multimillion-selling albums, “Nick of Time” and “Luck of the Draw.”

The title song of Raitt’s latest album, “Just Like That” is an emotionally wrenching song that has touched so many people. She based it on a news story about a mother who donated her deceased son’s organs. It was the first song written by a solo composer to win the award since Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab.”

“‘Just Like That’ is about a woman who loses a son and organ donation, and the trials and tribulations, and the redemption that sometimes comes along with it,” said Hutchinson. “Many a night on stage, I’ve had an emotional reaction to it. She was broken up, as she is every time she sings anything that means something to her.”

The song was especially heartbreaking for Hutchinson as he lost his sister, Ann Hutchinson Tower, the week of the awards, and “she ended up saving two women. Her kidneys went to two younger, fit women in their 50s. Organ donation is important, but I didn’t think I’d be living that song the week we won Song of the Year for it. It was one of the more bizarre, surreal moments of my entire life. There’s been extreme highs and extreme lows.”

In a tough couple of months, he also lost a handful of musician friends, including David Lindley and David Crosby. Hutchinson had been getting ready to head out on tour with Crosby, and had previously recorded with him, and Crosby with Graham Nash, and with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.

“I’ve known David for 50 years,” he explained. “I met him when I was 19. He was always in my life, a sort of a mentor and friend and a bandmate many times. The rehearsals in December sounded great. I’d never seen him happier. He was ready to go out and do a final tour. I just loved working with him. My proudest musical moments are anything with David Crosby. I miss him so much.”

Player’s Pick Podcast #63 – James “Hutch” Hutchinson – December 2020

Talk with Hutchinson and he will regale you with 50 years of encounters with a myriad array of famous musicians, from recording with the Rolling Stones in Ireland to rock ‘n’ roll legend Jerry Lee Lewis. His remarkable list of recording credits includes Ringo Starr, B.B. King, Elton John, Brian Wilson, Al Green, Willie Nelson, Stevie Nicks, Ziggy Marley, Jackson Browne, the Doobie Brothers, Joe Cocker, Roy Orbison, Garth Brooks and Neil Diamond.

What was it like playing with the Beatles’ legendary drummer?

“Ringo is great. He’s funny, and he’s great to be around,” Hutchinson said. “He’s just a fantastic musician, and he loves music and he loves people. I worked with Ringo a number of times. I love people who are easy and fun to work with.”

Proclaimed “The Groove King” by Bass Musician magazine, Hutchinson can comfortably fit into any genre.

His local collaborations include recording with other musicians on Maui like Grammy winner Peter Kater, Pat Simmons Jr. and Gail Swanson. He toured the Mainland with Hapa and was also a regular at Shep Gordon’s Wailea benefit shows. Teaming with John Cruz, he played on a star-studded “Playing for Change” video of “The Weight,” and was filmed in Haiku with Pat Simmons in a marvelous updating of Cat Stevens’ “Peace Train.”

Back on the road with the “Just Like That Tour 2023,” Hutchinson said the Maui show will include “at least four songs” from the latest album.

“The set list changes,” he said. “We know a lot of tunes and you can only play so many per night, and there’s some we have to play. People expect ‘Something to Talk About’ and ‘I Can’t Make You Love Me.’ People want to hear those songs.”

The Maui leg of Raitt’s Just Like That Tour 2023 takes place on Friday at the MACC’s A&B Amphitheater. John Cruz will open. The show begins at 7 p.m. and gates open at 5 p.m. Tickets are $60, $80, $100 and $140 Gold Circle, plus applicable fees, at MauiArts.org.

Source: © Copyright The Maui News

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‘I’m 73 and it shows’: The blues legend who beat Taylor Swift and Harry Styles

on March 13, 2023 No comments

Bill Wyman

There was a twist at the end of this year’s Grammy Awards. After a parade of youthful and spangled pop stars rose to the podium for various honours, the Song of the Year prize went to one Bonnie Raitt, the veteran singer-songwriter and guitarist with a distinguished 50-year career behind her, including, among other things, a previous Grammy for album of the year.

But that didn’t stop some second-tier news outlets from wondering who the hell had beaten out Lizzo, Harry Styles and Taylor Swift.

“Unknown Blues Singer Wins Song of the Year” blared several sites. The headlines soon went viral.

“That was a big surprise,” Raitt, 73, admits. “I was overwhelmed with appreciation.”

She produced the album, Just Like That…, her 18th, herself. She wrote a big chunk of it, too, and it was released on her own record label, Redwing. She’s been doing this for a while, but this time, two tracks, the title song, and the album’s closing tune, Down the Hall, connected with fans, and the larger world, in an unexpected way.

Both songs are wrenching, not because they contain sensitive personal revelations, but because of their unusual stories.

Down the Hall is told from the point of view of a prisoner who ends up working in the jail’s hospice ward, sitting with terminal inmates who have no one else. Just Like That, the Song of the Year winner, is a gentle, luminously presented tale about a woman who lost her son. But the son’s heart had been donated to someone who needed it. The recipient visits the mother and invites her to lay her head on his chest, so she can feel her departed son’s heart beating.

“Organ donation and prison hospices are not songs people generally write songs about,” Raitt says. “I think it has something to do with reaching people at such a time, with COVID and the shutdowns and the political animosity. These songs are about uplight and grace and redemption. I didn’t write them for those reasons but I think that’s why they landed this time.”

In the post-’60s wave of ’70s singer-songwriters, featuring everyone from Jackson Browne to Randy Newman to Cat Stevens, Raitt stood out. There was that redwood voice of hers. Plus she was a guitarist, self-trained and steeped in influences stretching back into deep folk and blues. Raitt is not a tall woman and the image of the diminutive singer displaying her mastery of her large and beloved Gibson hollow-body guitar became iconic.

*You can hear in Bonnie Raitt’s voice her own life’s journey mixed in with those of her blues heroes* © Marina Chavez

“I still have that guitar!” she exclaims.

She was unusual in other ways. Not all her fans knew her father was an icon, too: Broadway legend John Raitt. Bonnie learned to play guitar at the family house in the Hollywood Hills and went to university at Radcliffe, at the time the women’s college of Harvard.

She put out her first record, ~~Give It Up~~ Bonnie Raitt, in ~~1972~~ 1971, the songs almost uniformly marked by her strong blues and rock licks. Her interpretation of John Prine’s Angel from Montgomery became her signature song, and a cover of Del Shannon’s early 60s chestnut Runaway gave her an unexpected hit single in 1977. “The ’70s were a blast,” she says.

Then she was dropped by her label. Follow-up albums didn’t do well. She fought drug and alcohol addiction.

But she came roaring back in the 1990s. The aptly titled Nick of Time sold five million copies and won that Album of the Year Grammy. A popular MTV video saw her canoodling with actor buddy Dennis Quaid to the song Thing Called Love.

Gracious and quick, Raitt crisscrosses her history, mentioning friends, mentors, artists gone and others still around, people she played with and those with whom she conspires to this day, from Bruce Springsteen, Linda Ronstadt, Browne and Prince to Muddy Waters and Emmylou Harris.

But the friend she remembers the most is the late Prine, the quirky, much-loved Chicago singer-songwriter who never quite rose to mass public attention. “That type of songwriting was so inspired by John,” she says.

These days, you can hear in that voice her own life’s journey mixed in with those of her blues heroes. It’s suggested that she did not so much grow into her voice but see her voice grow into her.

“That’s great,” she agrees. “After I hit 50 I could get other ranges and other colours and reflect other experiences I’ve had. I’m 73, and it shows!”

Bonnie Raitt plays Palais Theatre, Melbourne on April 5, ICC Sydney on April 7, Bluesfest, Byron Bay, on April 9 and 10.

Source: © Copyright The Sydney Morning Herald

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6 Things To Know About Bonnie Raitt: Her Famous Fans, Legendary Friends & Lack Of Retirement Plan

on March 6, 2023 No comments

A Special Benefit for the GRAMMY Museum’s Music Education Programs

To celebrate her incredible wins at this year’s GRAMMY Awards, including Song Of The Year, Best American Roots Song and Best Americana Performance, the GRAMMY Museum is thrilled to welcome 13-time GRAMMY-winner and Recording Academy Lifetime Achievement Award honoree Bonnie Raitt for a special benefit program at the GRAMMY Museum. The program will be moderated by GRAMMY telecast writer and producer David Wild, an Emmy Award and Peabody Award winning writer who worked with Bonnie Raitt going back to his days at Rolling Stone magazine. Proceeds from this event will benefit the music education initiatives of the GRAMMY Museum.

Bonnie Raitt is a singer, songwriter, and guitarist whose unique style blends blues, R&B, rock, and pop. After 20 years as a cult favorite, she broke through to the top in the early 90s with her GRAMMY-award-winning albums, Nick of Time and Luck of the Draw, which featured hits, “Something To Talk About” and “I Can’t Make You Love Me” among others. The thirteen-time GRAMMY winner was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2000 and Rolling Stone named the slide guitar ace one of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time” and one of the “100 Greatest Singers of All Time.”

2022 was an incredible year for Raitt with a 75-date headlining U.S. tour; the release of her critically acclaimed 21st album ‘Just Like That…,’ on her independent label, Redwing Records; receiving the Icon Award at this 2022’s Billboard Women In Music Awards and seeing her breakthrough album, ‘Nick of Time’ added to the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry. ‘Just Like That…’ was #1 on six Billboard charts the week of release and was perched at #1 on the Americana Radio Album Chart for ten consecutive weeks. The album’s first single, “Made Up Mind” remained in the top three spots on the Americana Radio Singles Chart for 17 weeks. Raitt will be on tour for most of 2023 with stops in the U.S., Australia, the UK, Ireland, and Canada. View all concert dates here.

As known for her lifelong commitment to social activism as she is for her music, Raitt has long been involved with the environmental movement, performing concerts around oil, nuclear power, mining, water, and forest protection since the mid-‘70s. She was a founding member of MUSE (Musicians United for Safe Energy), which produced the historic concerts, album, and movie NO NUKES, and continues to work on safe energy issues in addition to environmental protection, social justice, and human rights, as well as creator’s rights and music education.

*Bonnie Raitt at the GRAMMY Museum – March 5, 2023* © Rebecca Sapp

During “A Conversation With Bonnie Raitt” at the GRAMMY Museum, 13-time GRAMMY winner detailed her career trajectory, history of big-name collaborations, and how her win for Song Of The Year at this year’s GRAMMY Awards was “a total surprise.”

For the uninitiated, Bonnie Raitt is just an “unknown blues singer” — albeit one who managed to nab the Song Of The Year award at the 2023 GRAMMYs, plus two other trophies. But to the millions in the know, and the choice few in attendance for a chat with Raitt at the Grammy Museum on March 5, she is a living legend.

Over the course of her decades-long career, Raitt has earned 30 GRAMMY nominations, taking home 13 golden gramophones for tracks like “Nick Of Time,” “Something To Talk About,” and “SRV Shuffle,” as well as albums such as Luck Of The Draw and Longing In The Hearts. Last year, Raitt was awarded the GRAMMY Lifetime Achievement Award, and at this year’s ceremony, she snagged GRAMMYs for Best American Roots Song, Best Americana Performance and the coveted Song Of The Year.

Before she heads out on a tour of the western United States and Australia, Raitt sat down to chat with moderator David Wild for about two hours, musing not only about her “total surprise” about snagging the Song trophy, but also about her experience at the ceremony. It was an illuminating and downright charming experience — as well as an educational one. Here are six things we learned at “A Conversation With Bonnie Raitt.”

Taylor Swift Is A Fan — And A Humble One At That

Raitt recounted being chatted up by Taylor Swift during the GRAMMYs, with Swift telling Raitt backstage that she felt okay losing Song Of The Year to her. Swift’s “All Too Well (10 Minute Version)” was in competition, alongside works by Lizzo, Adele and Harry Styles.

Swift also introduced herself to Raitt, whom she’d never met, saying,”Hi, I’m Taylor.” Raitt said she responded, “Ya think?” — which made the audience in the Clive Davis Theater crack up.

She’s A Master Collaborator, With More On The Way

“No one commands more respect” amongst their musical peers than Bonnie Raitt, said Wild, who’s worked on the GRAMMY Awards as a writer since 2001. Whenever the show’s team has struggled to think of who could best pay tribute to someone like John Prine, Ray Charles, or Christine McVie, “the answer is always Bonnie Raitt.”

That’s probably why, as Raitt noted, she’s recorded duets with more than 100 different musical acts — from Bryan Adams to B.B. King. Raitt added that she’d still love to work with Keith Richards, Bob Dylan, and H.E.R., and that fans can anticipate new collaborative work coming from work she’s done with Brandi Carlile and Sheryl Crow.

Raitt added that she’s gotten really into Unknown Mortal Orchestra lately, who she heard about through Bruce Hornsby.

She’s Learned From And Befriended Musical Masters

Raitt was effusive about her love for King, among others, saying that one of the great joys of her career has been sitting at the feet of blues greats like Sippie Wallace and Son House. The singer/songwriter expressed her gratitude for being able to help get so many of these once-forgotten masters both the attention and the pay they deserved. She cited her work with the Rhythm And Blues Foundation as being of great importance to her personally, saying that it’s vital that the roots of blues and jazz are taught in schools today.

Wild also got Raitt to open up about her friendship with legendary gospel-soul singer Mavis Staples, who toured with Raitt just last year. Calling Staples, “all the preacher I’ll ever need,” Raitt said she thinks she and Staples bonded over being the daughters of famous fathers. “It’s a great honor of my life being friends with her,” Raitt said of her “mutual sister.”

Later, Raitt also waxed rhapsodic about another famous daughter, Natalie Cole, who she said she’d been thinking about all day.

Raitt’s Got An Independent Spirit And An Independent Label

A good portion of Wild and Raitt’s chat was devoted to the star’s career trajectory. The two detailed how, as a 21-year-old college student, Raitt signed to Warner Bros. only after they promised her complete creative control and nowadays has her own indie label, Redwing.

Raitt said it was only with the help of a”team of mighty women” that she was able to go independent. She cited lessons from friends like Prine, Staples, and Jackson Browne, from whom she learned going it alone could be done successfully.

Bonnie Raitt Almost Missed Out On “I Can’t Make You Love Me”

Raitt also talked a bit about her previous GRAMMY triumphs, including her run of nominations and wins around 1989’s Nick Of Time. Her popular single, “I Can’t Make You Love Me,” was originally written for Ricky Skaggs, who intended to make it a lively bluegrass record.

Raitt added that she thinks the song “Nick Of Time” struck a chord because she opened up about what it means to be getting older.

She’s Not Planning On Retiring (Or Dying) Any Time Soon

After joking that COVID lockdown felt like “house arrest” and “hibernation,” Raitt said that her recent tours have been a blessing. “It feels like I was under the earth without any sunshine,” Raitt says, reassuring attendees that she’s “never retiring.” She said that while she’s lost eight friends in the past three or four weeks, including the great David Lindley, the 73-year-old is optimistic that she can “be here and celebrate for another couple of decades.”

Raitt capped off the event doing what she loves best, teaming with long-time bassist Hutch Hutchinson for an intimate four-song set that included “Angel From Montgomery,” “Shadow Of Doubt,” “Nick Of Time,” and the GRAMMY-winning “Just Like That.” Raitt ended the evening by thanking the Recording Academy for inviting her out, joking, “I can’t believe I get to do this for a living.”

Bonnie Raitt Essentials: 11 Songs That Showcase The Breadth And Depth Of The 2023 GRAMMYs Song Of The Year Winner

Following Bonnie Raitt’s big night at the 2023 GRAMMYs — where she won three golden gramophones, including the coveted Song Of The Year — GRAMMY.com looks at 11 tracks that showcase the blues icon’s talent.

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