Lilly Hiatt creates her own sharp-witted brand of Americana

It’s a good time for women in the wide-brimmed hat of the music world known as Americana or alt-country or whatever you want to call it. The landscape is ripe with fresh, smart, cutting-edge female singer-songwriters who dance around the margins of indie-rock, rootsy country and classic alternative rock.

“It’s an interesting world – the whole Americana one. It’s a way for a lot of people to categorize themselves that otherwise couldn’t,” says Lilly Hiatt, daughter of famed singer-songwriter John Hiatt, who himself never quite fit snugly in any definitive genre. She plays Evening Muse on Thursday.

“It’s a vague term. It’s a confusing term,” she continues. “To me, it can encompass a lot of different things, but when people ask me what kind of music I play, I don’t say ‘rock ’n’ roll.’”

Call it the class of the 2010s – solo artists like Canada’s Lindi Ortega (at Double Door last week); Ohio’s Lydia Loveless; Greenville, S.C.,’s Nikki Lane (opening for Social Distortion at the Fillmore Aug. 28) and Nashville, Tenn.’s Hiatt grew up in the ’90s and early ’00s, listening to an earlier generation of strong, honest, female songwriters and soaking up punk, rock, classic country, pop and whatever else came into their orbit.

“I loved Liz Phair and the Indigo Girls. I always forget to say this, but I loved Melissa Etheridge. I thought she was such a bad-ass. So many women.…” recalls Hiatt, who takes a lyrical route that’s as frank but not quite as provocative as a young potty-mouth Phair. “My parents had (Phair’s) ‘Whipsmart’ and I don’t know why they were playing it in the car with little kids, but I’m glad my parents never censored things.

“Sometime my mom would draw the line.”

Artists like Hiatt’s father colored outside the lines of country, rock and blues long before the term “Americana” came into the mainstream lexicon, so her versatility should come as no surprise.

Hiatt writes honest, relatable, sometimes eyebrow-raising lyrics on her album “Royal Blue” and sings with a touch of Tennessee twang like a young Rosanne Cash who scored a handful of pop crossovers in the ’80s. Hiatt can shift from a torchy barroom waltz fit for “Urban Cowboy” (“Somebody’s Daughter”) to riding a Replacements-style groove (“Get This Right”) to trippy psychedelia that escapes easy description (“Heart Attack”).

“I was not going to put that one on the record,” she says of the hypnotically paced “Heart Attack.” “Before we’d played it as a band, I didn’t know if I could see it fitting in with the rest of the songs or whether it was developed enough of a song. Sometimes other people playing your song makes you realize ‘I do like this song.’”

As far as her varied influence goes, “When we practice there’s always a lot of band referencing going on, but I’m never worried about it sounding like it was ripped off or lifted from something else. We navigate away from trying to copy but certainly draw from different people’s tricks and sounds.”

“At the end of the day,” she adds. “My influences are bands that sound nothing like me.”

This story was originally published August 18, 2015 at 5:59 PM with the headline "Lilly Hiatt creates her own sharp-witted brand of Americana."