Okay, troops, it's time to power down, unplug, and take a moment to discuss one of the most elusive and valuable species in the music menagerie. No, I'm not talking about club owners when it's time to pay the band — although, come to think of it, that's a topic to tackle within the next few months. The game this month is the quality side player.

By side players, I don't mean stone-cold session automatons who can read like Evelyn Wood and play with Rockettes-like precision. The great backup musicians are those who know how to get inside a song in ways that lie beyond the reach of simple virtuosity. Their connection to the singer or songwriter is personal, mysterious, and intuitive. They live for the thrill in building an interpretation of some terrific piece of material delivered by a talented leader to his or her band. Believe me, the great songwriters appreciate musicians who know how to bring their works to life.

Just ask John Hiatt.

THE IMPORTANCE OF SIDE PLAYERS

You know Hiatt's work, I'm sure. He has a great track record as a singer-songwriter, even by the high standards of his home base in Nashville. His songs can have more than a little attitude and a lot of poetic nastiness, as on “The Negroes Were Dancing” from the album Slug Line (MCA, 1979). He can cook up hits with unforgettable lyrical and melodic hooks, as on the Bonnie Raitt smash “Thing Called Love.” Hiatt even made Three Dog Night sound good when the band covered his “Sure as I'm Sittin' Here.”

He's also a nice man with an easy conversational style that makes it sound as though he has his feet on the porch railing and a dog's head in his lap (still attached to the dog, I hasten to add). Furthermore, Hiatt's heart is in the right place: much of the budget for the Cumberland Heights Alcohol and Drug Treatment Center (www.cumberlandheights.org), a Music City program for teens, is funded by proceeds from his annual all-star concert at the Ryman Auditorium, as well as from online fund-raising efforts through his Web site.

But Hiatt himself concedes that the players that he's performed and recorded with have been essential to his successes. Two of his bands have been particularly impressive: Little Village, formed for Bring the Family (A&M, 1987) and reunited briefly in 1992, enjoyed the higher profile as a supergroup featuring Nick Lowe, Ry Cooder, and Jim Keltner. But the Goners, who came together to play the Bring the Family tour in 1988, enjoyed an especially strong connection — one that was brought back to life with a return performance on Hiatt's latest album, The Tiki Bar Is Open (Vanguard Records, 2001).

GOING, GOING, GONERS

“It's one of those magic bands,” Hiatt says, “and that has a lot to do with the rhythm section. My thing is so rhythm based, and between what Kenny [Blevins, drummer] and Dave [Ranson, bassist] play, there seems to be this perfect hole where I can put in my rhythm bag.”

Although Hiatt didn't personally know those guys when he welcomed them into his band, their arrival does prove the axiom that it pays to have connections. Just before meeting Blevins and Ranson, Hiatt had hired Sonny Landreth on the strength of a mutual friend's recommendation.

Hiatt remembers how it happened: “My friend Ray Benson [of Asleep at the Wheel] called me up and said, ‘I'm producing this guy, Darden Smith, and Darden brought in this slide player, Sonny Landreth. You know, he's the other slide guitarist.’” [Meaning the other slide guitarist after Cooder.] “I thought that was a pretty high recommendation, so I asked Sonny to come up. I had another rhythm section, and I brought him into that. The band sounded so great that I said, ‘I'd love you to do the tours with me.’ Sonny said, ‘You know, I don't usually do this, but I got this rhythm section that would be perfect for what you're doing.’ He brought them up; we played one song, ‘Natchez in the Meantime’; and I knew they were the right band.”

And so the double whammy: Benson opened the door for Landreth, who slipped in far enough to toss out a carpet for his buddies Ranson and Blevins to follow. Hiatt would never have heard them if not for that chain of connections.

Ironically, that story mirrors one dating from Hiatt's past, in 1979, when an opportunity presented itself for an audition with Cooder. At the time, Hiatt was the lesser-known artist, intrigued at the chance to play with the stellar guitarist. “We had a mutual friend, this gal who help8217ople book sessions for their own projects,” he re;b