A Music and Cigars Pairing

It’s been a while. More than a year ago, we made the decision here on the Tiki Bar Online to focus pretty much exclusively on cigars and cigar-related topics like adult beverages that go with them. Before that we had published some “pop culture” recommendations for books, music, movies, etc., but at a certain point we just wanted narrow our focus and, for the most part, I think that has been a good decision. Every now and then, though, I do want to talk about a new piece of pop culture that has made its way into my life and today is one of those times. So, I’ll be looking at the latest release from one of my favorite musicians, interspersed with some thoughts on a new release from one of my favorite cigar manufacturers.

John Hiatt has been a fixture on the music scene for about 4 decades now. He moved to Nashville in the early 1970s to work as a songwriter and it wasn’t long before he was creating his own albums. He gained his biggest fame in the 1980s with the Slow Turning album, as well as the title track from that album, and he first came onto my musical radar in the early ‘90s with Walk On. His 2001 album, The Tiki Bar is Open provided the song that was the inspiration for this blog’s name. Last month saw the release of his latest, Mystic Pinball, already the most acclaimed album he has done in 2 decades. The album was recorded in Nashville with Hiatt’s latest backing band, The Combo, which consists of Doug Lancio on guitars, Patrick O’Hearn on bass and Kenneth Blevins on drums.

La Aurora was founded in 1903 and has continued to produce high-quality cigars for 109 years, longer than any other company in the Dominican Republic. One of their most highly-regarded lines is the Preferidos collection, introduced in 1998, and expanded upon greatly in the intervening years. The latest addition is the Preferido Diamond, a perfecto measuring 5” long with a 54 ring gauge; it comes in a black tubo and features a Connecticut Broadleaf wrapper. I haven’t seen these on store shelves yet, but got my sample from Jason Wood of Miami Cigar & Company at a recent event.

Mystic Pinball opens up with the fierce opening salvo of “We’re Alright Now,” probably one of the strongest radio-friendly songs Hiatt has written since the late ‘80s. It features juicy guitars riffs, insistent drumming and a killer bass line along with some of the best sing-along lyrics and clap-along melody around. In his early career, Hiatt was sometimes referred to as “America’s Elvis Costello” because of his biting lyrical content; these days, life is good and he is happy, but he can still manage to write infectiously about it. “Baby, it’s alright now / All those bad old days are gone.” Great testament to his long marriage and the trials they’ve been through.

The first thing I noticed when I took the Preferidos Diamond out of its tube was just how dark this wrapper was. A dark chocolate hue with nearly black mottling. It had a ripe earthy aroma to it with a touch of licorice. The draw was great and I detected natural tobacco, chocolate and berries on the cold draw. Lighting up, the flavor was overwhelmingly good...coffee, cocoa powder, earth, dried fruit and cedar on the palate along with roasted nuts and black pepper on the nose.

John Hiatt’s music is best categorized as “Americana”...otherwise, his mix of country, rock, rockabilly, folk, and blues is hard to figure out. In the “country” (more or less) category this time around are “It All Comes Back Someday” and “Give It Up.” The former is about regretting actions you took when you were younger and lacks just a steel guitar to be a country hit. The latter doesn’t even lack that...if Hiatt were accepted on today’s country stations, this would be a hit. Another almost-country song I’ve been enjoying is “I Know How To Lose You,” wherein the narrator admits to his relationship flaws.

I poured some Big Bottom Port Cask Finished Bourbon to enjoy with the La Aurora Preferidos Diamond; as always a good Bourbon paired well. As I got past the narrow tip, the Diamond picked up on notes of black coffee and anise, while the pepper pretty much disappeared. Sweet chocolate also played a big part in the flavor profile still.

Hiatt takes a Springsteen/Dylan-esque turn with “Wood Chipper,” a tale of love, jealousy, robbery and murder. You hear that some people could “sing the phone book,” but here Hiatt literally sings a shopping list and makes it a moment of hilarity in a dark tale. As the years go by, Hiatt seems to move as much toward the blues as any other genre. On Mystic Pinball the blues is represented best in “One of Them Damn Days” and “Blues Can’t Even Find Me.” The first is a straight-forward driving 12-bar song with a nasty guitar solo and great sax punctuations in a tale about seeing “my baby on the other side of town” and drinking to cope with it. “Can’t Even Find Me” is the last song on the album (sort of...more on that later) and is a mostly acoustic song about feeling so insubstantial that the blues can’t even get a location. It references modern things like listening to the estranged spouse telling her side of the problem “50 times on a cell phone” while on a car trip and how we’re all using social media to tell everybody “when we’ll be taking our next breath.”

Through the middle third of the Preferidos Diamond, the rich chocolate flavors intensified and the darker notes of coffee and anise dropped off a bit. While this is billed as “full-bodied,” so far, it is really only a bit over straight medium-bodied for me. Maybe they meant “full-bodied for La Aurora” but in today’s marketplace that doesn’t necessarily mean “full-bodied.” Regardless, it was turning out to be quite excellent.

Any fan of John Hiatt knows that he can’t resist recording adoring songs about his wife (whether completely true or slightly fictionalized). “You’re All The Reason I Need” is an upbeat rockabilly-infused song. “Sometimes the day crawls by / Slow enough to make you cry / I catch my breath and I wonder why / Then I think about you.” Years ago, Hiatt wrote and recorded “Have A Little Faith In Me” (since covered by over 30 artists as diverse as Jewel, Kenny Rogers, Chaka Khan, Joe Cocker, and Delbert McClinton); “No Wicked Grin” falls into much the same category as a tender song expressing devotion to a loved one and a commitment to stick by them through thick and thin. “I’ve got this smile / I’ve had for a while / It ain’t exactly brand new / It’s no wicked grin / It’s good and worn in / And I’d like to give it to you.” And then there’s the bonus track, available only if you buy the album through johnhiatt.com. Strange to make the title track of an album a bonus track, but “Mystic Pinball” isn’t the throwaway track some bonus songs tend to be. It’s a country-infused rocker with seemingly too many words crammed into each phrase, a manic bouncing from place to place until “like a mystic pinball, I’m rolling home to you.”

So what do we have with this pairing? Two veteran artists in their respective fields that have released winning products. La Aurora has been on a hot streak in the last few years with the 107, Guillermo Leon and Fernando Leon Family Reserves, and Puro Vintage lines (among others). They are part of raising the bar for Dominican brands from the mild and sometimes one-dimensional cigars of old to very complex cigars that appeal to today’s cigar enthusiasts. John Hiatt has released some great albums in the last 20 years, but some have missed that mark as well; this is the third in a row that I would call “great” (after 2010’s Open Road and 2011’s Dirty Jeans and Mudslide Hymns) and he hasn’t had that kind of consistent output since the late ‘80s.