Key to the Highway: Lilly Hiatt

Americana Highways’ Key to the Highway series (photo by Glenn Cook)

Fans always clamor to learn more about their favorite, most beloved musicians and those who travel with them. There’s such an allure to the road, with its serendipity, inevitable surprises, and sometimes unexpected discomforts. This interview series is a set of questions we are asking some of our favorite roots rock Americana artists to get to know more about them and what they’ve learned and experienced on the road. We are sure they have key insights to share and stories to tell. Here’s one from Lilly Hiatt.

How do you like your coffee or other morning wake-up beverage?

I like my coffee strong and with cream and sugar!

What’s the most interesting or strangest motel/hotel or place you have stayed (while on the road?)

Oh wow, way too many too name. Let’s see should I start with the hotel in Birmingham, UK where I am pretty sure the working staff were all ghosts or circle back to our most recent Days Inn in Iowa City that embodied a certain kind of European “goats on the rooftop” theme. We’ve had some adventures, that’s for sure.

If one CD is stuck in the player in the van for the entire tour, what do you hope it is? And why?

hmmmmm for now, I’ll go with my recent favorite record, “Pony” by Orville Peck. It’s so spacious and sorrowfully dreamy that lately I have found myself letting it play 2 or 3 times before I take it off.

What’s one personal item you must have with you on your road trip?

Headphones! My ticket to tuning out!

What is your relationship with food? How do you handle this on the road, and what’s your favorite dish on the road, (or restaurant, and what do you order there)?

Wow, I admire your audacious questionnaire. Hehe this could really open some flood gates! But, I mean, I have never quite mastered the art of eating perfectly on the road, given that every meal is either from a gas station or restaurant. It’s fun trying local cuisine, but at some point my body will start craving very plain and simple foods. I have started to eat vegetarian which helps me, and try to not eat too much candy. Salads, and nuts! But I let some jelly beans and stuff slip in the mix. It’s a hard balance out there! Lots of gas station coffee.

If you could pause your life for a few weeks and spend some time living in a place you only have passed through, which would you choose, and why?

Ohhhh! Hot Springs, NC. I’d chill on that river and go off the radar!

What quote or piece of advice have you gotten from someone on the road that has really stuck with you?

“Don’t let em break your heart”- my friend Austin Lucas

Find all things Lilly Hiatt here:  https://www.lillyhiatt.com/ Check out a recent release with Jimbo Mathus, here: Song Premiere: Jimbo Mathus (w/Lilly Hiatt) in “Sunken Road” From Upcoming Mathus Release “Incinerator”. Read a show review with pictures, here:  Lilly Hiatt Slays With Words and Guitars at Pearl Street Warehouse In Washington, D.C.

See other Key to the Highway interviews here: https://americanahighways.org/category/interviews/key-to-the-highway-series/ (click here for: Eric Ambel, Dan Baird, Robbie Fulks) Sign up for our weekly newsletter here for your Friday reminder for this series and more: