Bo Koster, at KCRW 2005
"I feel sorry for anyone who has to conjure up a way to label this band from now on. [smile]"
- Bo Koster
(Paste Magazine interview, June 2008)
Rock 'n' roll
"Rock 'n' roll that's all I can say. It's everything, rock 'n' roll encompasses all the emotions."- Jim James
(CMJ interview, September 2003)
"If I'm forced I say rock 'n' roll because that can be anything. It can be the Stooges, it can be Roy Orbison, it can be Outkast. There's so many things that can be rock 'n' roll and if you say that you can't be limited."- Jim James
(JamBase interview, January 2004)
"We've always really tried to stay away from being an alternative-rock band. We're more interested in being a weird rock 'n' roll band. Alternative rock hasn't lasted, and I think it has something to do with the production. Take Weezer: their first album is a classic fucking record with great songs and great writing, but it sounds so early '90s with that sort of heavy-distortion approach. Same with the Smashing Pumpkins' Siamese Dream."- Jim James
(The Georgia Straight interview, November 2005)
"We basically just say we are a rock band, but I don’t really know what that means. I mean, if I am at the dentist’s office and the dental assistant is like ‘I like Kid Rock, would I like you?,’ I’m like, ‘well you may like us.’ And if she presses, I’m like, ‘but we are a weird rock band,’ so if she comes to see us, she isn’t disappointed."- Carl Broemel
Southern rock hillbillies?
"The only way that is possibly true is we live below the Mason-Dixon line and we’re a rock band. That’s it. We’re influenced by so much it’s hard to say that. I’m sure that because of where we live there’s a little country feel we might throw in there once in a while. We’ve gotten further and further away from it, and the new album is a testament to that. I think it’s just an easy assumption because we’re from Kentucky."- Jim James, talking about how the band sometimes is tagged as a southern-rock band.
(PopMatters interview, October 2005)
"Look at a picture of us. We have long hair and dueling guitar solos and those are elements of it. But anybody who said that never took the time to listen. There’s nothing wrong with it, we just don’t agree with the comparison. We love southern rock, but we don’t play southern rock."- Patrick Hallahan
(PopMatters interview, October 2005)
"Well, we don’t like being pigeonholed, period. I think we got tired of the southern rock hillbillies from Kentucky thing. All the Lynyrd Skynyrd references and types of things. We just got tired of lazy journalists that assume that we’re from Kentucky, so we’re not wearing shoes. Or we’re hippies…. But how would they know what we’re really like? That’s why we don’t complain about it any more."- Patrick Hallahan, when asked what journalists always get wrong about My Morning Jacket
(The Star interview, June 2008)
"We try to never subscribe to any label or genre, we just don't like to be classified."- Tom Blankenship
(Rolling Stone interview, October 2005)
