Fredericksburg (2010)
On April 29th 2010 Fredericksburg published an interview with Patrick Hallahan, done by Jonas Beals. The original interview can be found here.
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Meet the meat. My Morning Jacket is 32 ounces of savory American Angus prime rib--a bloody center guarded by a shell of greasy char and gristle. It's the best thing on your plate.
Perhaps responsible for introducing the indie-rock world to the joys of excessive reverb, MMJ is--and has always been--more than that gauzy Appalachian haze that floats atop their music.
This Louisville, Ky., quintet is the group that brought depth to the jam-band world and sorrow back to Southern rock.
Lead singer and songwriter Jim James is rightly given credit as the mastermind behind MMJ, something his solo career (as Yim Yames) and work with Monsters of Folk prove without a doubt. But his beefiest work still comes thanks to the MMJ collective--a group that shines just as brightly on- stage as it does in the studio.
The band that has stolen the show at Bonnaroo Music Festival on more than one occasion is back on the road and headed to Merriweather Post Pavilion this Saturday.
"It couldn't be going better," drummer Patrick Hallahan said of their current tour.
Things had been rolling along so quickly that the band took the past year off to catch its breath. The pause did not cost them any momentum.
"There's a new energy in the band," Hallahan said. "There is something cooking, but I don't know what its name is yet."
And that is one of the aspects of the band that makes it so compelling. They embrace the spontaneity of the stage, improvising and feeding off the energy of the crowd.
"We really love that song and dance," Hallahan said. "If the crowd is responding well, we'll go to Mars and back for them."
The flip side of that freewheeling ethos is found in the studied, polished intricacies of the same songs. These are lyrics that reward attention and blunt melodies that swing from rockabilly to Motown.
It is an unusual package that appeals to indie snobs, jam-band fans and folkies alike.
"We're just huge fans of music," Hallahan said. "There are so many things that move us. We don't like to do the same things over and over. We're antsy."
Rather than sticking with one item at the buffet, MMJ builds strength by consuming everything rock music has to offer. It's a neat trick to pull off--something that could go horribly wrong in the hands of a lesser band. Hallahan attributes the band's peculiar success to communication.
He has known James since childhood, and has gotten to know the other MMJ members just as well.
"It probably helps, playing-wise," he said. "We all have the same level of nonverbal communication. It's speaking through music. Knowing the person and knowing how they think."
MMJ is often called a Southern rock band, and while their long hair and sometimes heavy-metal guitar attack certainly fit that bill, Hallahan thinks the geography that influences them isn't that Dixie-fried.
"Regionally, we're all pretty close," he said. "The only similarity is that we didn't have anything to do when we were growing up. We had to make our own fun. We all come from the Midwest, so we had to use our imaginations."
When the band started, it's unlikely that they considered dreaming this big.
MMJ has hit all the rock 'n' roll peaks in the past five years. Opening for Neil Young. Playing with the Boston Pops. Performing on "Saturday Night Live." "David Letterman." Radio City Music Hall. Madison Square Garden. "Austin City Limits." A Grammy nomination.
"We want to better ourselves constantly," Hallahan said. "It's been such a gradual process, not one huge jump. We just kept working."
