Cover of The Tennessee FireIn May 1999 My Morning Jacket's released their debut album on Darla Records. The album was named The Tennessee Fire and contains 16 tracks.
- Heartbreakin Man
- They Ran
- The Bear
- Nashville to Kentucky – 2:58
- Old Sept. Blues – 2:28
- If All Else Fails – 3:58
- "It's About Twilight Now" – 4:06
- Evelyn Is Not Real
- "War Begun" – 3:06
- "Picture of You" – 3:16
- "I Will Be There When You Die" – 4:42
- "The Dark" – 3:22
- "By My Car" – 4:04
- "Butch Cassidy" – 3:55
- "I Think I'm Going to Hell" – 5:06
- "[Untitled]" – 2:42
The first pressings (1000 copies) of the 2LP-version included a bonus 7″ single with 4 tracks: Evelyn Is Not Real (flood remix), R.I.P.V.G., Tonight I Want To Celebrate With You, Josta Dreams And Bitter Hands.
Recording
Pre-recording
"I’m a 20-year-old video-store clerk playing in a band. A bandmate gives me a cassette for another project he’s working on. ... I listen to the tape, amazed that this hilarious dude Jim has written these beautiful songs."- Tom Blankenship
(am New York interview, October 2010)
Sound/themes
I first got the demo tape given to me by the drummer Jeremy maybe 6 or 8 months before I joined the band. Most of the album had already been completed. Number one: I was blown away by this guy Jim, who was the same age as me but could write these haunting yet kinda poppy sounding songs. What I loved about the album was that it had all these familiar elements that I'd never heard put together before. I couldn't put my finger on what the sound was or how to describe.- Tom Blankenship
(JamBase interview, 2010)
Influences
Critical reception
Not long after the release of the album a journalist in the Netherlands found out about the record and wrote a long, gushing story about the band and from there it snowballed. In a 2003 interview with PopMatters Johnny Quaid explains how the band ended up being so popular in the Netherlands.
"The writer had a friend who worked in a record shop who gave him a copy of Tennessee Fire and said 'You need to listen to this,' Then he went on to write this article about how the album made him feel like a kid, and how amazing it was. The next thing we knew, we're sitting in Kentucky working our day jobs, and we get a phone call from someone who wants to fly us to the Netherlands. The first thing we did was get a map to figure out where it was."- Johnny Quaid
(PopMatters interview, October 2003)
The name of the album
Before I joined the band, I remember pulling up to the studio in Shelbyville. I was in a band called Winter Death Club at the time, and we'd have practice after My Morning Jacket practice. At the time MMJ was just a 3-piece of two guitars, drums and vocals. They even played a few shows with that lineup, which is how [The Tennessee Fire] was mainly recorded. I remember pulling up and hearing that Jimmy had got a record contract with Darla but he didn't know what to name the band. I think he maybe wanted to call the band The Tennessee Fire at one time. As far as I know, that's how it came about, that and the picture inside the album of the Tennessee fireworks store where the 'works' is cut off.- Tom Blankenship
(JamBase interview, 2010)
Around the time of the album
How Two Tone Tommy came to be
“I really should have a funny story by now. J. Glenn, the drummer on the first two records, used to leave funny messages on my answering machine all the time and one of them was three minutes long with him giving me all these different monikers — one of them was Two Tone Tommy, which he repeated over and over again. So when Tennessee Fire was being put together I was asked, ‘Do you want to use your real name?’ And I was like, No, not really, so I picked Two Tone Tommy. After a show, if I have my hair up in a ponytail no one knows who I am. Even if they do recognize me, it’s always, ‘Tommy?’ or ‘Two Tone?’ I don’t even respond to it because I’m just not used to it in my everyday life”- Tom "Two Tone Tommy" Blankenship
(PopMatters interview, October 2005)
