KDHX (2011)

Carl Broemel in St. Augustine 2010, photo by Courtney

On August 2nd 2011 KDHX published an interview with Carl Broemel, done by Matt Champion. The original interview can be found here.

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Scheduled to appear at the Pageant tonight in St. Louis, My Morning Jacket guitarist Carl Broemel took a few minutes today to chat with me about music, books, charity and even "American Dad."

Matt Champion: Where did your interest in music begin?

Carl Broemel: Oh, wow. It was kind of always around me. My father is a retired classical musician. You know, the first musician I ever heard, I think, was him practicing the bassoon. It was just something that you did, like playing baseball or whatever. Play catch and play the piano or the violin. It all goes hand in hand. So, yeah, I got exposed to music through him and my older brother. I have a brother four and a half years older than me and as he started getting into rock 'n' roll it kind of trickled down into my world, so I can thank him for that. Yeah, I've always kind of dabbled in music and different instruments along the way and ended up mainly playing the guitar. I went to school, studied some music and was playing in bands along the way.

Was there any one musician, group or song in particular that really made you pick up the guitar and run with it?

Um, I don't know. I think it was just the idea, as soon as I got swept up in the magic and mystery of rock 'n' roll and bands and stuff like that. I was interested in the guitar from just listening to the radio, just listening to whatever was on. The one cool thing about the guitar that really clicked for me was that I could pretty quickly learn something that I thought was super magical, like, you know, something stupid like a Bryan Adams song or something. It was like "I could play that RIGHT NOW!" It was instantly fun versus learning some song in a piano lesson that you hadn't heard before. It was that connection from "I thought that was impossible, I don't think I could ever do that" to literally ten minutes later "I'm doin' it!" That's what was exciting about it. It was instantly fun and I could get enjoyment out of it right away and then put some time in later. It's very encouraging to feel that when you're in awe of music in general and the history of rock 'n' roll bands and all of a sudden you're holding it in your hands.

Do you have any non-musical influences such as authors, artists, or directors that you find influence your music?

Yeah, but I think that stuff kind of influences your life in general. I definitely read some. I've been trying to read more and more. I took a few years off from reading. It's been hard to find time with family and stuff going on, but recently I've been reading these Carlos Castaneda books, like the "Don Juan" trilogy if you're familiar with that. They're amazing books. The stories are really cool, aside from the sort of '60s mentality and the drug references. The stuff that's amazing about those books is the stuff that has nothing to do with taking drugs to expand your reality; it's about just being aware. Anything about that I'm kind of into right now, trying to just appreciate what you're doing when you're doing it versus dwelling on the past or worrying about what's going to happen next or taking yourself too seriously. I think that's one of the most destructive things you can do to yourself, taking yourself too seriously. So, yeah, recently those Castaneda books have been mind blowing. Maybe before I go on stage I'm thinking about that, it influences my music too.

Do you find that your songs take on a different personality live versus when they were recorded in the studio?

Yeah. I kind of look at studio recording as creating little embryos, trying to make a perfect little thing that has potential to change while still being based on the DNA of that moment, you know? When we put out a record like this most recent one, we recorded this one pretty quickly. We kind of went in the moment from song idea to finished recording within a day or two for each song. Those songs were very fresh in my mind and were made early on before we played them a ton. Usually we'll do a really long rehearsal session where we work on all the details of each song.

This time we skipped that and went straight in, so when I listen to it these songs sound like first takes or early, early takes of the songs. Now that we're on tour and have ingested what we've done in the studio and manipulated it so we can make it happen live, they will inevitably change. When you're playing with more intent and knowledge of what you're trying to play versus being more exploratory in the studio it's a completely different change in gears. Then once you know exactly what you want to do, you start exploring again a little bit, naturally.

Having an audience changes the way we play too. It's just a different experience. It's like all of a sudden you're having an out of body experience and there's all this consciousness pointing its energy at you at the same time that you're playing. It just changes the feel of what you're playing. I'll never forget when Bo [Koster] and I joined the band. Before the first tour, we're all just standing around in Louisville rehearsing and I didn't really know the guys all that well. We're all standing there, our hair in ponytails, just relaxing, going through the songs trying to figure out parts and teaching each other things. Then we got to the first show and everybody went berserk. You know, like these three dudes that I just met who were chilling before just turned into monsters. I was like "Shit, what have I got myself into?" you know? That was a big moment for me and Bo. We looked at each other like "Holy shit!" We knew that these guys were crazy but we had no idea when we were rehearsing that the shows were gonna be like this. It was a big emotional release that would quickly guide us into going crazy ourselves.

That leads into my next question. You draw from such a diverse array of musical styles and blend it all together so well. Does that come from everyone having a huge love of all music in general or do you each bring something new for everyone to grab onto and run with?

You know, we all live in such close quarters for part of the year and the other part we're off doing our own personal lives that when we tour it's fun to share music while we spend that time together. Tom [Blankenship] has gained this really deep knowledge of jazz music, which Bo already had since he went to school for jazz studies. We've all been really geeking out on that, stuff that we've overlooked over the years. Lately the guys have been educating me in hip-hop because I really have no idea. It's really cool how we all kind of fill in the gaps for each other as far as musical genres go. I've realized more and more as I get a little older and keep touring and playing music that the things I was writing off, I was writing off for no reason. At first I was like "I don't get that" but now I'm like "Hey, there's something to that! What was my problem?" I'm very open to listening to a lot of stuff. There's a lot of great bands happening right now. We're in a good era again, you know? Musicians feel empowered to be creative again in the present moment, and I think that's a good thing.

How would you compare the sound of Circuital to the sound of your previous albums?

To me, this record sounds less "hi-fi" than the last record, mainly because we were in a non-traditional recording space. We recorded this one in a church gymnasium and the last two records were done in recording studios. For me personally, that's a huge, huge difference sonically. It's just massively different. Where the other records have a little more perfection to the tones, this one is a little more raw and unforgiving. When I listen to the record, all I see is the church gymnasium. (Laughs) It just sounds like we're standing in that place. It definitely colored the sound and performance.

I live in Nashville but the rest of the guys live in Louisville and we recorded in Louisville so we were at home and things were in more of a relaxed pace when working on the record. With the last record we were in Manhattan in a pretty small studio, being caught up in the hectic nature of the city it got pretty frantic and exhausting. This time we had a totally different mindset when we rolled in there. We had as much time as we needed, we could stop and shoot baskets if we felt like it when taking a break. It sounds like the church and it sounds kind of relaxed to me.

Speaking of the previous albums, what was it like playing them all in order, back to back, at Terminal 5 in New York last October?

That was an adventure, for sure. We kind of booked that ahead. We were like, "In the future, we'll do all the records and that'll be fun." We started a session for "Circuital" and did ten days, got four or five songs done. Then we took a break, tore everything down and did a little bit of touring including the T5 and stuff. It was really fun to go back to all of those records. There's always been songs since I joined right before "Z," songs from the older records that never got played so that was an opportunity to force ourselves to do the work to try to get all the songs in a place where we could play them. It was fun. Sometimes we'd walk off saying "Man, why don't we ever play that one? That's pretty cool" or "Yeah, I know why we never played that one. That one's kind of weird."

It was fun for us, it was like cramming for a test, having all that music in the front part of your brain where you could access it (laughs). It was also cool to know that the audience knew what was going to happen. They knew that they were going to hear a record every night and after that there would be random stuff like B-sides and covers. It was freeing to know that they knew we were playing the whole record so we didn't have to make a setlist. We'd just play the record and just do something stupid at the end, something fun and crazy. We were exhausted by the time that was over. I'd have to wake up each morning and review the stuff that I wasn't 100% on and then go play. I'd get off stage, my friends would want to go out and party and I'd be like, "Look, I have to get back to the hotel room." We may do something like that again, I don't know. It was a lot of work though. It was nice to then roll back into the studio with those observations and all that history of the music and get back to work.

Out of all of those shows, was there a cover or B-side that the crowd really reacted to?

Yeah, there's this old song called "Little Billy" that never gets played that I think is kind of a cult classic that finally got played. We had Johnny Quaid, the original guitar player, play with us on a bunch of songs. That was a special thing for me personally. As far as covers we did some ridiculous stuff. On the third or fourth night we did "Come Closer" which was a B-side into "Miss You" by the Rolling Stones into a 27-minute version of "Cobra" [from the "Chocolate and Ice" EP]. That was something that we'd never done before. That one was pretty epically long (laughs).

As I was looking up your tour dates, I noticed that you donate to local charities in the cities where you play. Do you feel that giving to the communities that you play is an important factor in the tours and the band as a whole?

Yeah, absolutely. We've always wondered exactly how to get it together. You're rolling into a city, burning fossil fuels, taking people's money and then rolling out. After a while you feel like there needs to be a little bit more depth to it. It's great that we hooked up with this amazing non-profit called Air Traffic Control. Jim [James] did an artist's retreat in New Orleans after the hurricane and hooked up with all these great people who worked there. Air Traffic Control helps us pick non-profits in every city. They'll send us a list of choices in each city with notes like "We've worked with this one, these are great people and this is what they're doing" and we all go through them and pick one in every city to donate a dollar for every ticket to. It's been a no-brainer thing where we can add some depth to it and on the occasion that we get to talk to people after it they're so grateful and it's just so fun. It's like, "Why wouldn't we do that now since we can?" We could probably do a lot more, but this is a good start for us. They make it really easy for us to do, so it's a cool thing to do.

I have one last question for you. I mentioned online that I was interviewing you and asked what questions [people] had for you. The one that came up most often was this one: What was it like appearing on "American Dad" and what did you think of seeing yourself animated?

(Laughs.) That was really fun. We got to go into the vocal booth, do voiceovers and "act," which I'm horrible at. I did manage to get one line into the show, which was pretty funny. Mike Barker, the guy who co-created and writes that show, he's become a good friend of ours since working with him on the show. It was just kind of a thrill. I feel that my favorite thing that happened because of that is that not only did a lot of people who didn't know who we were see it, some people thought, "Hey, is this band made up or is it real?" You could tell that people were like, "Is that like Spinal Tap? Is that real?" I got a kick out of that when I watched it at home because it's not like we're a household name or anything. So Mike Barker went out on a limb for us to put us on his show.