On August 9th 2011 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette published an interview with Carl Broemel, done by Scott Mervis. The original interview can be found here.
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A lot of bands spend a career staying pretty close to the original template. Thirteen years into its run, My Morning Jacket comes in a number of attractive styles and sizes.
When the Louisville band first turned up in 1999 with "Tennessee Fire," sporting an alt-country sound akin to The Band and Neil Young, it was hard to predict the space-rock, reggae and funk that would emerge a half-decade later on "Z" and "Evil Urges."
That happened to be around the time guitarist Carl Broemel and keyboardist Bo Koster signed on with My Morning Jacket, fronted by the powerful, golden-voiced singer Jim James.
My Morning Jacket
"When I joined the band, I don't think I really understood the potential fully, but the more we all got to know each other, I think I started to realize what was going on," Mr. Broemel says. "Jim's ideas ... when I get them sometimes, I'm like, 'What is THAT? What is he DOING?' trying to figure it out myself. He definitely spearheads the explorations, and we're all just trying to help him, help each other figure it out. Making records with these guys is really cool because there isn't anything that isn't at least worth trying."
The latest addition to the MMJ catalog is "Circuital," another musically expansive outing, also marking the band's highest chart position at No. 5. The process was very different than 2008's "Evil Urges," because rather than going into a proper studio, the band created its own in a Louisville gymnasium with a new producer, Tucker Martine.
"And we sort of skipped a step," the guitarist says. "For 'Z' and 'Evil Urges,' we did a little retreat before going to the studio where we would work on all the ideas, so we had a good road map of where we were gonna go. This time we showed up at the gym and started working on songs and also recording right away. We managed to get versions of songs before we played them that much."
In fact, he says, the version of the title track was the first time the members ever played the song, because they couldn't play it better a second time. As for the recording space, gymnasiums aren't generally known for good acoustics.
"No," he says, "but sometimes it's fun to have a massive space. We did a lot of taming of the room. We put some carpet down and we actually got a camping tent and a bunch of sleeping bags and threw them all over the drum kit, so we contained the microphones that were really close to the drums and still managed to get the far-away reverbed-out sounds. We got things to sound hi-fidelity in a sort of lo-fidelity way. The sound of the gym is the sound of the record."
Two tracks at the center of the album -- the gentle-folk ballad "Wonderful (The Way I Feel)" and the heavy psych-rocker "Outta My System" -- were songs that Mr. James originally wrote to be played by the fictional Dr. Teeth & the Electric Mayhem in an upcoming Muppets film. The original recordings, however, went unused when the executive who signed them on was fired.
"We should probably release our version from that [first] session, because it's really hilarious," Mr. Broemel says. "It's very Muppet-y. All the background vocals are affected and we were trying to pretend we were a Muppet choir. Jim said, 'Let's try it for our record,' and we completely started over with the arrangements and the approach, and the lyrics didn't have be sung by Dr. Teeth to go over and make sense. I think we all related to that song."
One of the songs getting the biggest response is the orchestral-sounding "Holdin' on to Black Metal," dealing with how a musical genre can become a lifestyle.
"We saw Slayer play not too long ago, and it's like they're amazing, there's something undeniable about Slayer. For me, black metal was not a huge part of my musical upbringing. I was more into even lamer stuff that was metal, but I think it applies to almost everything where, at some point, you have to give up listening to the Smiths all the time. So for me it could be any band or any era that you have to give up listening to, where your personality is so connected to it, it's almost holding you back from being an adult or whatever."
Having produced yet another acclaimed album, My Morning Jacket now hits the stage where the band makes its biggest impression with jammy marathon sets filled with unexpected twists and turns.
"It's exhausting," he says with a laugh, "but it's sort of like watching a baseball game versus playing a baseball game. If I watch a baseball game, I'm like 'Jesus, it's taking forever.' But if I'm playing shortstop, the game goes by so fast. I'm amazed people are able to hang with it. I'm just thankful."
