On September 16th 2011 Ultimate-Guitar published an interview with Carl Broemel, done by Steven Rosen. The original interview can be found here.
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Three years have passed since My Morning Jacket released Evil Urges, the band’s R&B-hybrid themed album as supported by songs like “Remnants” and “I’m Amazed.” On Circuital, the group have moved back to the sort of incandescent rock anthems that initially brought them praise and on songs like “Outta My System,” “Wonderful (The Way I Feel)” and “Holdin’ On To Black Metal” the five-piece adds layers of acoustics, fuzz solos, and even female choruses to their alterna-rock sound.
Circuital is guitarist Carl Broemel’s third album—he debuted on 2005’s Z and appeared again on Evil Urges—and on it he displays a palette of six-string textures ranging from Ebow-laced pedal steel to dramatic cascades of powered rhythms. Unlike those earlier albums, Circuital was recorded live in a converted gymnasium situated inside a church. They showed up, set up gear, and turned on the tape—not digital—machines. Recording in such a huge space was not an easy thing: instruments bled into one another and the natural cavernous echoes were sometimes difficult to tame. But producer Tucker Martine, a veteran of sessions with R.E.M. and the Decemberists, was able to bottle the live ambience to create the Kentucky group’s most rockin’ album to date. Vocalist Jim James glides over the instrumental tracks while Broemel licks at the heels of the vocals with intricate guitar licks, little rhythmic flourishes and just a great sense of joy an abandon.
Ultimate-Guitar: When you joined My Morning Jacket in 2004 for the Z album, the band had already recorded three records. Did you listen to what Johnny Quaid, the previous guitarist, had done on The Tennessee Fire and It Still Moves? Did that inform your playing?
Carl Broemel: Yeah, I think it did. Before I auditioned, I hadn’t really heard much of the band’s music. But once I joined the band and even when I was just kind of preparing to go meet them and play with them the first time, I was listening to the records with a guitar in my hand. Trying to figure out who was doing what because I didn’t know what parts Jim was doing and what parts Johnny was doing ‘cause I’d never seen them play. So I kinda learned all the parts. It’s just in preparation I didn’t know what I was gonna need to do. So we went on tour and I spent a lot of time with Bo [Koster, keyboards, also joining in 2004] with headphones and trying to like learn all the music because we just got thrown into it. So, yeah, I spent a lot of time playing along with those first three albums and learning and then listening to some live recordings too just to see how it had been done before.
When you went into the studio to do the Z album, were you trying at all to play like Johnny Quaid?
When we went in and did Z, there was really no pressure for me to play like anyone. But certainly at that point we had been touring and I had been playing music from the first three albums so I was in kind of in that groove. It was just a fun time; I love learning songs. It’s real easy if like guitar is your life and you play guitar all the time, it’s so easy to forget what was so fun about just sitting in a room when you’re 13 and playing along with records. Any reason that life pushes you to do better is a good thing because there’s so much to learn.
“Wordless Chorus” from the Z record has become one of the band’s mainstays. Where did that muted riff come from?
On that particular song, the demo that Jim did, he played the keyboard part and he played the guitar part. On the chorus, I did come up with like a little weird wind chimey thing that’s an overdub but I can’t even remember how to play that. The other day I was like, “How did I do that?” But I just kind of worry about that main thing and that muted guitar part that was sort of Jim’s idea for the song.
What about a song like “Lay Low,” which has a fair amount of guitars on it?
That’s the big guitar song on Z and that solo at the end where it all kind of intertwines. Those two guitar solos were, I believe, Jim improvising into a four-track and then he and I sat down and kind of divided up what he had done and refined it a little bit and that became the end of that song.
John Leckie produced the Z album and he’d worked at Abbey Road Studios and done recordings with George Harrison, John Lennon, Pink Floyd and Radiohead. Was he helpful in pointing you in a direction?
Definitely, yeah. John was amazing as far as being a really good filter on arrangements. He felt like if something was lacking, he was really listening closely where he’d be like, “Your tremolo is a little too slow and you need to speed it up a little bit.” He was really integral and super helpful when he needed to be. He’s a great producer I would say because a great producer is someone who steps in when they need to and keep quiet when they don’t.
Because it sounds like Jim James has a very good idea of what he wants MMJ to sound like anyway.
The more we work together, the more we feel like we kinda have the idea of what it’s supposed to be like and we don’t really need it [producer input] all the time. But it’s crucial sometimes especially when we worked with Tucker Martine this time [producer on Circuital] and he was good at stepping in when he needed to be.
With the experience of working on Z, you now go onto the Evil Urges album. Did you feel more comfortable in the band by this point?
Umm, yes and no—it’s always sort of been an exploration. I think the benefit of Z is that me and Bo had a really solid, devil-may-care sorta attitude. We were like, “I don’t know what the fuck’s gonna happen and I don’t care. Let’s just do it.” We were a little more conscious of ourselves when we were doing Evil Urges and it was like [in exaggerated voice] “We’re gonna try, we’re gonna try really hard!” And so we tried to kinda de-evolutionize for this new record and be like, “You know what? We’re gonna just get in there and try and be in the moment and we’ll be able to tell if it’s good or not without trying so hard.” Not worrying about, “We really want it to be great.” It’s like it doesn’t really help.
Sometimes the harder you try, the more you miss it.
Exactly [laughs].
The title track from Evil Urges had one of those great MMJ grooves with all the guitars swimming in and out.
The song “Evil Urges” was one that Jim didn’t really make a demo for. We did a little retreat in Colorado Springs for the week—we rented a space and stayed in a house together and played everyday. And that was a song that we started on the first day and finished like three weeks later. We worked on it everyday and kind of massaged it and changed things and as it grew we put it together. A lot of other songs on the record were the total opposite where Jim had a really flushed-out demo and we all worked on it and tried to get it figured out like who was gonna do what and how that was all gonna come together. And then as we were kinda like in the last week of that session, he played us a demo of “Touch Me I’m Going to Scream Pt. 2,” which was just him and an Omnichord [early 1980s electronic instrument with basic sounds] and we were all like, “Whoa! Why has he been holdin’ onto that one?”
What has it been like working with Jim James?
It’s been fun workin’ with Jim. I mean I really feel like he’s influenced me deeply in guitar playing. Kind of as a lightning rod more than anything—just trying to find something with it and not be worried about if you’re playing technically right.
There really is no set way that you work out guitar parts with Jim James? The guitars really act in a more ensemble fashion than you out there blazing solo guitar stuff.
Yeah. On Circuital, a lot of time I was playing electric guitar and Jim was playing acoustic or just singing. So the solo on “Circuital” was me but it was more because Jim was playing acoustic and it wasn’t like, “I want to play all the solos on the record.”
What about the electric guitars on “Slow Slow Tune”?
“Slow Slow Tune” as well, I play electric on that song. I was kind of approaching that area that I ended up in and Jim was like, “One note!” I’m like, “OK” and he was like, “One note, man, just one note.” I kind of ran with that and came with it and it’s real fun and collaborative. If things are working nobody says anything but if someone has an idea, we all kind of bat it around and try to find it together.
You have no ego about wanting to come in with your own guitar parts?
I’m totally happy playing Johnny Quaid’s parts from the other records and I’m totally happy to play anything that Jim comes up with on his own that becomes a signature part of the song that he thinks is important.
The recording process for Circuital was live in a converted gym inside a church?
For Z and Evil Urges we did three or so weeks of the five of us workin’ on stuff. For this record we skipped all of that completely and we just went right in the studio with Tucker Martine and our friend, Kevin Ratterman who’s an engineer and producer in Louisville. So it was the seven of us and we just started working kind of from the demos and rough ideas and recording everything as we were sorting through the parts.
It’s not an easy thing to create keeper performances in the studio when you haven’t rehearsed the material beforehand.
It was definitely a challenge. The way the session was typically set up was kind of like a medicine ball where there was no computer there—even if we wanted to cut tape, we had to drive over to Kevin’s studio to cut tape so we just kept recording and recording and searching for parts. It was really kind of awesome because some of the early takes were the best ones where we might have lost it in our quest for perfection of the song arrangement and all that stuff. And we really, really pushed ourselves to try and get Jim singing with the band and trying to get takes where we were all playing well and he liked his performance too.
Have you ever tried for those live elements on the earlier records?
We always have tried to do that a lot with Z and some of the songs are that way on Evil Urges. But we got a lot more that way this time, which is a lot more satisfying because when you’re done recording and you walk in the control room it’s all done. There’s no like, “Oh, well, we’re gonna fix that next week and blah blah blah.” It’s either there or it’s not. So, it is harder to do it that way but it’s also kinda awesome ‘cause when you get it, you know it’s done.
You talked about cutting tape—you recorded analog. Can you hear the difference between your guitar sounds on the earlier albums that were recorded digitally versus your analog guitar tones on Circuital?
I would like to think I can in a blind taste test but it would be really hard—like the Pepsi challenge or something. But the thing for me on these guitar sounds that I can definitely tell is there has been a lot of leakage into all the other microphones. Like the drum overheads have guitars in ‘em and even the vocal mike. So from the purely engineering standpoint, it’s not well recorded according to this day and age where you’d be in a studio and be isolated and you’d be perfecting the guitar sound that specifically fits into this sonic space or whatever. This record is everything kind of spilling into everything else and I can hear that; I know I can hear that. I used things like a reverb tank and a tape delay and stuff like that but there’s more ambience to it than that. It’s like a drum overhead that’s compressed for drum overheads is picking up the guitar as well and vice versa. So that’s the thing that we caught and it’s that kind of spillover tone that is really fun to hear. Because they sound good but they don’t sound good in a professional studio sort of way.
When you listen to all the great records from back in the day, they all had drum mics picking up guitar sounds and there was bleeding all over the place. The Beatles records were notorious for that and they are some of the most amazing sounding recordings ever made.
Have you played those four-tracks from Sgt. Pepper’s you can get on the Internet? You see what they put on each track and it’s pretty awesome. You have to dump the tracks into Garage Band or whatever and you can solo out the track that has the French horn and the fuzzed-out electric guitar. It’s like a super-rough punch-in and all of a sudden it goes from French horn to guitar and then back and it’s like totally awesome.
Tape has an undeniable quality that’s hard to achieve—though not impossible—with digital.
Our ear likes to hear the high end sort of rolled off in an organic way and that’s obviously what tape does and the low end as well; it works with our ears a little bit better. So the big thing for me with tape is not so much the tones as much as it forces you not to look at the [computer] screen so you’re not staring at the screen and trying to get something right and watching it happen. It’s just like the medicine ball where you have to keep going back to the well. That’s the thing, you can do that with a computer if you have the ultimate self-control but it’s so hard ‘cause you’re in there for two weeks with a computer and it will eventually whittle away at your self-control over what is performance-based and what you can edit and create. That’s the dichotomy for me with the ProTools and the tape and trying to bridge the gap and meet each for whatever they were good for. And know yourself well enough to know if you have the computer there, are you gonna use it?
“Circuital” was a great example of how the band blends acoustics and electrics. The Beatles were masters are putting together acoustic and electric guitars and so were the Who and Zeppelin. Did you ever listen to those bands for any kind of input?
I love that record Who’s Next and I think that’s the most relevant in your analogy. It rocks but it has acoustic guitar in it and it’s fuckin’ awesome. But we didn’t sit around when we were working on “Circuital” and be like, “Oh, let’s make this like Who’s Next.” Nobody would ever say that but obviously we’ve all heard that record. We love guitars in all their shapes and sizes and features for sure.
On “Wonderful (The Way I Feel)” there are a bunch of fingerpicked acoustics and you’re playing pedal steel as well?
Yep. On pedal steel I used an Ebow for part of it and also Bo has created some string sounds on that song as well. We had our friend, Ben Sollee, who’s a songwriter come play [strings] and a friend of Tucker’s named Jeremy Kittel played violin on the whole record as well. So it’s just all kid of mixed together with the steel, synths and live strings.
“Holdin’ On To Black Metal” has been getting a lot of notice in blending the horns, R&B-styled female backup vocals and fuzz guitar.
Jim made a demo of that song with a sample from a Thai pop compilation [Siamese Soul Thai Pop Spectacular Vol. 2 by Kwan Jai & Kwan Jit Sriprajan] so he kind of grabbed the riff. I don’t know if you were aware of that whole connection? Yeah, so he had that demo together and we actually working on that song when night Tucker and Kevin went to go make a master reel of the best takes of certain songs. So they had gone and we were still set up from a totally different song and we just kind of quickly plugged Jim’s guitar into a DI [direct input box] and skipped the amp. I had in my mind, “Ah, I think a 12-string would be cool for that riff” so I’m playing 12-string and we did a couple takes just for fun at the end of the night. Then we left and met up at Kevin’s studio the next day to kind of listen to the master reel of the other songs that we had done.
Did you play that version of “Holdin’ On To Black Metal” for Tucker Martine?
We brought the song and played it for Tucker and literally the first words out of his mouth were, “How are we gonna beat that?” We’re like, “We’re goin’ to—we’re gonna spend two more days workin’ on it!” And we did but we couldn’t beat it so that’s kinda funny. That take was just perfectly loose and kind of carefree and we couldn’t replicate it again though we were trying. We’d heard that take I was like, “OK, that’s my part and now I’m gonna go play that” but we couldn’t get it. Then Kevin and Jim got some girl singers and then we had some horn players from Nashville including my friend Oscar Herstrom who’s a trombone player; Chris Gregg and Leif Shires and came in and laid down the horns. But the best take was us, the five of us and me and Jim going, “OK, is this the next song we wanna work on?” and we got it.
You’ve talked about loving everything there is about guitar. What are some of the instruments and amps you used on Circuital?
I’ve been using Carr amps; they’re out of North Carolina and they’re made by Steve Carr. I have a couple of his amplifiers and I like ‘em a lot. I have his Rambler, which is a pretty Fender-y sounding amp but has its own thing, too. So I used that a lot for the main guitar and I used a [Fulltone] Tube Tape Echo, which is basically an Echoplex but it’s made now and it sounds really great and it’s really reliable and awesome. My friend Aaron who is a reallsmall amp and pedal builder, he built me a reverb tank. So I used the reverb and that Tube Tape Echo on everything basically. While we were recording, I found an old Princeton Reverb, the black-faced one, and it’s my new favorite amp for recording; I used that a lot.
Guitars?
My main guitar until recently was a mid-‘80s black Les Paul Standard that I’ve had for a really long time and I’ve played it forever and know it really well. I recently got a couple Duesenberg guitars, the German maker, and there was a Starmaker Special that I used a lot on the record. I might have used that on every song; I don’t remember. Then they also made a 12-string, which is really nice, that I used on “Holdin’ On To Black Metal.”
You also do a lot of the backup vocal harmonies on the songs.
I do a lot of it live. Jim did most of the singing on this record. On Evil Urges, Bo and I did some of the background vocals at the studio. For this record, Jim spent a couple weeks at home with the tracks so he just ended up doing his parts. Bo and I usually sing and we’ll try and do as many backups as we can cover once we get the songs on the road.
You released your second solo album, All Birds Say, in 2010, before you started recording Circuital. Were you ready to jump into the MMJ album after dong your record?
Oh, yeah. The thing with All Birds Say is I actually put that together really, really slowly over four years prior. Me and my friends Teddy Morgan and Richard Medek would get together and record one or two songs and not see each other for six months. So I was just sort of slowly assembling that album here and there. Recording that record was just super casual and we got to it when we got to it and it was done when it was done. So it wasn’t like I came off some real intense recording session right into recording with the band or anything like that.
Do you like doing solo albums as opposed to band records? Does it feed a different part of your guitar psyche?
I don’t know; I don’t really think of it too much in that perspective. It was more just like, “Yeah, let’s totally work on songs” and it’s what I do when I’m by myself. When we all get together, it’s something that I love more than even doing my own record. I just feel I’m better at being in the band.
Ron Sexsmith is someone you’ve listened to.
It’s like anything and getting a record that just resonates and you’re like, “Wow.” That record, Other Songs, when I heard that and that was a long time ago. It came out in ’98 [1997] but I just remember hearing that and liked the space that he was in and the way that sounds and the Mitchell Froom production on that. It kinda like all worked for me. There is other music and bands that I like that kind of put me in the same headspace like Big Star’s Third/Sister Lovers album and a band like Yo La Tango who has a wild side and a mellow side. Even like Tom Waits has a super crazy side and also a real beautiful and sensitive side. Galaxy 500. That’s just the kind of music I listen for traveling or I’m on a plane or in a car. I just like to be in that spot. Maybe the first J.J. Cale record, Troubadour…or not Troubadour but Naturally. I just kinda like those records.
So those kinds of elements are on the All Birds Say album?
When I first met Teddy Morgan and played him “Carried Away” and a couple other songs he was like, “Man, we can take the vibe from the J.J. Cale record where it’s really quiet and intimate and we make the drums sound like drum machines. We can fool around with it.” So those are the records for me that are my ear candy in my iPod. That’s how All Birds Say sounds the way it does.
You’re touring with Neko Case and performing the Circuital album. Do you have any sense of how the new songs are being received?
It feels really good. Compared to the time between album release and feeling the crowd react to a record, this has been the fastest over the past records to my guesstimation. When we were playing songs from Z, I remember people sitting there and trying to figure it out and the same with Evil Urges. For this record, it seems like as soon as we got to the first festival that we played, people immediately knew the songs. I don’t know if it’s because they’re stealing it or it’s spreading but I don’t really know or care. We just thought it was really fun and we were kind of so excited it was feelin’ so good so fast.
STEVE CARR
Steve Carr, owner/founder of Carr Guitars, talks a bit about Carl Broemel.
“I met Carl thru MMJ front-of-house soundman, Ryan Pickett. Ryan used to be in a Chapel Hill band called Queen Sarah Saturday while I was in the Chapel Hill band, The Emperors of Ice Cream. This was in 1991 or so. Neither of us became stars though that is what the intent was! Anyway that is a bit of interest. I am glad he remembered me to introduce Carl to Carr Amps. Carl has three of our amps: a Slant 6V head and 2x12 cab; a Viceroy combo and a Rambler head. I think he is mainly using the Rambler and the Slant 6V together now. He was looking for a very dimensional thick clean sound, which is pretty much the definition of the Rambler! I have not met Carl that many times—about three—and he is a very cordial and humble guy. I like him and I like the band.”
