On the 2nd of April 2006 Pitchfork published an interview with the band (except Jim James) written by Dennis Cook, original interview can be found here.
Keywords: Elizabethtown, Reverb more to follow
At their best, My Morning Jacket, both on LP and in the flesh, make blue-collar music with a celestial bent. The Louisville quintet likes to mix up elements just to see the juxtapositions dance. For example, the tilted fairytale "Into the Woods" from their fourth album, Z, which pairs effervescent carnival music with lyrics like "A kitten on fire, a baby in a blender, both sound sweet as a night of surrender." One minute they're fuel-injected rock, the next they're as delicate and refined as Belle and Sebastian. Rather than settling into a predictable groove, MMJ have only grown more ambitious and strange with each outing since their 1999 debut.
Apparently folks like strange. Z was chosen as Harp's 2005 Album of the Year and made Rolling Stone's Top 10, PopMatters' Top 50, Spin's Top 40, and Pitchfork's own Top 50. Where it would have been easier to follow the full bore chug of 2003's It Still Moves with a straight rocker, MMJ teamed up with legendary producer John Leckie to create a complex long player that recalls the Pretty Things' S.F. Sorrow and Mercury Rev's See You on the Other Side, all lovely, fuzzy, oddly moving slabs. Newest additions Bo Koster and Carl Broemel, who joined after the surprising departures of longtime members Danny Cash and Johnny Quaid in late 2004, bring new color to MMJ's pallet.
Pitchfork spoke to everyone except main man Jim James, who was recovering from severe pneumonia, while the band was on brief respite from their marathon tour schedule.
Pitchfork: Z has been out for about 18 months now. What's the strangest take on it you've heard so far?
Two-Tone Tommy: Whenever I was talking about the title people would think it was our going to be our last record. I thought that was funny. Or someone said we were going to start going backwards. After Z we'd do Y and just keep going that way.
I don't pay too much attention to the album reviews. I like to read about the shows and takes on the band's history but I tend to stay away from what gets written about the albums. I don't really think about it too much when I'm in the middle of doing it, writing it or recording it, so it's strange to see it deconstructed through somebody else's eyes when I haven't even done that myself.
Carl Broemel: I think the coolest take was when I played it for my dad. I told him, "Here's a saxophone part but it's a little bit out of tune." He was a classical musician and he said, "Sometimes that's better." Oh cool! He's on board! He kinda gets it more than I thought he would.
Patrick Hallahan: Somebody emailed me and said Z was the bible of the universe. That's pretty fucking weird [laughs].
Pitchfork: How does it feel to be an apostle?
Hallahan: I had no idea I was an apostle, so it might take some getting used to before I can answer that.
Pitchfork: How are the new songs developing as you tour them? I thought there were a lot of new corridors opening up in the newer tunes when I saw you in November.
Tommy: Only a handful of songs had been played live before the [fall tour]-- "What a Wonderful Man" and "Off the Record". A lot of them are just as short as they are on the record, like "Gideon" and "What a Wonderful Man", whereas in the past we'd have stretched out a lot longer. We'd have made the three- and four-minute songs six or seven minutes long. Part of it is the difference between this line-up and the last one. We always just played everything out as much as we could with John [Quaid] and Danny [Cash]. With Carl and Bo it seems a little more focused.
Bo Koster: They're taking on a life of their own. That's one of the cool things about this band. We're all open to things if they feel right. There's no rigidity to the way we approach things but we're also not completely out of control.
Hallahan: It's just like anything you keep doing. They just kind of grow by themselves. We always approach the live performances differently than we do the albums because we want them to exist in two different worlds. Live is a little more loose. I've noticed an incredible leap in everybody else in the band musicianship wise. Everyone's grown as a musician so I think we're able to take these new leaps and bounds on these songs.
Broemel: The stuff we didn't think would work live ended up being almost the most fun, like the end of "Off the Record". Before we rehearse we go back through all the old records and pick a few songs that haven't seen the light of day in a while. Like playing stuff off Tennessee Fire is fun because a lot of times those songs need to be reworked anyway, just 'cause they're not big rock songs. [With] this incarnation of the band, it becomes a totally different thing. That's fun to do, to rejuvenate a song that hasn't been out there in a while.
Koster: When I first joined the band there was obviously stuff [already] recorded, so it didn't feel like I totally had ownership over it. Now, when I play those songs it's a part of me, too.
Pitchfork: That kind of thing does affect the melody and feel. You bring your own life, your own experience, into the music in subtle ways. You made your movie debut this year in Cameron Crowe's Elizabethtown. MMJ seemed to be having a ball during the funeral firestorm concert sequence but that could all be in the editing. I'm willing to allow for that.
Hallahan: It was a blast! It was exhausting, though maybe I say that because I was standing up [laughs]. Editing has nothing to do with it. I think on the DVD version Cameron is going to put more of the band scene in as an extra. You'll see we're that animated all the time. We were talking about incorporating [the fictitious band in the film] into our set but we didn't want to kill ourselves, so we'll just do it on the big screen.
Tommy: We didn't spend that much time-- three or four days in Kentucky outside Lexington and two weeks in L.A.-- which are all the scenes inside the ballroom. It was great.
Koster: I wasn't there the whole time because I wasn't in the movie. Patrick was the keyboard player 'cause [actor] Paul Schneider was the singer and drummer. There was no room for little old Bo [feigns crying].
Broemel: I was the acoustic guitar player. It was fun to be a part of it even for a few days, to be on the set and see how it all goes down. It was exciting to have a big flaming bird fly over my head. I felt the heat from it. It was kinda exhilarating. The first time it fell in the wrong spot so that was a little scary.
Pitchfork: Any trepidation about doing the archetypal anthem of southern rock? Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Freebird" is one of those songs with a lot of baggage.
Tommy: It started out with us giving each other looks like, "I can't believe we're going to do this, the band that everybody says we're like." [He adopts a cartoonish drawl]. Those longhaired hippies from Kentucky! In the end, we're doing it [for] Cameron Crowe and we believe in him, so why not?
Hallahan: We were definitely taken aback at first. Once we read the script and saw it in context it made perfect sense.
Broemel: If you think about it, people are gonna scream that at our shows anyway. I think we're all so sick of hearing about southern rock that we don't even care. Let's just go for it and do it. How can you say no? I have the utmost respect for Lynyrd Skynyrd and that song is an amazing song but we're trying hard to not get caught up in that stuff like the rebel association. That's the negative part of southern rock.
Koster: I read a lot of reviews that talk about southern rock and I get surprised how many times they mention Lynyrd Skynyrd. I just don't hear it. I understand when they hear "southern" in us but not Skynyrd.
Pitchfork: One of the things I love about MMJ is there seem to be no limitations to what kind of music you'll play. If you dig a dub beat then you'll play it, but you might join it to an ambient jam or a '60s pop tune arrangement. Given that range, what do you think are the defining characteristics of the band's sound?
Broemel: Jim's voice is a huge part. Patrick's right foot is a huge part of it. Everybody has their own little thing to contribute. As far musical ideas, the sky's the limit. There's things we probably don't think about that will always be there, but I have no idea what the next record will be like. We'll work and rework a song. "Into The Woods" had three or four incarnations that we thought were pretty cool before we finalized what we wanted to do with it. The same goes for "Off the Record" which wasn't a reggae-feeling song at first. All the songs are great as just acoustic songs, too.
Tommy: Obviously, the reverb-- especially on the vocals and drums. I think those sounds are kind of a signature. You always know it's My Morning Jacket when you hear the drums start. Songwriting-wise we'll always be all over the map but production wise there's always little hints of what came before, a My Morning Jacket vein that runs through everything.
Hallahan: If you don't have any prejudice in the music you listen to you shouldn't have any prejudice in the music you play.
Koster: There's a certain mysterious quality to everything. I always feel like I'm in another time or place when I play this music. Sometimes I feel like I'm in a movie or something. That's a testament to Jim and his imagination. His songwriting is very non-literal a lot of the time, and there's a fantasy element to some things.
Pitchfork: Well, you had a forest on stage at the Fillmore in San Francisco. And the band invited the audience to dress up like faeries, wizards, and goblins.
Koster: Yeah, that was pretty literal [laughs]. We just came up with the idea of letting the people who came to the show interpret this ambiguous paragraph we sent out. It's kind of the way we do a lot of things, ambiguously. It's not something we can deconstruct or control. It's more like a feeling.
Pitchfork: The band has been playing to larger audiences over the past couple of years. My sense, and I'm not alone in thinking this, is you'll eventually be playing coliseums and stadiums. How do you feel about the prospect of rocking massive spots like Red Rocks or Madison Square Garden?
Koster: That sounds great, I've heard people say that before. It's so weird to think about because it's just my life everyday. And the lifestyle can be so fast-paced, where you play so many shows and meet so many people that you forget a lot of moments that you have. So thinking about the future, or the past even, can bog you down.
Tommy: I'm not sure how to feel about it. We've done some hockey arenas on the Foo Fighters tour and we did Dave Matthews for a short one-week run and Wilco, too, which was an amphitheatre thing. So, we've had a taste of it. It's kind of cool in a way because it's this huge arena rock thing like Ted Nugent, Kiss or whoever. At the same time I love the really tiny venues, too. Like when we played Madison, at a sports bar where there was no barrier and the stage was two-feet high. So, you're right there in front of the crowd. I'd always prefer to play the smaller place over the bigger place anytime just for the crowd interaction. Also, when the space on stage is so tight that you're on top of each other then the energy just kind of flows between all of us because we're touching each other all the time.
Pitchfork: But bigger means massive props, dwarves and flashpots! I really liked the Squallis Puppeteers you had at Bonnaroo last summer-- freaky 10-foot tall cockroaches and Loony Tunes symphony conductors just wandering around you as you played. What can I say, My Morning Jacket does strange on a big scale and that's one aspect of the bigger venues it'd be cool to see you really explore. That and flashpots, of course.
Tommy: Yeah, that would be awesome to have a bunch of mini-tours that only lasted one or two weeks where there's always a different background and it's a different experience every time-- having a show tailored to different markets.
Koster: That's really the cool part of becoming more successful-- the ability to do a few things you couldn't do as a smaller band.
Pitchfork: Like hitting Iron Maiden's garage sale?
Koster: Stonehenge!
Pitchfork: Since Jim is the only one not joining this little roundtable, tell us one thing we should know about Jim James?
Hallahan: Want me to make fun of him? I'm just joking. To be perfectly honest, he's one of the most incredible people in existence on this planet. He never ceases to amaze me. He never stops making me laugh. I want to kiss and smack him all at the same time. He's been my best friend since fourth grade. He's a special person and a gift to this world.
Koster: When I think of Jim I always think of his ability to get everyone in a good mood. He has a real skill for getting a whole room in on a joke or a whole room focused on listening to a song. When I first met him that was my favorite thing to do with Jim. Late at night he'd get his iPod and just DJ for me for an hour. He has an amazing feel.
And he's hilarious. That's a big contradiction in him, where he can be completely sincere and serious and really take a lot of care in everything he does but at the same time he can be very carefree and childlike. One of the main things I learned from him was to stop compartmentalizing things and deconstructing moments and instead just feel them as if we were still children. 'Cause when you're six years old you're an artist. Those are the most creative moments of anyone's life. He still has that wide-eyed wonder through it all. There's no pretension at all to anything he does.
Broemel: Jim's a pretty damn good DJ. When we're on the bus it'll be late and we're pulling away and we'll have people on the bus and he'll find the perfect song for the moment. Everybody will have their eyes closed listening to whatever he puts on.
Pitchfork: That's beautiful. It's always great when somebody can capture a moment in song and kind of still everybody.
Broemel: I think that's what we're all searching for-- to try and create songs that are perfect for a lot of moments.
Showing posts with label Pitchfork. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pitchfork. Show all posts
Pitchfork interview (2002)
Keywords: Live shows and touring, Influences - Jim James, Memes and rumors, The Dawn of My Morning Jacket, Patrick Hallahan join the band, Songwriting, This is not America, The Way That He Sings, My Morning Jacket/Songs:Ohia Split EP, Spirituality, Career and commercial sucess, It Still Moves
If you haven't yet sampled the earthy yet otherworldly reverbsploitation of Kentucky's My Morning Jacket, it's time. I hereby predict that this wholly unpretentious band will go the distance for you, figuratively and literally (their last album was 74 minutes and came with a long bonus disc of demos, and at 41 minutes, MMJ's last EP was longer than many bands' proper records). The five-piece's warm but desolate rock sounds like Sun sessions held on the moon, and Jim James' pipes, which seem to come from somewhere beyond himself, can make others' 'intimate' vocals seem like stilted Merchant-Ivory performances.
On stage, James wields a flying V. He's an immovable crooner one minute and a flailing headbanger the next. His eyes and grin seem naïve, but also convey that he might know something you don't, or be attuned to something you aren't. Looking spacy, sweet and stout, he's a Manson-meets-the-Snuggle-Bear who could put you in a figure-four leglock. He can be hilarious: when playing at a club beside a club where the Genitorturers were playing, he deadpanned a public service announcement about how people shouldn't go around torturing people's genitals. He can be confounding: at one show he put a sort of stuffed buffalo puppet head on the mike, draped his hair around it, and sang 'through' it. At another he was barefoot in a tie-dyed muumuu.
And what's with all the dark songwriters voicing such cheer outside their songs? Modest Mouse's Isaac Brock, who's penned many a sociopathic verse, explains in the current issue of Bookforum how reading John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath made him "want to be kind to people." Jim James has a similar thing happening: after closing one album shuddering, "I think I'm going to hell," and opening the next one yelping, "All your life is obscene," he actually presents himself as gleeful and willing to praise Mom, Disney, and love.
This interview, conducted during the band's current tour, went pretty well considering the fans-should-never-meet-artists shenanigans that plagued the interviews I used to do for a small paper. Steve West and I talked about the Civil War more than Pavement; I once made an OJ Simpson joke out of a certain band's song, earning a stream of one-word answers; and Peter Murphy stopped me and asked where my soul was. Ambitious, excitable, funny and ever enigmatic, all Jim James did was fend off my questions about vocal influences, lyrical influences, why darkness and introspection appeal to him, the buffalo cozy, and the muumuu. Hallelujah.
Pitchfork: Howdy homesnake. No sense trying to play it cool: I'm the guy who's grabbed you, a little sloshed, after each Florida and D.C. show in the past year, self-nominated as one of your sad ambassadors. I think I only make friends or go on dates long enough to get people hooked on My Morning Jacket, and then I move on, like Michael Landon on "Highway to Heaven".
James: Hello, old chum. Thanks for the enthusiasm, dawg.
Pitchfork: So how did the decision to be so explosive live come about, as opposed to the albums' mellower sounds? The consensus being that the acts you open for, bless their hearts, are regularly upstaged.
James: I wouldn't say anyone gets upstaged; it's just two different things, you know? The others are very talented at what they do. We just all play kind of differently. I think we just like to have fun and try to convey that to the audience as well, without losing all the meaning. We're not trying to be Poison. Once we start getting more time to do full sets, you'll definitely see a lot more of the acoustic side as well as the rock side.
Pitchfork: Speaking of Poison, you head one of the few acts in which one hears as much metal as soul. What's the soundtrack in the tour van?
James: Oh man, everything. Danzig 2: Lucifuge has been in heavy rotation, as has Europe's The Final Countdown. Roy Orbison's Best Of. Strange mix CDs. And Erykah Badu live. Also we've been jamming to the new Swearing at Motorists, Bobby Bare Jr., and Ben Kweller. As well as the Scorpions' Love at First Sting and The Muppet Movie soundtrack.
Pitchfork: Did you get your ears on Willie Nelson's killer version of The Muppet Movie's "Rainbow Connection"? Whoooo.
James: I saw Willie do it in concert and nearly cried. The crickets were out and it was at the state fair. It was a beautiful night for a beautiful song. My mom was there too and that meant a lot, because that was a big song for us growing up. It was a magical moment.
Pitchfork: Sounds like it. Any old-school rap in your mix? Some Public Enemy?
James: I really really enjoy some old school rap and hip-hop, the likes of Tribe, NWA, Chronic-1-era Dre, The Predator by Cube, and Young MC, to name a few. With rap I'm mainly a singles man. I'm never really a fan of just a group, but rather a bunch of songs from an era.
Pitchfork: What do you think of the wave of instrumental stuff that gets called 'post-rock' or 'math-rock', much of which has connections to your Louisville turf?
James: I'm not sure, I don't really listen to it.
Pitchfork: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot? The Genitorturers?
James: Yankee is a great album, indeed, though when I'm in the mood for Wilco I always return to Being There. That is a classic fucking album. Timeless. Foxtrot is a little too modern for me, but it is great. The Genitorturers can do no wrong in my book.
Pitchfork: What other mediums inform My Morning Jacket? Do you read a lot and go to films or are you pastoral, ascetic meditators?
James: We try to go to movies, but we just enjoy the explosive ones. Since none of us can read, books and other forms of printed entertainment are out of the question.
Pitchfork: I heard you guys were Disney-bound, or at least Epcot-bound, when you were last in Florida.
James: Epcot was nothing compared to the grandeur that was the Magic Kingdom. I love the Magic Kingdom. Epcot was okay; it was cool to go up inside the ball. The fiber optics in 'Mexico' were amazing.
Pitchfork: Are you regularly wild on the road, or do you just drink bottled water and look out for your cousin [guitarist Johnny] Quaid?
James: We have our wild nights. Rarely does a hotel room escape unscathed from our brutal rampages. They're mostly brought on by us reading books, or brutal TV fights and pillow fights.
Pitchfork: Wait, you just said that you guys read in the hotels, and that none of you can read. Which assertion do you want to stick?
James: None of us can read.
Pitchfork: Okay. Why is crack so funny when it shouldn't be?
James: That is weird. Crack is so damaging. Yet old crack and lightbulb jokes always get people laughing. I wish there was a way to help all the people who feel crack is an answer. I really do.
Pitchfork: Characterize, if you will, the formative years of My Morning Jacket, the individuals and the band. Were you typical city-farm Louisville-ians glad to be south of sometimes-stagnant Ohio's cusp?
James: We live and lived in an around Louisville, on and off farms.
Pitchfork: So you had to work bad jobs?
James: Yes. We have worked and will have to work many, many hard, stupid jobs. Jobs are so fun, I hope we can work them forever! My Morning Jacket started off as just me and an acoustic guitar, as it was a vent for songs my band at the time couldn't use. That band was called Month of Sundays. It featured Dave Givan and Ben Blandford on drums and bass, and I played guitar and sang. They're playing in a band called Panure right now. Very talented guys. I'm really proud of the music we made and I'm remixing some of it to hopefully release it someday. We were more into weird times and heavier stuff so lots of the stuff I was writing wasn't suited for that band. So I did my own thing as My Morning Jacket, but then John [Quaid] got so involved and the boys all followed suit, and we just kind of guffawed our way into playing all the time. Every single day! And making records too. Yeehaw!
Pitchfork: There have been several lineup changes. Does the band intend to blow through a Spinal Tap-ish number of drummers, or are you settled with new drummer Patrick Hallahan?
James: He is our savior. We love him and intend on keeping him for a long time to come.
Pitchfork: And keyboardists Danny Cash, who sits like Grandpa Thunder in the back of the stage at shows, is an addition. How did his role come about?
James: He just volunteered one day and it was magical. Cash is master of all things with keys. He is a mastermind; I'd hate to think of ever not having his delicious sounds grace us.
Pitchfork: What proportion of your songs are written collaboratively? Do you bring a skeleton and then everybody chucks some meat on it? Or are you a micromanager like that Smashing Pumpkin?
James: I bring in the skeletal structures and the boys flesh him out. His name is Orange Roughy and we like to tenderize him until he takes on different shapes and sounds just right.
Pitchfork: Is there ever tension in a band in which you, the writer, singer, and lead guitarist are so focal? Four other people have to hang back from time to time for your more stripped-down hits.
James: No. The boys are angels. They realize that we are on a mission and that that mission involves many aspects. They are my saviors. And they are amazing.
Pitchfork: What's your mission?
James: I guess our mission is just to bring some mystery and some fun back to rock and roll. It seems like there is no mystery or fun nowadays. It's all so serious. I just don't feel any real emotion from some of the more widely accepted artists these days. Although there still are many great bands right now that are keeping it real, such as Swearing at Motorists, Flaming Lips, Wilco, Stories for Boys and The Summer Life.
Pitchfork: That's interesting that you mentioned enjoying lots of music that's more straightforward than the often slippery, uncanny, even nonlinear lyrics and song structures of MMJ. Outside of some of The Tennessee Fire one hears a lot of psychedelia in MMJ, for example. There are many moments of anything-goes, experimental songwriting in the extended MMJ discography, yet you guys are consistently labeled 'alt-country'. Is your sound the result of natural inclination, or conscious pursuit of a sound? Do you resent that label as ghetto-izing or do you appreciate the benefits of its insta-following?
James: I don't really understand... I don't understand 'alt-country'. I appreciate people recognizing maybe some of our country roots, but anyone that explores our catalog can easily see we are not an alt-country band. The only label for us is rock and roll. That encompasses everything.
Pitchfork: Okay, time for some song- and project-specific questions. I understand that there's a Dutch documentary about MMJ, that you guys have a zealous following over there. Tell us about that.
James: The Dutch documentary was very eye-opening. It felt really weird to be looked at and probed by the public for the first time, but the Dutch are very friendly and kind people. They did a wonderful job and we love them dearly. They were the first group of people to really make us feel like what we were doing was really listenable; you know what I mean? It felt so good to actually know that maybe we could make this thing work, that maybe one day our dreams of changing rock for the better might come true. It made us want to work harder and try, I know that.
Pitchfork: Will the doc ever be commercially available stateside?
James: I doubt it will be available. I'm very proud of it but I feel that we were very young and naïve when it was made and since we've added and changed members, it's not very relevant. But it was very well done, so I don't mind people seeing it.
Pitchfork: Where do the infamous covers fit into the My Morning Jacket canon? You've released your own versions of songs by Erykah Badu, Elton John, Berlin, and Nick Cave, and you regularly perform Black Sabbath. Are these serious reappraisals to show what you can do with a good song, crowd pleasers, or what?
James: We try to think of a song we love and that other people would get a kick out of hearing, too. We try to make them not a typical song that a normal group would do, but something just a little unusual. I think covers are a good way to connect with people who are unfamiliar with you, and a good way to have fun all around.
Pitchfork: Is "The Way That He Sings" from At Dawn about someone specific? Is there a story there?
James: "The Way That He Sings" is just about all my favorite singers, really, just the fact of being in love with the way something is, rather than what it appears to be or is presented as. There is nothing more pure and beautiful than the human voice and oftentimes I just drift away listening to Roy [Orbison, Pitchfork assumes] or Neil [Young, Pitchfork assumes] sing a song, and it doesn't matter really what they're saying or they're playing. You know, it's all about the moment. And I feel the same way about love. I kind of mention that little rascal too from time to time; I guess it's inevitable.
Pitchfork: Did you mean love as in "I love you" or Arthur Lee's band Love?
James: Not the Arthur Lee kind. I mean just loving things for what they mean, not just what they seem to mean. Dig?
Pitchfork: How'd the Songs: Ohia split CD come about?
James: Jade Tree approached us, and since they're such a great label, and Jason [Molina] is such an excellent songwriter we thought it would really be a neat way to reach a crowd we normally wouldn't reach.
Pitchfork: Why does the sped-up track on that split "The Year in Review" exist?
James: To make people laugh. To make people think. Maybe every release doesn't always have to be cut-and-dry. Maybe some things can be funny or stupid or not make sense at all. That topic kind of makes me bummed because from some of the reviews I read I could tell people clearly don't understand what we're trying to do. Regarding "Cobra", they say things like "twenty-four minutes is too long," or, regarding "The Year in Review", "Why was there a sped-up version of all the songs?" Or back to "Cobra", "Why is there weird-sounding eighties rhythms and no reverb"? We just want to try everything there is to try and we think EPs are the best place to try weird things out. Sure, not all of them work, but I always try to not let experimentation get in the way of still giving people their money's worth when they buy something. I think on both the new EPs, there is a lot of really good music on there, even though some of it may be really fucked up.
Pitchfork: I think it speaks to how unpindownable the band is, along with your at once tossed-off and profoundly mysterious cover art. Where does that stuff come from?
James: God sends it to me.
Pitchfork: Is some religion at work in MMJ? Or in the background?
James: I believe there is a force that controls and guides everything I do. I totally believe in it and pray to it though I don't know what it is. I am grateful for what it has given me. Every night I tell it this prayer which I learned as a child.
Pitchfork: Do you have a message of hope for people who, to quote your lyrics, also think they're going to hell, all of whose lives are obscene?
James: Stay off crack. Believe in your product. Believe it is worth the trouble. Every day is a gift. Every gift is a day. Listen to Bill Hicks.
Pitchfork: What are the pleasures of Bill Hicks for MMJ? His Southernness? His politics? His suspicion that Gideons are ninjas?
James: Bill Hicks tells it like it is, and I think we all appreciate that. I don't necessarily believe in everything he says, but I appreciate honesty. He says a lot of things we all think but are afraid to say.
Pitchfork: Then let me ask you how it feels to be on so many people's 'unsung titans' list. Ain't it time you guys blew up? I ask this as someone who thinks you should be headlining a Monsters of Rock revival.
James: We don't really think about that stuff. We are grateful to everyone who comes out to see us whether there are five or five hundred people at a show. Dig? Of course it'd be fun to make a living off of this. Sure. But that's just a pipe dream anyway. Or is it?
Pitchfork: I think you're walking the tightrope. You've got the recipe, as a band whose craft is treasured by music lovers, but whose songs' swooniness attracts boppers. The rock delivers, and meanwhile someone screams "that's my new boyfriend" about each band member at every show.
James: I don't know how to respond to that. I don't think we've experienced attracting 'boppers' to our shows yet. The day panties start flying at the stage and there are lines of women waiting to get into our dressing room, then maybe I'll be able to respond to that.
Pitchfork: While we're discussing the future, what can you tell us about your upcoming album? Same label? Just as long/epic as the previous two?
James: As of late I'm not quite of liberty to say anything. Top secret. It will be rockin'. And it will be mysterious. And it will be quiet. And it will feature instruments and people. We are so excited. We are shitting to get back to the studio and record.
Pitchfork: Do you get sad at the post office?
James: I get sad everywhere and nowhere, all the time.
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