On August 16th 2011 CityBeat published an interview with Bo Koster, done by Amy Harris. The original interview can be found here.
Keywords:
The effect My Morning Jacket has had on live Rock music in America over the past several years is hard to deny. Spawned from the fertile Louisville music scene, the band’s legendary live show is an electrifying experience for all who attend. At the end of May, MMJ put out its sixth studio album, Circuital, which earned a career-high first-week entry into the Billboard Top 200 album chart, bowing at No. 5. Bo Koster, MMJ keyboardist since 2004, joining the band during the gap between its major label debut, It Still Moves, and the wildly diverse Z. CityBeat spoke with Koster about the band’s Cincinnati stop Wednesday at PNC Pavilion with Neko Case, as well as My Morning Jacket’s memorable live performances and passion for local record shops.
CityBeat: Many of the band members are from the Louisville area. Are you actually from Louisville as well?
Bo Koster: I actually grew up in Cleveland, a Cleveland boy. I haven’t lived there in a long time but I grew up there. I spent the first 21 or 22 years of my life there.
CB: You guys opened your tour for Circuital in Louisville at the Palace Theater and had it broadcast on YouTube (part of the “Unstaged” concert series, which featured live concert streams “directed” by various accomplished filmmakers). It was a large production. What was that experience like for the band?
BK: That was a hectic day, for sure. That was the first show we did on our new record. We had not played all the songs live yet. That alone was kind of nerve-racking because you don’t have the confidence of playing them for years under your belt. Plus we had this whole narrative aspect so it was almost like doing a live play or Saturday Night Live, where everyone has to hit their mark on time. Everyone was a little bit on edge backstage and then we had the whole internet element and (series sponsor) American Express was involved.
CB: But no pressure at all, right?
BK: We were like, “Oh, fuck.” This is a lot of stuff piled on top of each other. Plus being a hometown show is pretty heavy. There’s something about playing your hometown that always adds a little bit of extra pressure. Maybe I wouldn’t say pressure but you want to play a good show for your hometown show. It’s just an added element.
CB: Did anything go wrong that day or any craziness?
BK: Doing that show was definitely mind-bending. But it was great and the opportunity to work with Todd Haynes (director of MMJ’s concert stream and director/co-writer of music flicks Velvet Goldmine and I’m Not There, in which MMJ appeared) … he was really awesome. We had a great time working with him. He is super-talented. That alone was worth the whole thing and also having a record come out that way, streaming live on the internet, was pretty cool.
CB: I actually have seen you guys a few times. I’m a photographer and shot you for the first time at Voodoo Festival and I just caught you guys in Lexington at the small show you did at the University of Kentucky. I have to say, I did get a little upset with the white sheets at the Voodoo fest.
BK: The white sheets?
CB: When you dressed up for Halloween at Voodoo Festival.
BK: Is it because you couldn’t see us?
CB: Yes. It was awesome for the crowd, I’m sure.
BK: Yeah, but when do you get the chance to shoot a band wearing white sheets …
CB: It was memorable.
BK: Everybody gets to shoot the band as they normally are.
CB: But not as angels, you’re right (see badly shot video snippet below). But you guys are obviously, in my opinion, one of the best festival performance bands around right now. Do you prepare differently for the festivals versus an arena or theater show?
BK: A little bit because we know that there will probably be a lot of people there that have never seen us play before. We want to make sure that we build the set with that in mind. If we play our own show, obviously we are thinking more about fans of the band that are familiar with all our records or most of the records. We want to keep it upbeat because festivals are a little bit of a different beast because it is about keeping the crowd excited because they are there all day and it is usually fucking hot.
They are usually camping out. They are usually drinking and doing drugs. So in order to get a whole crowd hyped up and with you in the moment, you have to bring the energy and bring excitement. We are always trying to think of cool things we can do. We have done a lot of weird shit over the years. Wearing costumes (at the Voodoo show) was one of them. One of many.
CB: You also have those stuffed animals on stage with you, the bears. It was really funny because I interviewed Grace Potter two weeks ago and she was telling me the story of how she fought with you guys over the owl and you won, and she has tigers on stage with her now.
BK: She has tigers. Yeah. It’s funny because those tigers that she has, we procured some of those too along the way. There are a couple of those hanging on the wall at Jim’s house. You can get those tigers at any truck stop.
CB: She said it was very convenient.
BK: Yeah, and we’ve given them all names.
CB: You have bears on stage now, right?
BK: Yeah, we have bears. We have always had animals and shit like that since the beginning of time. There is a bear on the cover of It Still Moves. There is a song called “The Bear.” It’s been part of the band for a long time. It’s our spirit animal. It’s our totem. Have you seen those animal totem books? I have a couple of those at home. That’s kind of a thing. It’s fun.
CB: I just thought it was crazy because she said, “We fought My Morning Jacket for the owl because we are The Nocturnals, but they won so we have tigers.” It was making me laugh.
BK: We have the owl, too. I forgot how the owl got in there. But it’s been part of album artwork. We had this really cool white owl that we put on the top of the recording desk when we recorded Z, I believe. Ever since then, it has been our mascot as well.
CB: So you guys are really good about staying connected to your fans and you make a lot of appearances at independent record stores, particularly in Lexington and Louisville. Why is that important to you guys?
BK: Independent businesses are a big deal for us. We believe family-owned, mom and pop-owned places are definitely something hard to maintain with today’s corporate culture and we think that’s a bummer. We think that it is getting harder and harder for people to kind of realize their own dreams on that level because of corporate domination in every sense of the word. We just like to support the little guy that has sacrificed everything in their life to open a business to do something special and do something different.
It is kind of like being against the homogenization of the world. As a creative person, it gets sad when you go to every town and every town has the same fucking thing. There’s the same Arby’s. There’s the same T.G.I.Fridays. There’s the same Starbucks, and I love Starbucks. I go all the time. It is a good company and whatever. But when it comes to music, these are the places that we go to have a relationship with people and music and culture. The independent record store is like a church to a lot of us. We go there to meet people that love music as much as we do. We go there to stumble upon things and get turned onto things. We love music. We believe it is a spiritual thing.
I think it is important to support the people that are fighting really hard to keep those places open for people like us. Nowadays, you can download records on the internet. The search engine is specifying your searches for you. If you buy an Arcade Fire record, it’s only going to show you records like the Arcade Fire or other records people who bought the Arcade Fire record have bought. So you are never stumbling upon some fucking weird record. Where, if you go to a record store, you might just happen to see a weird record in the corner with a fucked up cover and go, “Weird, what is that?” Then you pull it out and say “1984? This is weird.” Then you ask somebody about it and they are like, “Oh man! You have to listen to track 4.” That just doesn’t happen at Best Buy. That doesn’t happen on Amazon.com.
CB: The community aspect of it has been lost.
BK: Yeah, and it is an important thing. The bigger the corporation is, the less likely it is the little guy is going to get their record out and be heard. You don’t see a tiny band with some weird 7-inch at Best Buy. You can’t get that stuff, really. You can get it on iTunes, but you have to find out about it and it’s harder to find out about it nowadays. So I think supporting those places is mandatory. It’s like supporting the local orchestra or library or anything like that, any cultural thing in society that adds value and work beyond making money, like an art museum or anything. That’s what independent record stores are to us.
CB: It’s amazing the support that you show. I’m sure they appreciate it. I know in Cincinnati we have three or four independent stores that are still open and trying to make it.
BK: And the owners of those stores are fighting the good fight. They are fighting an uphill battle. They need all the help they can get. We are happy to do it.
CB You guys recorded the new album in a church in Louisville. I wanted to ask you about that experience and if you would ever consider doing it again. How did that all came about?
BK: Yeah, it was just kind of a lucky thing. This guy, Kevin Ratterman, that we are friends with is a recording engineer in Louisville. He kind of had a relationship with these people at the church and they had done a little bit of recording there. When we were talking about getting together and working off demos and doing initial recording sessions on the album, Kevin said we should try this church out. We went in there with no expectations. We grabbed as much gear as we could. Kevin helped us out, he brought gear. Tucker brought gear. Jim brought his gear. So we just set up shop without really knowing what it was going to be or what we were going to get. It ended up being really a good thing. Without having the heavy, weighted expectations on it, it ended up allowing us to be free and enjoy the moment and have fun and hang in the studio together trying to get takes because we had not even rehearsed any songs yet. It was super-rough demos that we were working off of. I think it put us all in a good head space.
CB: Is this something you guys would consider doing again?
BK: Yeah, for sure. It’s like if you have never made some crazy dish and you got a bunch of your friends together and you all brought pots and pans and brought ingredients and were like, “Let’s see if we can cook some cool food.” You don’t know what’s going on. You don’t really care if it’s good or not. So it’s just kind of fun.
It lent itself on a creative level for all of us to be open-minded and kind of have a beginner’s mind, to be in the moment and enjoy what it was. I definitely think we get off on playing unique spaces and weird kind of environments and stuff like that. Every place has a history and a certain unique energy to it, with ghosts and spirits. It affects the people in that space and the music coming out of it. So I think we are always trying to find those places and hopefully it affects the process in a positive way.
CB: Is there anything, that you like to do when you are here in Cincinnati? Any fond memories?
BK: It’s kind of been a while since we have been there. We used to play, what’s the name of that club that everyone has played?
CB: Bogart's?
BK: Yeah. We used to play there. I don’t know why we haven’t been going through there. I guess we have been in between.
CB: Louisville and Lexington are really close and it is almost the same market.
BK: Yeah. And I think we were probably coming down to having the right size venue. Sometimes the size of venue doesn’t work for the tour or the amount of production we have going into it. There is a lot that goes into the routing. I have a couple friends that live in Cincinnati, so a lot of times they come out and we go out to eat. We don’t have a specific thing that we do, but if you have any suggestions, we are open.
CB: They have re-vamped downtown a lot so there is a lot more to do in downtown Cincinnati and Fountain Square. There are cool restaurants and they are trying to get more people into the downtown area.
BK: So you think it would be worth going down there?
CB: Yeah, I do. I think downtown Cincinnati is beautiful, especially during the summer. You can walk around and there are a lot of cool things to do. What can the fans expect from the show that night?
BK: I don’t know. Hopefully, just more of what we have been doing all year long. Hopefully we can play for a while. I think Neko Case is opening. It’s going to be a great night of music. Neko is one of the best songwriters alive. Her voice is undeniable. I could listen to her sing the rest of my life. I think it is just going to be a good show with her opening.
Showing posts with label Bo Koster. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bo Koster. Show all posts
Bo Koster
Bo Koster, Boing Boing video 2011
"On the stage it's pure kind of just emotion and just letting it go, it's fun to build the house, but it's also fun to... knock it down"- Bo Koster
(Making of Evil Urges documentary, May 2008)
Bo Koster originally from Cleveland, Ohio is the keyboardist of the band, he also does percussions and vocals.
Nicknames: Baby Cookies (Twitter), DJ Juice (Twitter), Christopher B. Honey (EU), Bart Koosler (Z)
Instruments: Keyboard, percussion
Social media: WorldBoFree (Twitter)
Just one more thing: Bo loves basketball
Photo by AMightyCaporal- Bo Koster
(Rotoworld interview, February 2009)
Influences
Favorite bands
In an Rotoworld interview Koster talks about his favorite bands, explaining that he kind of considers himself to be a jack-of-all-trades, master of none. However he goes on to list a few names including Henry Mancini, Allen Toussaint and Animal Collective. He also mention some of the first records he connected to as a teenager.
(Rotoworld interview, February 2009)
Favorite bands to tour with
When asked, in a Rotoworld interview, about his favorite bands to tour with Koster names M. Ward, Dr. Dog, Everest, and Andrew Bird. He also talk about playing It Makes No Difference and A Quick One While He's Away with Eddie Vedder.
(Rotoworld interview, February 2009)
Other musical projects
Other appearances
November 22, 2009 - Bo Koster and the rest of My Morning Jacket played themselves in an episode of American Dad entitled My Morning Straitjacket.
Mentioned
Bo Koster photo by 5500
Nicknames: Baby Cookies (Twitter), DJ Juice (Twitter), Christopher B. Honey (EU), Bart Koosler (Z)
Instruments: Keyboard, percussion
Social media: WorldBoFree (Twitter)
Just one more thing: Bo loves basketball
Photo by AMightyCaporal"I like being the keyboardist. It's a cool role, because you can be a color guy by adding some frosting on top of the cake, but you can also be part of the drum and bass section. I secretly wish I was a drummer or a bass player. Sometimes I really wish I could jump around and be mobile too and lose my mind a little bit more."
(Rotoworld interview, February 2009)
Influences
Favorite bands
In an Rotoworld interview Koster talks about his favorite bands, explaining that he kind of considers himself to be a jack-of-all-trades, master of none. However he goes on to list a few names including Henry Mancini, Allen Toussaint and Animal Collective. He also mention some of the first records he connected to as a teenager.
"Keith Jarrett, "Koln concert", Genesis, "Lamb Lies Down on Broadway" from the Peter Gabriel era, and Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" were some of the first records I really connected to when I was 13 or 14. I grew up listening to a lot of the typical classic rock stuff, and then I got heavily into jazz and soul music in high school. There was a moment there where I listened to Miles, Coltrane, Bill Evans, and Keith Jarrett almost exclusively."- Bo Koster
(Rotoworld interview, February 2009)
Favorite bands to tour with
When asked, in a Rotoworld interview, about his favorite bands to tour with Koster names M. Ward, Dr. Dog, Everest, and Andrew Bird. He also talk about playing It Makes No Difference and A Quick One While He's Away with Eddie Vedder.
"The Pearl Jam guys really know how to treat an opening act. Ed would come out and sing with us to encourage people to arrive early to see us. That's a really generous thing to do and really sweet, and it meant a lot to us. Opening for Neil Young was mind-blowing. Watching Neil play music and channel that energy never gets old. I could probably watch Neil play every day for the rest of my life and never get bored."- Bo Koster
(Rotoworld interview, February 2009)
Other musical projects
Other appearances
November 22, 2009 - Bo Koster and the rest of My Morning Jacket played themselves in an episode of American Dad entitled My Morning Straitjacket.
Mentioned
Bo Koster photo by 5500
CNN (2011)
On July 18th 2011 CNN published a video interview with My Morning Jacket.
Keywords: Band name, Circuital, Songwriting
Patrick Hallahan: We're My Morning Jacket
Jim James: We're My Morning Jacket and we have absolutely nothing to say.
Interviewer: Where did your band name come from?
[laughs]
JJ: It was Boot's Bar, fall of '83, there's a place in Lexington called Boot's Bar. It didn't burn down, but the inside of it burned. The outside was still there and we went in one night and they were carrying everything out. Down in the bottom of the bar, was like the strippers' area I guess. It used to be a strip club and there was like a pole and the stage was there and the whole bar was burned and everything was decimated, but the stage lights were still on and in the dressing room next to the strippers' stage was a closet and in that closet was a jacket with the initials MMJ stenciled on the jacket.
JJ: When we recorded Circuital, we wanted to record it live and all in the same room. We really wanted to to focus on us being a band in a circle and just playing and try to just disappear into that. Try not to overthink anything too much and just let... Just kind of let the songs grow naturally from seeds that we kind of just all started working with.
Carl Broemel: Out of the blue we'll get like a magical CD in the mail and it will have something scribbled on it, like the word 'please' or something on it, so I know it's from Jim. And he'll just send us a bunch of ideas. Once we all get together we have a general idea of what we're gonna do. But it's always interesting, you never know, like there's definitely been a few songs that now in my mind is classic us songs, that the first time I heard them I was like 'what is that? Is that Jim? What is that?'.
JJ: We always try to respect the fact that we are not in control fully. The spirits are in control, the land is in control, the ghosts are in control. They decide if it rains or shines, they decide if it's a good show or if your equipment's all gonna break or if you're gonna sing great or if you're not. At the end of the day it's not, we can only come into it with the best of intentions and hope that the spirits know that we respect them y'know? And that we want it all to work out.
Bi fm radio (2012)
On June 20th Bi fm published a video interview with Patrick Hallahan and Bo Koster.
Keywords:
Bo Koster: We haven't really seen much, we just pulled up and sound checked, but we played here 2006 and we always remember it fondly. We had a great time in 2006, so we're hoping that tonight will be even better.
Keywords:
Bo Koster: We haven't really seen much, we just pulled up and sound checked, but we played here 2006 and we always remember it fondly. We had a great time in 2006, so we're hoping that tonight will be even better.
Patrick Hallahan: Yeah, yeah, we have a couple of friends on the bill that we are excited to see, M. Ward and North Mississippi Allstars are here. So it's kind of a nice little re-union to see those guys
BK: Skynard. I've actually never seen Lynard Skynard. I had to come all the way to Spain...
PH: [laughs]
BK: ...to see
PH: I know, yeah, yeah
BK: So that's pretty cool
PH: This is kicking off, yeah this is kicking off the, it's the first European date. Where are we going? Oh we're heading north from here all the way, we'll go as far as Norway and Sweden.
BK: Yeah
PH: So, from Spain to Sweden.BK: Tonight's the first night that we're doing our Spontaneous Curation Series, where we are asking fans to help us decide what songs to play in the set. Especially what song we open with. And so it's kind of forcing us to get out of our comfort zone and play different songs and put them in different orders. And taking the control, giving the control to the fans.
PH: I think internet can be a double edge sword, but we try to use it for good and you know really. I think internet has knocked down that wall between fan and band. So there's a, I do, I think we miss the mystery between fan and band, but at the same time it's a beautiful tool to do what you're saying, to create situations like this where they're picking songs on our setlist and winning autographed things from our repertoire on a day by day basis. We really like to use the internet as a positive tool.
BK: I think it's still bigger in the states. We're making headway over here though, it seems like every time we come over more people know about us in different countries and we... It seem to be a... I don't know.
PH: I think our popularity is relative to how much we tour and we had to cancel a couple of tours in Europe. So we don't really have any radio singles, our songs are too long usually, so we need to tour more over here and we're starting to feel the effects of it, it's really nice.
PH: I'll tell you what, there's a great differenced between why I like Bonnaroo and why I like the Azkena festival . This festival is really special because there's only two stages and that's one thing that... There's three this year? Well when we first came it, there were only two stages here and it was great because there was only one stage to play at once. So everybody at the festival would go to that stage and then the next band would play and they'd go to that band. Whereas Bonnaroo is, God how many stages are at Bonnaroo, like 15 stages, yeah. And it's just a huge widespread area, which is, it's awesome, it has its own magic to it. But we really like this feel of this festival, it's much more intimate.
BK: The thing about Bonnaroo that's so special is that you get 90,000 people to camp. They're all camping, like some people stay in hotels, but there's very limited hotel space right? So you really have to commit to the whole experience. So it's down and dirty, like you're not gonna get showers, you're not gonna like have your normal amenities. So I think it puts people on this frame of mind where they're all in to use a poker term. They're ready to do whatever it takes to make the weekend fun, so the spirit is high there. 'Cause people are like geared up to do it, 'cause they give y'know? Instead of going back to your bed, your home.
PH: We've been kind of buddies with those guys [Band of Horses] for a little while and they have always said that they wanted to play shows with us and then we were kind of looking for an opener for the Madison Square Garden show last December and we had them open up. And it was just like a perfect fit, our fans and their fans are kind of along the same lines and we got along with them really well. We feel that our music matches well together and I don't know, they're just great guys. We thought it would be a good fit.
BK: And honestly they're almost doing us a favor by opening up for us, 'cause they could easily headline their own tour of this similar size.
PH: Yeah, that's very true.BK: So we feel lucky and grateful that they're gonna do it, 'cause they're good people and they make great music.
PH: This is something that has been in the works for a long time and actually [laughs] our career has delayed his solo albums. So y'know it's was just kind of an understood thing that at some point he would go off and do a solo album. He's pretty much gonna put that out, tour for a month and then we start recording another album. It gives us more time at home. [laughs]
BK: Yeah everything's healthy y'know, it's all healthy kind of creative environment that we're all in, like we're all open to doing things with other people. Him doing a solo record is just about feeding the creative desire, we're still gonna do our thing and it's great. It's good for everybody.
BK: Hopefully sooner than later.
PH: Yeah, yeah, I guess we'll probably start recording in spring of next year. I'd say probably April or May. Isn't that when we kind of slotted the time?
Jim James: [walks past interview] That's not true!
PH: You get out of here! You've had your time!
We Live on Cliffs by Adam Haworth Stephen
On the 29th of October InsideNova published an article about Adam Haworth Stephen and his new solo album We Live on Cliffs. In the article it is mentioned that Stephen was given the opportunity to explore with help in the studio from Grammy-winning producer Joe Chiccarelli, as well as Patrick Hallahan and Bo Koster.
Bo Koster DJ on WFPK
On the 26th of October Bo Koster visited WFPK to play some of his favorite songs and artists.
1. Let’s Start – Fela Kuti & Ginger Baker
2. I Think It’s Gonna Rain Today – Nina Simone
3. My Old Ways – Dr. Dog
4. In Dreams – Roy Orbison
5. Try Again – Big Star
6. Albatross – Fleetwood Mac
7. Simple Twist of Fate – Bob Dylan
8. Black Star – Gillian Welch
9. Someday We’ll All Be Free – Donny Hathaway
10. Real Love – Beach House
11. Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be) – Sly & The Family Stone
More and source here.
1. Let’s Start – Fela Kuti & Ginger Baker
2. I Think It’s Gonna Rain Today – Nina Simone
3. My Old Ways – Dr. Dog
4. In Dreams – Roy Orbison
5. Try Again – Big Star
6. Albatross – Fleetwood Mac
7. Simple Twist of Fate – Bob Dylan
8. Black Star – Gillian Welch
9. Someday We’ll All Be Free – Donny Hathaway
10. Real Love – Beach House
11. Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be) – Sly & The Family Stone
More and source here.
Austinist (2011)
On September 15th 2011 Austinist published an interview with Bo Koster, done by Julie S. The original interview can be found here.
Keywords: Festivals,
My Morning Jacket albums tend to have a way of growing on you, seeping into your consciousness over time until you need it more and more. The Louisville natives' live shows on the other hand are essentially instantaneously captivating, sucking you in with Jim James' highly reverbed vocals, Bo Koster's keyboard and percussion skills, Tom Blankenship thumping bass, Patrick Hallahan's persistent drums, and Carl Broemer's guitar/pedal steel guitar/saxophone chops. Austin's only chance in 2011 to experience MMJ is this Saturday night at ACL Festival, and Bo Koster talked with Austinist to give us some insight ahead of time.
My Morning Jacket is playing more festivals than ever before - do you guys find it challenging at all playing in front of larger festival audiences that may not be as familiar with your music or does it just help bring in more fans?
It’s hard to tell sometimes. Sometimes it feels like we’re playing to a crowd of people who’ve never seen us before, and they’re confused at first but then we get everybody in. And then sometimes it feels like we’re playing a normal show, mostly just our fans, so it just depends on the festival. I feel like in Austin, usually we play for people that at least have heard of us, but it’s kind of up to the music gods sometimes.
True! Next up is a tour of Europe with The Head and The Heart. How did that come to be?
Yeah, we’re excited about that. We had some weird connections - my girlfriend is from Seattle and she used to do work for SubPop, so I first heard about them through her when I went to see them in L.A. Then they played a show with us in London, just kind of a one-off when we played the Somerset House there a few months back. They were great, seemed like a perfect fit, and they seemed excited about it, so it worked out. They’re a great opener because they have so much positive energy, they move around, and play up-tempo songs.
MMJ has played some marathon sets, like the three hours at Bonnaroo 2008, which was amazing. If there were no venue time limits put in place, is there a perfect set length for you or would it depend on something else?
It’s hard because we now have six records, spanning almost ten years, and some songs are super fan favorites, but some work better in festival settings than others. So we try to do our best in covering all the records and putting on a show that’s good for a festival, because we know people are standing around all day. They made the commitment to be there for the whole weekend, they’re putting in a lot of energy just to be there, so I feel it’s our duty to come out there and bring a lot of energy and give them something that they’re going to get excited about.
That’s great. You’ve got a bunch of records, you’ve been in this for ten years and it’s still for the fans. Do you have a favorite song to play then?
There are so many that I still enjoy playing. It’s funny, you know, we play “One Big Holiday” every show. I don’t think we’ve ever played a show where we didn’t play that song. It feels like Groundhog Day every time we play it, but it’s always fun and kind of exciting. I’m always in awe of that.
It speaks to the songs themselves, which have a lot of ins and outs, a lot of things happening in terms of the music. The song “Circuital” off your latest album is what, seven, eight minutes long? And it doesn’t get boring at all.
Yeah. That’s definitely one of my favorites to play. I love all the different colors and different parts in that song for sure.
Speaking of Circuital, the album was recorded in a church gymnasium, right?
Yeah, it was mostly at the church gymnasium. But also there was a little chapel on the side of the gymnasium, and most of the live tracking was done there.
Oh, so did you use that as kind of an isolation booth then, the side chapel?
Yeah, it gave the recording some natural reverb with the guitar amps and such. There wasn’t a lot of room, since it was kind of built on an angle, so we couldn’t really record in there. But I think we did some vocals in there, and guitar sounds, stuff like that. We tried to use a lot of the church. A lot of the piano work I did eventually in a tiny little prayer room with all these prayer books. It looked like it was straight out of 1982 or the late 70s. You can hear on “Moving Away” at the end of the track, it was raining outside and it’s right on the street so you can kind of hear the cars driving by at the end of that song. We definitely tried to get the sound of the church.
It definitely has an imprint on the overall recording.
When you do stuff live like that, you can’t help but capture the moment in the space that you’re in. That’s what we really liked about recording live, and recording in that unique space. When you listen to the record, you can feel the space, you can feel the place, it feels really real. Whereas some other modern records are chopped up, and everything is isolated, like it could have been recorded anywhere. It wouldn’t have mattered where it was recorded.
Absolutely. So is that the plan going forward then, continuing in that sort of manner? I mean, you guys have always been a heavily reverbed and very intense live band. But you are constantly changing as well.
It will be interesting to see where we go. We don’t really talk about it too much. You know, we are who we are, and we like what we like. We like certain sounds, and sometimes it changes and sometimes it stays the same. I wouldn’t be surprised if we did something again that was similar, because it was such a positive experience. You never know what kind of inspiration can come along, kind of change the direction.
It’s funny, we talk about the process a lot. You go in with this idea, and you’re like “this song is going to sound like this, and this record has to be at least five songs, and it’ll sound like this, and we can just fill in the blank, and it’ll be this kind of record, and this kind of song will be first, and whatever.”
But by the end, the record just kind of makes itself. It does what it wants to do, and you’re not really in control of it. You just have to kind of surrender. The more you try to control it, the less magic is there.
Sure, and that kind of goes back to the overproduced, everything isolated, situation. You lose the magic.
Well, some of those records are cool. We love hip hop records. There’s no sound of the room or real reverb in hip hop records though. It all has its time and place. But for us, we kind of went another way this time. We always try to do it that way. V was recorded a lot like that. We were all in the room together, and you hear the big sound of the studio that we recorded in.
You also helped produce the Delta Spirit record.
Eli Thompson and I co-produced it. He mostly engineered it, and I was considered almost like a consultant, or a player-coach because I played on a lot of the songs. I was a part of the band for a lot of the time, and other times I was behind the boards, giving my input there. It was a collaborative effort, for sure.
So are you looking to get more on that side of the glass, sharing your time behind the console and keyboards?
I am. I’ve always been somebody who has played in a lot of different scenarios. And working with younger bands that are hungry and have fire in their belly and really want to make something great - that’s really inspiring and it’s definitely something I feel I have a knack for, keeping people positive and helping them along the way. Eli and I are definitely continuing to work on records together.
Is there a certain studio you guys are working out of or is it dependent upon the band, wherever they need you?
Every band is different; every band has different ideas about what they want and different dreams and hopes at how they want to record the album. The most important thing when you’re working with the band is to be ego-less and learn as much about them as you can to find out what they want to do and what kind of record they want to make and then help them realize that goal. I never want to be the kind of producer that comes in and make it sound like my record. There are some producers where you hear their work and can go “oh that’s a so-and-so record. All the sounds are the same, that’s his guitar sound, that’s his drum sound or whatever”. That’s not something I’m really interested in.
Right! Then you’re kind of taking away the individuality of the band your trying to capture there.
It’s like being in a relationship. You can’t do what you want all the time and dictate everything that goes on, it’s a partnership and when you’re producing it’s more their record then yours, actually it’s all their record. So I help them realize that, and help them find their way. Sometimes it’s just a matter of asking a question. For example, what do you like? Why do you like that? Okay, how do we go about getting that?
You’ve mentioned before how you like to support local businesses, how important that is to you. Have you ever had a chance to visit any in Austin like Waterloo records?
Oh yeah, we go to Waterloo every time we’re in Austin. I remember hearing something about a signing there this year. [Ed. Note: The signing is actually at the Waterloo tent on site at Zilker, 5pm Saturday.]
We have a lot of close ties in Austin. We have a lot of close friends down there. Little Johnson is a very close friend of ours and we always meet up with him and he shows us around the town and we know the C3 guys. One of the keyboard companies, Open Labs, is based out of Austin so I always catch up with them too.
It sounds like a mini-homecoming for y’all to get back here!
Yeah, and Tom’s wife has worked at SXSW. She’s one of the original people involved so Austin is definitely like a home away from home from us.
I mean how cool is Austin? They have Austin City Limits the television show, and all those cool venues, like Stubbs. It’s definitely a special place and anything we can do to support local businesses we’re going to do. We view them as sacred places, as like an opera house or an art museum. We think that it’s important in our culture to still have those things so whatever we can do we’re going to do.
Absolutely. There’s been talk about a live box set in the works. Is there any word on planned release dates or additional info as to what material might be included in it?
We do plan on releasing the T5, five nights we played each record at Terminal 5 in NYC, in some shape or form. It’s just a mountain of work to get through in terms of having everybody listen to the music, mixing it, putting it together and since we just put out a record the timing isn’t great to put out something else like that. That’s going be a big project - we’re going to do it in the near future but we’re probably not going have a whole lot of time while we’re still touring. Not quite sure if the covers will be in the box set - I'm not sure how the licensing works. So we'll have to figure that out but definitely we're going to put something out, in some shape or form, in the near future.
Sounds like there is a lot of work ahead for you guys!
It takes all five of us to sit down and listen to like 99 songs or something. It’s a lot of work just to listen to it and make notes. We have to figure out how to mix it and it usually takes about a month to mix a record that has 10 songs. So to mix a live record with like 90-some songs will be quite an undertaking.
Looking forward to the release. Does the band ever plans to play the song "Run Thru" in its entirety again or are you just going to tease and torture fans with the short version from here on out.
I think it's teasing and torturing me! (Laughs)
It's funny, that moment in the show has worked really well from a showmanship aspect because of the light and the way it transitions from one song into that part, it's become kind of a thing that we do with our lighting director, with the clock arms. So we kind of got into a rut with that because it works so well with the transition between those two tunes - “Smokin From Shootin” and “Run Thru”. We get into habits and then we fall out of habits. And if you follow the band long enough you watch us get into habits doing one thing over and over and then we get out of it, start another thing. So we'll definitely play it all the way through again eventually.
Good to hear. Anything you’re excited about for Austin City Limits Festival?
I’m excited for some of the side shows. I know that Bright Eyes is playing Stubbs at the same time we're playing and Stevie Wonder will be across the park so it's going be a tough choice for the people in Austin.
We hope they come out and see us though! I don't think we've actually scheduled a tour date there this year because of ACL, and Patrick's wife is about to have a baby, so it's a bit of hodgepodge tour route. I don't think we have an Austin date lined up anytime soon.
So this is the one chance for everybody to see My Morning Jacket this year! Are you guys going to be able to stick around for the whole festival?
I think so, most of us are staying until Sunday. Jim's going to be playing a solo gig with Iron & Wine on Sunday night as well, which will be a treat. It was a total bummer though when we heard we're playing at the same time as Stevie Wonder, since now we can't see him! Hopefully we play for two hours and he plays for two hours so that people can split it down the middle.
Keywords: Festivals,
My Morning Jacket albums tend to have a way of growing on you, seeping into your consciousness over time until you need it more and more. The Louisville natives' live shows on the other hand are essentially instantaneously captivating, sucking you in with Jim James' highly reverbed vocals, Bo Koster's keyboard and percussion skills, Tom Blankenship thumping bass, Patrick Hallahan's persistent drums, and Carl Broemer's guitar/pedal steel guitar/saxophone chops. Austin's only chance in 2011 to experience MMJ is this Saturday night at ACL Festival, and Bo Koster talked with Austinist to give us some insight ahead of time.
My Morning Jacket is playing more festivals than ever before - do you guys find it challenging at all playing in front of larger festival audiences that may not be as familiar with your music or does it just help bring in more fans?
It’s hard to tell sometimes. Sometimes it feels like we’re playing to a crowd of people who’ve never seen us before, and they’re confused at first but then we get everybody in. And then sometimes it feels like we’re playing a normal show, mostly just our fans, so it just depends on the festival. I feel like in Austin, usually we play for people that at least have heard of us, but it’s kind of up to the music gods sometimes.
True! Next up is a tour of Europe with The Head and The Heart. How did that come to be?
Yeah, we’re excited about that. We had some weird connections - my girlfriend is from Seattle and she used to do work for SubPop, so I first heard about them through her when I went to see them in L.A. Then they played a show with us in London, just kind of a one-off when we played the Somerset House there a few months back. They were great, seemed like a perfect fit, and they seemed excited about it, so it worked out. They’re a great opener because they have so much positive energy, they move around, and play up-tempo songs.
MMJ has played some marathon sets, like the three hours at Bonnaroo 2008, which was amazing. If there were no venue time limits put in place, is there a perfect set length for you or would it depend on something else?
It’s hard because we now have six records, spanning almost ten years, and some songs are super fan favorites, but some work better in festival settings than others. So we try to do our best in covering all the records and putting on a show that’s good for a festival, because we know people are standing around all day. They made the commitment to be there for the whole weekend, they’re putting in a lot of energy just to be there, so I feel it’s our duty to come out there and bring a lot of energy and give them something that they’re going to get excited about.
That’s great. You’ve got a bunch of records, you’ve been in this for ten years and it’s still for the fans. Do you have a favorite song to play then?
There are so many that I still enjoy playing. It’s funny, you know, we play “One Big Holiday” every show. I don’t think we’ve ever played a show where we didn’t play that song. It feels like Groundhog Day every time we play it, but it’s always fun and kind of exciting. I’m always in awe of that.
It speaks to the songs themselves, which have a lot of ins and outs, a lot of things happening in terms of the music. The song “Circuital” off your latest album is what, seven, eight minutes long? And it doesn’t get boring at all.
Yeah. That’s definitely one of my favorites to play. I love all the different colors and different parts in that song for sure.
Speaking of Circuital, the album was recorded in a church gymnasium, right?
Yeah, it was mostly at the church gymnasium. But also there was a little chapel on the side of the gymnasium, and most of the live tracking was done there.
Oh, so did you use that as kind of an isolation booth then, the side chapel?
Yeah, it gave the recording some natural reverb with the guitar amps and such. There wasn’t a lot of room, since it was kind of built on an angle, so we couldn’t really record in there. But I think we did some vocals in there, and guitar sounds, stuff like that. We tried to use a lot of the church. A lot of the piano work I did eventually in a tiny little prayer room with all these prayer books. It looked like it was straight out of 1982 or the late 70s. You can hear on “Moving Away” at the end of the track, it was raining outside and it’s right on the street so you can kind of hear the cars driving by at the end of that song. We definitely tried to get the sound of the church.
It definitely has an imprint on the overall recording.
When you do stuff live like that, you can’t help but capture the moment in the space that you’re in. That’s what we really liked about recording live, and recording in that unique space. When you listen to the record, you can feel the space, you can feel the place, it feels really real. Whereas some other modern records are chopped up, and everything is isolated, like it could have been recorded anywhere. It wouldn’t have mattered where it was recorded.
Absolutely. So is that the plan going forward then, continuing in that sort of manner? I mean, you guys have always been a heavily reverbed and very intense live band. But you are constantly changing as well.
It will be interesting to see where we go. We don’t really talk about it too much. You know, we are who we are, and we like what we like. We like certain sounds, and sometimes it changes and sometimes it stays the same. I wouldn’t be surprised if we did something again that was similar, because it was such a positive experience. You never know what kind of inspiration can come along, kind of change the direction.
It’s funny, we talk about the process a lot. You go in with this idea, and you’re like “this song is going to sound like this, and this record has to be at least five songs, and it’ll sound like this, and we can just fill in the blank, and it’ll be this kind of record, and this kind of song will be first, and whatever.”
But by the end, the record just kind of makes itself. It does what it wants to do, and you’re not really in control of it. You just have to kind of surrender. The more you try to control it, the less magic is there.
Sure, and that kind of goes back to the overproduced, everything isolated, situation. You lose the magic.
Well, some of those records are cool. We love hip hop records. There’s no sound of the room or real reverb in hip hop records though. It all has its time and place. But for us, we kind of went another way this time. We always try to do it that way. V was recorded a lot like that. We were all in the room together, and you hear the big sound of the studio that we recorded in.
You also helped produce the Delta Spirit record.
Eli Thompson and I co-produced it. He mostly engineered it, and I was considered almost like a consultant, or a player-coach because I played on a lot of the songs. I was a part of the band for a lot of the time, and other times I was behind the boards, giving my input there. It was a collaborative effort, for sure.
So are you looking to get more on that side of the glass, sharing your time behind the console and keyboards?
I am. I’ve always been somebody who has played in a lot of different scenarios. And working with younger bands that are hungry and have fire in their belly and really want to make something great - that’s really inspiring and it’s definitely something I feel I have a knack for, keeping people positive and helping them along the way. Eli and I are definitely continuing to work on records together.
Is there a certain studio you guys are working out of or is it dependent upon the band, wherever they need you?
Every band is different; every band has different ideas about what they want and different dreams and hopes at how they want to record the album. The most important thing when you’re working with the band is to be ego-less and learn as much about them as you can to find out what they want to do and what kind of record they want to make and then help them realize that goal. I never want to be the kind of producer that comes in and make it sound like my record. There are some producers where you hear their work and can go “oh that’s a so-and-so record. All the sounds are the same, that’s his guitar sound, that’s his drum sound or whatever”. That’s not something I’m really interested in.
Right! Then you’re kind of taking away the individuality of the band your trying to capture there.
It’s like being in a relationship. You can’t do what you want all the time and dictate everything that goes on, it’s a partnership and when you’re producing it’s more their record then yours, actually it’s all their record. So I help them realize that, and help them find their way. Sometimes it’s just a matter of asking a question. For example, what do you like? Why do you like that? Okay, how do we go about getting that?
You’ve mentioned before how you like to support local businesses, how important that is to you. Have you ever had a chance to visit any in Austin like Waterloo records?
Oh yeah, we go to Waterloo every time we’re in Austin. I remember hearing something about a signing there this year. [Ed. Note: The signing is actually at the Waterloo tent on site at Zilker, 5pm Saturday.]
We have a lot of close ties in Austin. We have a lot of close friends down there. Little Johnson is a very close friend of ours and we always meet up with him and he shows us around the town and we know the C3 guys. One of the keyboard companies, Open Labs, is based out of Austin so I always catch up with them too.
It sounds like a mini-homecoming for y’all to get back here!
Yeah, and Tom’s wife has worked at SXSW. She’s one of the original people involved so Austin is definitely like a home away from home from us.
I mean how cool is Austin? They have Austin City Limits the television show, and all those cool venues, like Stubbs. It’s definitely a special place and anything we can do to support local businesses we’re going to do. We view them as sacred places, as like an opera house or an art museum. We think that it’s important in our culture to still have those things so whatever we can do we’re going to do.
Absolutely. There’s been talk about a live box set in the works. Is there any word on planned release dates or additional info as to what material might be included in it?
We do plan on releasing the T5, five nights we played each record at Terminal 5 in NYC, in some shape or form. It’s just a mountain of work to get through in terms of having everybody listen to the music, mixing it, putting it together and since we just put out a record the timing isn’t great to put out something else like that. That’s going be a big project - we’re going to do it in the near future but we’re probably not going have a whole lot of time while we’re still touring. Not quite sure if the covers will be in the box set - I'm not sure how the licensing works. So we'll have to figure that out but definitely we're going to put something out, in some shape or form, in the near future.
Sounds like there is a lot of work ahead for you guys!
It takes all five of us to sit down and listen to like 99 songs or something. It’s a lot of work just to listen to it and make notes. We have to figure out how to mix it and it usually takes about a month to mix a record that has 10 songs. So to mix a live record with like 90-some songs will be quite an undertaking.
Looking forward to the release. Does the band ever plans to play the song "Run Thru" in its entirety again or are you just going to tease and torture fans with the short version from here on out.
I think it's teasing and torturing me! (Laughs)
It's funny, that moment in the show has worked really well from a showmanship aspect because of the light and the way it transitions from one song into that part, it's become kind of a thing that we do with our lighting director, with the clock arms. So we kind of got into a rut with that because it works so well with the transition between those two tunes - “Smokin From Shootin” and “Run Thru”. We get into habits and then we fall out of habits. And if you follow the band long enough you watch us get into habits doing one thing over and over and then we get out of it, start another thing. So we'll definitely play it all the way through again eventually.
Good to hear. Anything you’re excited about for Austin City Limits Festival?
I’m excited for some of the side shows. I know that Bright Eyes is playing Stubbs at the same time we're playing and Stevie Wonder will be across the park so it's going be a tough choice for the people in Austin.
We hope they come out and see us though! I don't think we've actually scheduled a tour date there this year because of ACL, and Patrick's wife is about to have a baby, so it's a bit of hodgepodge tour route. I don't think we have an Austin date lined up anytime soon.
So this is the one chance for everybody to see My Morning Jacket this year! Are you guys going to be able to stick around for the whole festival?
I think so, most of us are staying until Sunday. Jim's going to be playing a solo gig with Iron & Wine on Sunday night as well, which will be a treat. It was a total bummer though when we heard we're playing at the same time as Stevie Wonder, since now we can't see him! Hopefully we play for two hours and he plays for two hours so that people can split it down the middle.
GRAMMYs @ Lollapalooza 2011 with My Morning Jacket
GRAMMYs @ Lollapalooza 2011 with My Morning Jacket, August 2011
On August 18th 2011 TheGRAMMYs published a video interview with My Morning Jacket at Lollapalooza, video above, rough transcript below.
Video runtime: 6:15 minutes
Show recorded at: Lollapalooza
Keywords:
Patrick Hallahan: I'm Patrick Hallahan
Carl Broemel: Carl Broemel
Jim James: I'm Jim James
Tom Blankenship: I'm Tom Blankenship
Bo Koster: Bo Koster
PH: It's just a huge honor to headline a festival, we're fans of the festival
JJ: Yup
PH: And y'know we're joining some pretty good company of people who've headlined in the past so, that's fantastic
JJ: Yeah, it's insane
PH: And we soundcheck a lot earlier, we soundchecked at 9:30 this morning
JJ: Lollapalooza was the first festival I ever went to as a kid, as a youth, sophomore in high school '94 Lollapalooza '94 in Cincinnati, so yeah I mean going to Lollapalooza in '94 and now getting to headline it is pretty... surreal.
JJ: I wouldn't say it's any different we try to look at every show the same really, I mean obviously there's some technical things you have to address that are different from stage to stage, but we, I don't know, we're all about trying to find that special place where time and space stop and you're not anywhere anymore. You're not at a festival or a club, you're just gone. So that's our goal always, to try to transcend wherever we are and hope that the audience comes with us, y'know and hope that it's transcendent for everybody. So we always just try to look at it all the same.
BK: Most days we get up at 6 am and run about like fifteen miles
PH: [laughs]
BK: And leading up like a couple weeks before a big festival, we pump it up to like 20, 21, 22 depending on how many beers we've had the night before, so...
PH: I think what makes Lollapalooza stand out from the rest is that this is one of the only ones that's actually like an urban setting, so having a city as a backdrop to the music festival is a whole different feeling from being secluded on a piece of land. It just has a great aesthetic to it. When the buildings are all lit up at night it just makes for such a cool atmosphere for a music festival.
JJ: I think for a lot of us too, Lollapalooza has some bigger sense of nostalgia
PH: Absolutely
JJ: Y'know I really love, all the festivals have their own special thing, but for Lollapalooza y'know for a lot of us that was the first festival we ever even heard of. You heard of Woodstock or whatever, but it wasn't relevant, I mean, to you as a festivalgoer. But for our generation, I feel like Lollapalooza, especially when it traveled was such a pivotal moment for everybody. I remember being in high school being like 'Oh my God, there's this thing called Lollapalooza where I can go see all my favorite bands at once, y'know such a mind blowing thing. Now I think it's, I don't want to say cooler, but I think it's cooler almost now that it's rooted in Chicago, 'cause Chicago is such an amazing place, so great to have a reason to come here, all the time. Not that there's not a million reasons to come here, but it's just great to have it anchored here.
PH: I would personally tell my 1998 self not to take no for an answer and to... not care about what other people think I guess. I would definitely try to instill some more confidence in that head of his.
JJ. In 1998 I was really worried about the Y2K distaster
PH: [laughs]
JJ: So I would really look back and tell myself that Y2K is, just don't worry about it. Y'know, it's going to be okay, even...
CB: The Mayan Calendar
JJ: Yeah it's more about 2012
PH: You brought up the Mayan Calendar now [laughs]
JJ: Don't worry about 2000, worry about 2012
[more laughs]
JJ: Because that's... Yup, you got plenty of time.
JJ: The world is very different now, I don't think that it has to change for us, as far as putting out our art form, because we still really care about the packaging and really care about releasing vinyl. So it's kind of like the world has grown, but it's almost become more of a buffet table y'know. Like every person can take what they want, 'cause I think we're all... I'm into everything. I really think there's a cool side to the digital music scene and getting things and I love physical things, I got a giant vinyl collection at home and as a traveling musician to be able to have so much music with me on a hard drive at all times is just, been unbelievable privilege. I think in today's day and age it's so important that people really respect the honor system. If you're doing well for yourself, please buy your digital downloads and please support the artist that you love, but if you're struggling and you can't afford health insurance, please steal our record. I love the idea of people who are struggling to get by to be able to get free music, to me is a really, I mean that's how it should be. I think that people have to look at it fairly, 'cause music is expensive, it costs a lot of money to make a record and put it out and if nobody pays for it, then music's going to suffer. I think if people are on the honor system and try to support the bands they love if they can, that's my personal view on it.
JJ: I think what Patrick said about, just don't take no for an answer and don't let anybody tell you that your ideas are crazy or that there's some reason you shouldn't do something. Voices pop in your head for a reason and I think it's a hard job to listen to the voices that pop into our head and try to respect what your head tells you to do in regards to your art.
PH: It's also, it's easy to be lazy when you get a good idea to just go on about your day. I think it's important to remember too, if you have like a really good idea or a moment of enlightenment, to write it down or record it or whatever, just so you can have it. So you can reflect back on it later, especially for songwriters, I think it's... y'know you walk around all day and sing songs to yourself, singing in the shower, if you have a good idea, try and capture it. Iphones are really good for that, but I just feel like a lot of the times... When I was younger I would have an idea and I would just go on and it would be gone forever, it could have been something amazing. I think it's important to capture those moments.
Rotoworld interview (2009)
 |
| Bo Koster at Dome, Marseille, 2006, photo by Pirlouiiiit - Concertandco .com |
On February 26th 2009 Rotoworld published an interview with Bo Koster, done by Steve Alexander. The original interview can be found here.
Keywords: Bo Koster and Carl Broemel join the band, Bo Koster
Where are you from and what were your teams growing up?
I'm from Cleveland Ohio, and I grew up a die-hard Cavs, Tribe, and Browns fan. I rooted for Ohio State a bit, mostly basketball though. I still follow all of them, but I'm only really invested in basketball at this point. I barely watch any football and baseball anymore, but I still read the Cleveland Plain Dealer sports page a lot. I definitely relate to the underdog. I'm not capable of rooting for a frontrunner, because of my Cleveland upbringing.
What got you interested in fantasy sports and joining our fantasy hoops league? Any interest in any other sports or are you an NBA guy?
I've been following the NBA pretty heavily for a long time now. I just love the game of basketball. I love the style and creative aspect to the game, the flow, the rhythm, the speed. Basketball has so much flavor, especially with the rise of international players now. I have a friend who has the NBA package and we watch a lot of games together, but I haven't had television in my home since 9/11, so that cuts into watching other sports. March Madness is my favorite sporting event, and then the World Cup is right behind that. I wish the WC were played every year.
How did you find out about the "Rock and Roll Hoops League" I was forming?
Well, I met you and you convinced me! Now we're old pals. Aren't we? I mean...it's cool. Call me bro. If you want to...I mean...whatever it's cool. Do you text?
Yes, I will text or call you tomorrow, no worries. I will try to find a way to make time for MMJ. Thanks for humoring me. So how would you sum up your rookie season thus far? Good picks, bad picks, things you've learned?
Typical rookie season. I showed some promise, but made way too many dumb mistakes. I drafted Greg Oden fairly early, and dropped him in January. I knew it was a gamble, but for some reason I thought he was going to have a solid year on that team (Portland). He has all the tools, but he also looks like he might be injury prone. Although, it seems like the whole NBA is at this point...I also drafted Gilbert Arenas, going against my pledge to not draft any injured players or players coming off an injury. I've learned a ton this year so far. I didn't know what the statistical categories were when I drafted my team! Also, watching the good teams in my league and how they run their teams has been a good learning experience. I did pick up Boris Diaw, which was a great waiver-wire snag. That's about all I've done well, is play the waiver wire. I think six out of my 12 guys right now are waiver wire pick-ups.
Did you draft with your head or your heart this year? In other words, did you crunch numbers or just go with guys you like?
Well, my whole plan was to draft young guys in their prime. So, my first four or five picks were Deron Williams, Brandon Roy, Andre Iguodala, Josh Howard and Richard Jefferson. I still like that approach. Unfortunately, Deron and Howard were hurt most of the first half, and Iggy started off slow...I overestimated guys who score a lot of points. I assume a lot of first timers do that. I tried not to, but I did anyway.
What have you learned for next year?
I think I've learned that I need to be more proactive with trades and so forth, and to act faster. My draft will be way better next year, and more balanced. I've also learned to not draft injured players. I'm going to consult a shaman or a tribal chief, and have them do some rituals next year to ensure my team is healthy. Seriously.
Any players you will never draft again? Any discoveries you made as a "must-have" player for next year?
I don't think I'll mess with guys who are halfway decent to mediocre in a couple categories like Jefferson. It's like he's decent in a few categories, so he's a must start, but most of the time, his equivalent is getting the better of him in rebounds and FG%. I want to look for guys who consistently produce in four or more categories. I won't over-estimate one player's ability to do one thing well. I've been really happy with Boris Diaw and Brandon Roy. I think Iguodala is going to become like a Danny Granger next year. The Sixers are his team now but I was a year too early with him. Rajon Rondo is going to be a stud. I traded for him a little too late this year. I always thought that Kevin Durant was going to be a lot like Donyell Marshall. I thought he would have a couple good scoring years, and then never reach the heights everyone thought he would. I'm pretty convinced I was wrong on that one.
Yeah, Durant is The Man. As far as the real NBA goes, who are some of your favorite players? I know you're a Cavs fan, so feel free to share any thoughts on the state of the team, the future of LeBron and whether or not he'll be wearing a ring at the start of next season. If not, who is going to win it all this year?
My take on the Lebron situation is that he'll stay in Cleveland. Cleveland will have the ability to offer him the one of the best packages. They've got a good team, good coach, solid owner and solid G.M. They also have a couple expiring contracts in 2010 as well, so it's very possible they'll be able to make an offer to a guy like Chris Bosh or another solid big man, as well as keep Lebron. They'll have a lot of leverage to lure potential free agents because they have Lebron. Look at what it has done for Mo Williams. The Knicks organization will always be cancerous because of their owner and the Nets won't have it together by then. Neither will Detroit. The Cavs might be coming off a championship at that point too. LeBron doesn't need more endorsements. He owns that world. He's like Tiger Woods. Nobody talks about where Tiger lives...Most of the talk seems to be generated by websites trying to get hits – ahem, Yahoo Sports! - and journalists who are NYC-centric.
I think that the Celtics are vulnerable. The Cavs know how to stop them, and they can more than hang with their physicality. James Posey might have been the difference last year, and P.J. Brown to a small extent. The Cavs still took them to seven games and totally blew Game 1. I'm not impressed with the Lakers either, even though everyone thinks they're the team to beat just because they won back-to-back games against the Cavs and Celtics on the road. The Cavs were really beat up, and Boston had an off night, and were a little beat up as well. I think the Lakers defense is still very vulnerable, especially on the interior, and I don't think Kobe is as dominant as he used to be. I think Lebron is the better player, has the edge in that match-up, and is the most dominant player in the league. His edge over Kobe is in his ability to impact on the defensive end, and the fact that his go-to move, which is a vicious penetration, is just more efficient than Kobe's jumper at this point.
I think in the NBA, usually the team with the best player and best defense wins. Right now, I think if the Cavs are healthy, they're that team. I'm trying to be objective, and not be a homer here, but maybe my vision is still clouded. But let's face it – any of those three teams could win it all.
My favorite player at this point is Chris Paul. He is such a pimp. I love when opposing guards get frustrated and try to get physical with him. And instead of getting chippy, he just schools them and walks away from confrontation and takes the high road. There's nothing not to like about him. Dwyane Wade is also amazing to watch on offense. I love how fearless he is going to the rack. I'm happy he's healthy and playing at a high level again.
What are some of your earliest NBA, NCAA or professional sports memory? Some of mine are Doug Flutie's TD pass for BC, Fred Brown to James Worthy, Bird vs. Magic in the NCAAs, Reggie Jackson's three homers in the World Series, watching the Braves on TBS in 1980, etc.
I remember Dwight Clark's catch for the 49'ers. Most of my memories are sad ones. The Fumble, The Shot, The Drive, Red Right 88 during the Brian Sipe cardiac kids era. Did you know that Cleveland is the only three-major sport city that hasn't won a championship since the 60's? Because of that, I kind of can't be a homer, ya know? Even Milwaukee got an NBA title with my main man, Lew Alcindor. I have vivid memories of John McEnroe vs. Bjorn Bjorg. Jack Nicklaus winning the Masters at the age of 46, which was really amazing. I'll never forget Sandy Alomar hitting an opposite-field home run off of Mariano Rivera to beat the Yankees. It was so insane, because Rivera was so sick at that point, nobody could touch him, and the ball Alomar hit was a chin-high, 97 mph 2 seam fastball that was tailing away from Alomar. I swear he closed his eyes and just guessed. That was big for Cleveland. Beating NY is always a good thing. We can never beat NY, or Pittsburgh, and now Boston. I used to love World B. Free too. He used to chuck it up from waaay out. He was the king of the heat-check.
What was the first record you owned? What was the first concert you attended?
First record is hard to remember, but it was either a Kiss record, Fleetwood Mac "Rumors", or The Who Live At Leeds. Although, I remember a Foreigner record too. The first concert I went to was the Dead Milkmen. I did a stage dive during Bitchin' Camaro - it was all down hill after that. I hate to sounds nostalgic, but people just don't get down like they used to. It seems like people are more concerned with taking photos and video to document the moment instead of being actively engaged in the moment.
When did you join My Morning Jacket and what kind of things were you doing before you got the call?
I joined with guitarist Carl Broemel a little over five years ago. Before that I was living in LA, where I worked in documentary television for a long time and played a lot of various gigs around town. I used to play in a lot of different situations. Various jazz stuff, including a Bossa Nova band, singer songwriter stuff, rock bands, and I wrote music and played with a live hip hop band from east LA for a while. A lot of soul/R&B gigs, at a place called the Temple Bar. I went on the road a couple of times as a sideman, with an artist called Kenna and a Texas blues band. Then I worked on a project headed up by Mike Garson and a bunch of great keyboardists for Yamaha pianos for two years. Basically we made music for their Disklavier, which is a piano that plays by itself. Befriending Mike Garson was an important step for me looking back. He's a really heavy, interesting guy, and some of the talks we had really helped me find direction. For people who don't know him, he's been David Bowie's keyboardist since the Spider's From Mars era, and he's a really gifted pianist and composer. Just listen to his famous solo on Aladdan Sane, and your mind will be blown. Bowie found him in New York during a time where avant-garde jazz was really big. It was a pretty forward-thinking move for Bowie at the time I think, and Mike really added a lot to his music over the years. He was a guy I could relate to because of the fact that we both had an interest in a lot of styles of music. A conversation with Mike can be pretty heavy and spiritual. He's explored a lot of things and has an interesting perspective on life. The talks we had really helped me find my path. I don't think it was a coincidence that I found MMJ very soon after that period. I always wanted to find a situation that was creatively inspiring, with people who loved and had a similar attitude about music that I had. After a long search and struggle I finally found that, and I feel very lucky for it.
What has been the biggest MMJ highlight for you? I know of New Year's Eve at the Garden, going to hang at Neil Young's ranch, Bonnaroo at 3 a.m. in a storm – I'm guessing those are some pretty cool/surreal things to have been a part of.
Yeah, the whole year has been surreal. It all goes by so fast, and you almost forget or don't have time to really take in all the moments. As much as I remember those things you mentioned, I also have really strong memories of just hanging out with the guys, laughing, or whatever. Sharing the stage with Erykah Badu was a huge highlight for all of us. Playing Saturday Night Live, Red Rocks, Radio City. We've been so lucky to share the stage with so many ghosts. It truly is humbling, almost overwhelmingly so. Every time I get the chance to play and hang out with the guys, I feel extraordinarily lucky. It's that feeling of being so fortunate that continually drives me and inspires me to keep working at it and keep growing and not take it for granted for one second.
Do you like being the keyboardist as opposed to the lead singer? I'm guessing hanging out in the background has its advantages?
Yeah, I like being the keyboardist. It's a cool role, because you can be a color guy by adding some frosting on top of the cake, but you can also be part of the drum and bass section. I secretly wish I was a drummer or a bass player. Sometimes I really wish I could jump around and be mobile too and lose my mind a little bit more.
What music are you listening to these days? Name some of your favorite bands of all time.
I've never really done any pop stuff. I've kind of been a jack-of-all-trades, master of none. I've been listening to a lot of different stuff lately, and been trying to explore more of my creative side. I've been listening to some really cool movie soundtrack stuff by Henry Mancini, and I've been really getting into Allen Toussaint. I've been digging the new Animal Collective record...It would be hard to mention any one band as a favorite. Keith Jarrett, "Koln concert", Genesis, "Lamb Lies Down on Broadway" from the Peter Gabriel era, and Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" were some of the first records I really connected to when I was 13 or 14. I grew up listening to a lot of the typical classic rock stuff, and then I got heavily into jazz and soul music in high school. There was a moment there where I listened to Miles, Coltrane, Bill Evans, and Keith Jarrett almost exclusively.
Did touring with the band cause you any problems as far as setting a lineup or making transactions?
No, it's pretty easy to get an internet connection in all the clubs. I did miss one line-up change when I was on a plane all day.
Who are some of your favorite bands to tour with?
I have a lot of fond memories of touring with M. Ward, Dr. Dog, Everest (who I've had the pleasure of playing with lately), and Andrew Bird. Playing "It Makes No Difference" and "A Quick One While He's Away" with Eddie Vedder was really special. The Pearl Jam guys really know how to treat an opening act. Ed would come out and sing with us to encourage people to arrive early to see us. That's a really generous thing to do and really sweet, and it meant a lot to us. Opening for Neil Young was mind-blowing. Watching Neil play music and channel that energy never gets old. I could probably watch Neil play every day for the rest of my life and never get bored.
What's next in the pipeline for MMJ after the success of Evil Urges and the huge tours?
Not sure really. We're going to take it as it comes.
Now that your rookie season is almost in the books, any advice for someone getting ready to start their fantasy sports career?
Ahh, not really. I don't think I'm ready to start giving advice! I would just say jump in and have fun. I'm hoping to join a couple leagues next year. That's how much fun I had this year. I want more!
(Rotoworld interview, February 2009)
The Daily Californian (2008)
On September 25th 2008 The Daily Californian published an interview with Bo Koster, done by Rajesh Srinivasan. The original interview can be found here.
Keywords:
My Morning Jacket, who played at the Greek Theatre on Friday, have become one of the America's most popular indie bands. The Daily Cal phoned the band's keyboardist Bo Koster to talk touring, success and the mixed reviews that the band's latest Evil Urges received.
Daily Californian: How has tour been so far? You just finished the first leg of it, and you're coming here to Berkeley on the 19th. How have the songs played out on stage?
Bo Koster: Good. It's been interesting seeing the reactions to older songs and new songs and stuff like that. Seems like the band is in a good groove � I don't know, it's hard to say. Are you talking about fan reaction, or what it's like for us five musically?
DC: Just the experience of playing these songs on stage. I know you played a lot of Evil Urges in South by Southwest, but now that it's been released all the fans know the songs. How is that experience, and how are they reacting to the new sound?
BK: It's such an interesting phenomenon after you put out a new record. I remember when Z came out, the first tour that we did was the month right after it came out. It came out in October and we toured right away, like the day the record came out. I remember the Z songs being a little like � not as spectacular as maybe they would have been later on, or not as energetic because people were still getting used to the Z sound, whereas It Still Moves and At Dawn tracks like "Phone Went West" and "One Big Holiday" were really like the big crowd-pleasers. But when we went back the second time when Okonokos came out, it seemed like the Z stuff had kind of taken the place of the older stuff, where people had really gotten used to the songs. But this time, with Evil Urges, it seems like from the first couple shows, you hear people singing along to the new songs in different ways. Then there are some songs where it seems like half the crowd is singing along, half the crowd is just listening. It's been a little weird. It's been a hybrid kind of reaction to the new record. In some ways it's been received the most quickly and energetically since I joined the band, but in other ways it's also been divided a little bit. It's interesting.
DC: I noticed that when Evil Urges came out, it came out to fairly positive reviews, but unlike Z there were actually some negative reviews out there. Z was universally acclaimed-I think the Metacritic rating is 90 out of 100, which is one of the highest scores on the entire site. As a band, how do you react to that? What is the feeling like when you release a record that is immediately lauded, and the next album is received in a different manner?
BK: Well, it's so hard, because when you play in a band it's supposed to be pretty much a creative, artistic endeavor. It's hard to care what people think, especially critics, because that's a dangerous path to go down: to start really being concerned what critics say and so forth. At the same time, you want people to like what you do, so it's a crazy double-edged sword. When Z came out it was like, "We don't care what the critics think!" And then all the critics loved it. It's hard not to put that in your hat and wear that as a feather in your cap and be like, "Wow, we made a record and all the critics loved it." Then when they don't like it, you're like, "What do they know?!" [laughs] You know what I mean? It's been interesting to see the different reactions. You get "I love it!" or "I hate it!" There haven't been a lot of mediocre reviews, which is interesting. You normally see a lot of those 3-star, this-is-a-good-record, ho-hum, doesn't-blow-me-away, doesn't-bother-me kind of reviews. Seems like with Evil Urges, people either really love it and applaud the new direction or are like "I don't get it � 'Highly Suspicious' is weird." But it's kind of interesting, and I think it's good. It's good to elicit any sort of reaction, whether it's good or bad.
DC: Would you rather make a record that got those mediocre reactions, or would you rather have a record like this, where it's some really positive and some really negative, but either way you're evoking a strong reaction?
BK: Yeah, I prefer the latter personally. What's the point of making the same record over and over again? That's weird. That's chasing something you can never achieve again.
DC: My Morning Jacket has always made an effort to make every record sound as different as possible.
BK: Yeah.
DC: You joined the band in 2004, and the record before Z was It Still Moves, and Z sounded nothing like It Still Moves. It was really an amazing thing to hear a band change direction so quickly and progress like that in just a couple years.
BK: Yeah, I think it's good that albums can stand alone, by themselves. I think maybe that's a blessing and a curse for our band, because I feel like if you listen at each album in a vacuum � I think they work. It's so hard when people ask questions about the band. I'm afraid if I say "I like it, I love being in the band, I think we're awesome!" it sounds like you're being cocky or whatever, but I wouldn't be in the band if I didn't love it. And I think that The Tennessee Fire and At Dawn and It Still Moves-those records that I wasn't really a part of-I think they stand on their own as records. If you've never heard At Dawn before, and you put on The Tennessee Fire, it would stand alone as a good piece of work. Same with It Still Moves. I believe that with Evil Urges as well. I think that that's maybe the conundrum of the band as it grows older: There's these unrealistic expectations by people. I'm guilty of doing that too. I'll love one part of a band, and they'll come out doing something new, and I'll be so biased to what they had done before that I can't really appreciate what they've done new right away. I feel like with five different-sounding records, you have five different sets of expectations now. It's only natural for people to be taken aback a little bit if it doesn't have the reverb of At Dawn. But I'm sure those people are going to fall in love with "Highly Suspicious" and "Touch Me Pt. 2" and they're going to want that every time out. So you can't please everybody, you just kind of do what you can and try to be honest.
DC: But as a whole, My Morning Jacket are getting more and more popular. I believe Evil Urges hit 9 on the Billboard charts. How are you receiving this difference, where you're becoming more popular? Is it a blessing or is it a curse?
BK: I'm in such a vacuum of playing shows and doing band stuff that it's hard to kind of reflect on that at the moment. I think the more people that get exposed to your music the better. It's hard to say. There's a certain kind of like middle ground that happens with popular bands. You see things that are really popular are fairly inoffensive and fairly without risk. Things that automatically do well seem to travel that middle of the road [commercially]. I don't want to mention any names, but you can look at records that have sold a ton. They're kind of that middle of the road. It's an interesting place, because I don't know if we'll ever really fit into a place like that. I don't know if we'll ever do that because I think we'll always be kind of changing. It's up to a lot of factors: Jim's songwriting and stuff like that, and the band's direction and how we grow. I'm not quite sure I know what the popularity means at this point. It's nice to have some success, it's nice to be able to play for a lot of people and nice to be able to play a big rock show, where you can just like have three or four or five or 10 thousand people know your songs and they're singing along. That's kind of the power of rock 'n' roll. And you can still have that power if you're playing to 50 people or 10 people that you can have with 5000, but it's kind of nice to be able to do both.
DC: I just saw Feist a couple of months ago. I don't know if you keep up with Feist's music�
BK: Yeah, I love her.
DC: Earlier when she was here she would play in smaller clubs in San Francisco, but when she came to the Greek Theatre it was a completely different experience.
BK: It's interesting. Certain styles of music work better in small places or in big places. We have songs that are totally conducive to big stadiums and crowds. And we have other songs that are really conducive to a tiny acoustic setting.
DC: Jim James said that with Evil Urges the band was trying to mold the sound off their live shows. So are these new songs made for the stage?
BK: Yeah, I think we always try to play as much live in the studio as we can to create that kind of energy and magic of the live performance. I think that's important, because you can play the same song 15 or 20 times in a row and take the drum track one time and the guitar track another time and the vocal track from another time and put them all together and build it like a building, but I think you lose that certain kind of intangible, unexplainable magic that can happen during a take. Maybe the take isn't perfect, but it has just that certain kind of magic. So I think we're always chasing that in the studio. But at the same time, on this record, each song, we took a different approach. With Joe [Chiccarrelli], we kind of tried to approach each song differently even with the drum sounds. If you listen to certain tracks, the drums are super tight and they're compressed and tiny, like a Radiohead record, and on other tracks they're big and boomy and have a lot of cymbals crashing. We tried to kind of approach each song separately and treat it as its own entity. Like "Touch Me Pt. 1," we almost kind of tried to play a drum machine like thing with that song, even though we did play it live. Patrick and Tom did a good job wearing all those different hats, which wasn't an easy thing to do in a four-week period. But it worked out pretty well.
DC: Which song do you feel most attached to on the record?
BK: There's a few of them I really like. I guess "Smokin' from Shootin'" is the one that I really like. I really liked "Wordless Chorus" on the last record and I like "Smokin' from Shootin'" on this record. I can't say why exactly. It was kind of something that came up at the last minute and it had an interesting feel to me with that kick drum going with the lyrics and the awkward kind of part at the beginning of the song. The verses are kind of � not stale, but very sterile � kind of methodical. And then the end, when it kicks in, it's just this huge kind of orchestral thing.
DC: When you listen to a My Morning Jacket song, do you hear the entire song or do you hear specific instruments or do you focus on one thing? Paul McCartney was asked a question like this during "The Beatles Anthology"�
BK: Oh yeah.
DC:�and he said he heard both the overall sound and the different elements.
BK: It goes through different stages for me. I think when you work on creatively on something, it's easy to get stuck in the minutia of it all, or details. You all of a sudden start hearing things that you wouldn't normally hear if you approached it with an open mind or a clean plate. When I get the demos from Jim, I try to listen to them from a total blank slate, like a kid-like state, and just enjoy it. I really just try to hear the song for what it is and enjoy it and not judge it � and see what it makes me feel. Then I'll sit down at the piano with the demo and just tinker a little around, or maybe I'll just listen to it on my iPod on walks and stuff. When we go into the studio it gets a little bit more clinical, sometimes for good reasons and bad reasons. Sometimes I can be a little bit too much of a perfectionist in the studio and that can take away from hearing the thing as a whole. But once we get done with it, I don't listen to it for months. I don't think I've listened to Evil Urges since we've mixed it. I do hear a couple songs on the radio now and again, and it's interesting. It's kind of like looking at a photo from high school. It feels like so long ago that we did that.
DC: Do you go back to listen to Z or records that were produced before you joined the band?
BK: When I first joined the band, I listened to those records quite a bit. I really fell in love with At Dawn and The Tennessee Fire when I first joined the band. It was weird. I could kind of distance myself from the whole thing. It didn't feel like it was band I was part of when I listened to the records. When we played them live, I felt like I was part of it. But it was nice to sit back and get into the heart and soul of the music at the time. I listened to Z maybe once in the last year. I have it on vinyl-I bought a new record player, so I listen to Z on vinyl. I like listening to records on vinyl at this point; it's the only way I want to listen to music. But yeah, I don't know. It's hard when you're so close to it. It's hard to be objective, and I guess I'd rather listen to other stuff than listen to my own stuff. I do once we first do it, and I'm really into it, but for the most part, I don't.
DC: I was reading an interview that Jim James did with the A.V. Club yesterday. They pointed out that most of the media attention was focused on him. He said that it was unfortunate, because the sound has always been a reflection of the entire group, not merely him. How do you feel about most of the media attention being focused on Jim James?
BK: Personally, I think it's warranted to a certain extent. He writes all the songs. He's kind of the creative leader of the band. We fill some gaps here and there, but the creative inspiration, the words, the melodies-all that stuff is coming from Jim. And he's an amazing guy to work with, all that considered. Because if you or I had a band, and we wrote all the song and all the lyrics and it was our creative inspiration that was the result of all the songs � it would be hard to share that with people and then have them take it and change maybe what you originally thought it was going to sound like and still be open and retain control over your art and inspiration. In that sense, it's Jim's thing, so we're just kind of members of the team. I always think of basketball when people talk about this stuff-he's definitely our MVP, our LeBron James or Michael Jordan. The other pieces are important. I'm not to belabor that Patrick [Hallahan's] drumming isn't important to the band and Carl [Broemel] and Tom [Blankenship], and I hope I contribute some stuff and help him achieve his inspiration as best as he can. I think it's healthy in the band to know your role and not let your ego get in the way of the music. So that kind of stuff doesn't bother me at all. Sometimes I feel weird even answering questions about the band, even though I've been part of it for almost five years now. I always just feel like I'm playing my role, so to speak.
On the other hand, if you put five guys together and play music, it's going to sound one way, because there's the energy between those five brains and five hearts and bodies. If you take away one piece and put another piece in, it could be drastically different. You can't really put your finger on why. Playing music my whole life, I've played with so many combinations of people, and each group of people creates this sum of all parts. It's like if you're in a relationship with a girl, it will never be the same way it was with other relationships. So it's totally different when you put two people together and they're in a relationship, so it's also the same way with five guys playing music. It's just a unique thing. In that sense, yeah, we're a part of it.
DC: When you came in with Carl Broemel in 2004, it was definitely a different sound.
BK: Yeah, it's an interesting question and interesting discussion. You don't really know how you're effecting-maybe you're not, maybe you are, maybe just the fact you're sitting in a room with somebody and you're like "I love that!"� that can like change the whole direction of something because he's like "Oh you do?" "Oh you love that? "OK let's follow that path," or if somebody plays something and everybody's just like "Oh that's cool..." and you kind of don't go down that path. It's kind of an intangible thing. We don't really talk too much about music. We do a lot of like playing something, and we'll look at each other like "Hmm?" and the other guy is like "Yeah!" or when you look at somebody and you're like "Huh? What do you think?" and they're like "Ehh�" and you just kind of move on. That's kind of the way we work. We're less verbal than most bands.
DC: What direction is My Morning Jacket going to take? Do you have any idea of what direction you're going in or is it something that just happens?
BK: It's more of something that just happens. We don't talk about the direction of the band musically. I don't think we've ever talked about it. I think it starts with Jim's inspiration, and I've heard him say recently-I don't know if I was in an interview with him-but he said something like, "The songs come out of me, and those are the songs that come out of me." We follow that inspiration. Then when we get together we see where we can make it. I think he describes it as he bears the fetus, and we make them into real boys. [laughs] In that sense, I don't think we'll ever talk about it. I think the one thing that we try to maintain is open-mindedness and a pure love for music at its root. We'll always just try to make good music in any way we can, in any style or any form, and be open to anything, just making quality stuff. Thinking about how people will react to the music, or thinking about we should go this direction ... I think that is stuff that gets in the way of making music. It's more just about going with your heart and your gut and being open to it and letting it flow.
Keywords:
My Morning Jacket, who played at the Greek Theatre on Friday, have become one of the America's most popular indie bands. The Daily Cal phoned the band's keyboardist Bo Koster to talk touring, success and the mixed reviews that the band's latest Evil Urges received.
Daily Californian: How has tour been so far? You just finished the first leg of it, and you're coming here to Berkeley on the 19th. How have the songs played out on stage?
Bo Koster: Good. It's been interesting seeing the reactions to older songs and new songs and stuff like that. Seems like the band is in a good groove � I don't know, it's hard to say. Are you talking about fan reaction, or what it's like for us five musically?
DC: Just the experience of playing these songs on stage. I know you played a lot of Evil Urges in South by Southwest, but now that it's been released all the fans know the songs. How is that experience, and how are they reacting to the new sound?
BK: It's such an interesting phenomenon after you put out a new record. I remember when Z came out, the first tour that we did was the month right after it came out. It came out in October and we toured right away, like the day the record came out. I remember the Z songs being a little like � not as spectacular as maybe they would have been later on, or not as energetic because people were still getting used to the Z sound, whereas It Still Moves and At Dawn tracks like "Phone Went West" and "One Big Holiday" were really like the big crowd-pleasers. But when we went back the second time when Okonokos came out, it seemed like the Z stuff had kind of taken the place of the older stuff, where people had really gotten used to the songs. But this time, with Evil Urges, it seems like from the first couple shows, you hear people singing along to the new songs in different ways. Then there are some songs where it seems like half the crowd is singing along, half the crowd is just listening. It's been a little weird. It's been a hybrid kind of reaction to the new record. In some ways it's been received the most quickly and energetically since I joined the band, but in other ways it's also been divided a little bit. It's interesting.
DC: I noticed that when Evil Urges came out, it came out to fairly positive reviews, but unlike Z there were actually some negative reviews out there. Z was universally acclaimed-I think the Metacritic rating is 90 out of 100, which is one of the highest scores on the entire site. As a band, how do you react to that? What is the feeling like when you release a record that is immediately lauded, and the next album is received in a different manner?
BK: Well, it's so hard, because when you play in a band it's supposed to be pretty much a creative, artistic endeavor. It's hard to care what people think, especially critics, because that's a dangerous path to go down: to start really being concerned what critics say and so forth. At the same time, you want people to like what you do, so it's a crazy double-edged sword. When Z came out it was like, "We don't care what the critics think!" And then all the critics loved it. It's hard not to put that in your hat and wear that as a feather in your cap and be like, "Wow, we made a record and all the critics loved it." Then when they don't like it, you're like, "What do they know?!" [laughs] You know what I mean? It's been interesting to see the different reactions. You get "I love it!" or "I hate it!" There haven't been a lot of mediocre reviews, which is interesting. You normally see a lot of those 3-star, this-is-a-good-record, ho-hum, doesn't-blow-me-away, doesn't-bother-me kind of reviews. Seems like with Evil Urges, people either really love it and applaud the new direction or are like "I don't get it � 'Highly Suspicious' is weird." But it's kind of interesting, and I think it's good. It's good to elicit any sort of reaction, whether it's good or bad.
DC: Would you rather make a record that got those mediocre reactions, or would you rather have a record like this, where it's some really positive and some really negative, but either way you're evoking a strong reaction?
BK: Yeah, I prefer the latter personally. What's the point of making the same record over and over again? That's weird. That's chasing something you can never achieve again.
DC: My Morning Jacket has always made an effort to make every record sound as different as possible.
BK: Yeah.
DC: You joined the band in 2004, and the record before Z was It Still Moves, and Z sounded nothing like It Still Moves. It was really an amazing thing to hear a band change direction so quickly and progress like that in just a couple years.
BK: Yeah, I think it's good that albums can stand alone, by themselves. I think maybe that's a blessing and a curse for our band, because I feel like if you listen at each album in a vacuum � I think they work. It's so hard when people ask questions about the band. I'm afraid if I say "I like it, I love being in the band, I think we're awesome!" it sounds like you're being cocky or whatever, but I wouldn't be in the band if I didn't love it. And I think that The Tennessee Fire and At Dawn and It Still Moves-those records that I wasn't really a part of-I think they stand on their own as records. If you've never heard At Dawn before, and you put on The Tennessee Fire, it would stand alone as a good piece of work. Same with It Still Moves. I believe that with Evil Urges as well. I think that that's maybe the conundrum of the band as it grows older: There's these unrealistic expectations by people. I'm guilty of doing that too. I'll love one part of a band, and they'll come out doing something new, and I'll be so biased to what they had done before that I can't really appreciate what they've done new right away. I feel like with five different-sounding records, you have five different sets of expectations now. It's only natural for people to be taken aback a little bit if it doesn't have the reverb of At Dawn. But I'm sure those people are going to fall in love with "Highly Suspicious" and "Touch Me Pt. 2" and they're going to want that every time out. So you can't please everybody, you just kind of do what you can and try to be honest.
DC: But as a whole, My Morning Jacket are getting more and more popular. I believe Evil Urges hit 9 on the Billboard charts. How are you receiving this difference, where you're becoming more popular? Is it a blessing or is it a curse?
BK: I'm in such a vacuum of playing shows and doing band stuff that it's hard to kind of reflect on that at the moment. I think the more people that get exposed to your music the better. It's hard to say. There's a certain kind of like middle ground that happens with popular bands. You see things that are really popular are fairly inoffensive and fairly without risk. Things that automatically do well seem to travel that middle of the road [commercially]. I don't want to mention any names, but you can look at records that have sold a ton. They're kind of that middle of the road. It's an interesting place, because I don't know if we'll ever really fit into a place like that. I don't know if we'll ever do that because I think we'll always be kind of changing. It's up to a lot of factors: Jim's songwriting and stuff like that, and the band's direction and how we grow. I'm not quite sure I know what the popularity means at this point. It's nice to have some success, it's nice to be able to play for a lot of people and nice to be able to play a big rock show, where you can just like have three or four or five or 10 thousand people know your songs and they're singing along. That's kind of the power of rock 'n' roll. And you can still have that power if you're playing to 50 people or 10 people that you can have with 5000, but it's kind of nice to be able to do both.
DC: I just saw Feist a couple of months ago. I don't know if you keep up with Feist's music�
BK: Yeah, I love her.
DC: Earlier when she was here she would play in smaller clubs in San Francisco, but when she came to the Greek Theatre it was a completely different experience.
BK: It's interesting. Certain styles of music work better in small places or in big places. We have songs that are totally conducive to big stadiums and crowds. And we have other songs that are really conducive to a tiny acoustic setting.
DC: Jim James said that with Evil Urges the band was trying to mold the sound off their live shows. So are these new songs made for the stage?
BK: Yeah, I think we always try to play as much live in the studio as we can to create that kind of energy and magic of the live performance. I think that's important, because you can play the same song 15 or 20 times in a row and take the drum track one time and the guitar track another time and the vocal track from another time and put them all together and build it like a building, but I think you lose that certain kind of intangible, unexplainable magic that can happen during a take. Maybe the take isn't perfect, but it has just that certain kind of magic. So I think we're always chasing that in the studio. But at the same time, on this record, each song, we took a different approach. With Joe [Chiccarrelli], we kind of tried to approach each song differently even with the drum sounds. If you listen to certain tracks, the drums are super tight and they're compressed and tiny, like a Radiohead record, and on other tracks they're big and boomy and have a lot of cymbals crashing. We tried to kind of approach each song separately and treat it as its own entity. Like "Touch Me Pt. 1," we almost kind of tried to play a drum machine like thing with that song, even though we did play it live. Patrick and Tom did a good job wearing all those different hats, which wasn't an easy thing to do in a four-week period. But it worked out pretty well.
DC: Which song do you feel most attached to on the record?
BK: There's a few of them I really like. I guess "Smokin' from Shootin'" is the one that I really like. I really liked "Wordless Chorus" on the last record and I like "Smokin' from Shootin'" on this record. I can't say why exactly. It was kind of something that came up at the last minute and it had an interesting feel to me with that kick drum going with the lyrics and the awkward kind of part at the beginning of the song. The verses are kind of � not stale, but very sterile � kind of methodical. And then the end, when it kicks in, it's just this huge kind of orchestral thing.
DC: When you listen to a My Morning Jacket song, do you hear the entire song or do you hear specific instruments or do you focus on one thing? Paul McCartney was asked a question like this during "The Beatles Anthology"�
BK: Oh yeah.
DC:�and he said he heard both the overall sound and the different elements.
BK: It goes through different stages for me. I think when you work on creatively on something, it's easy to get stuck in the minutia of it all, or details. You all of a sudden start hearing things that you wouldn't normally hear if you approached it with an open mind or a clean plate. When I get the demos from Jim, I try to listen to them from a total blank slate, like a kid-like state, and just enjoy it. I really just try to hear the song for what it is and enjoy it and not judge it � and see what it makes me feel. Then I'll sit down at the piano with the demo and just tinker a little around, or maybe I'll just listen to it on my iPod on walks and stuff. When we go into the studio it gets a little bit more clinical, sometimes for good reasons and bad reasons. Sometimes I can be a little bit too much of a perfectionist in the studio and that can take away from hearing the thing as a whole. But once we get done with it, I don't listen to it for months. I don't think I've listened to Evil Urges since we've mixed it. I do hear a couple songs on the radio now and again, and it's interesting. It's kind of like looking at a photo from high school. It feels like so long ago that we did that.
DC: Do you go back to listen to Z or records that were produced before you joined the band?
BK: When I first joined the band, I listened to those records quite a bit. I really fell in love with At Dawn and The Tennessee Fire when I first joined the band. It was weird. I could kind of distance myself from the whole thing. It didn't feel like it was band I was part of when I listened to the records. When we played them live, I felt like I was part of it. But it was nice to sit back and get into the heart and soul of the music at the time. I listened to Z maybe once in the last year. I have it on vinyl-I bought a new record player, so I listen to Z on vinyl. I like listening to records on vinyl at this point; it's the only way I want to listen to music. But yeah, I don't know. It's hard when you're so close to it. It's hard to be objective, and I guess I'd rather listen to other stuff than listen to my own stuff. I do once we first do it, and I'm really into it, but for the most part, I don't.
DC: I was reading an interview that Jim James did with the A.V. Club yesterday. They pointed out that most of the media attention was focused on him. He said that it was unfortunate, because the sound has always been a reflection of the entire group, not merely him. How do you feel about most of the media attention being focused on Jim James?
BK: Personally, I think it's warranted to a certain extent. He writes all the songs. He's kind of the creative leader of the band. We fill some gaps here and there, but the creative inspiration, the words, the melodies-all that stuff is coming from Jim. And he's an amazing guy to work with, all that considered. Because if you or I had a band, and we wrote all the song and all the lyrics and it was our creative inspiration that was the result of all the songs � it would be hard to share that with people and then have them take it and change maybe what you originally thought it was going to sound like and still be open and retain control over your art and inspiration. In that sense, it's Jim's thing, so we're just kind of members of the team. I always think of basketball when people talk about this stuff-he's definitely our MVP, our LeBron James or Michael Jordan. The other pieces are important. I'm not to belabor that Patrick [Hallahan's] drumming isn't important to the band and Carl [Broemel] and Tom [Blankenship], and I hope I contribute some stuff and help him achieve his inspiration as best as he can. I think it's healthy in the band to know your role and not let your ego get in the way of the music. So that kind of stuff doesn't bother me at all. Sometimes I feel weird even answering questions about the band, even though I've been part of it for almost five years now. I always just feel like I'm playing my role, so to speak.
On the other hand, if you put five guys together and play music, it's going to sound one way, because there's the energy between those five brains and five hearts and bodies. If you take away one piece and put another piece in, it could be drastically different. You can't really put your finger on why. Playing music my whole life, I've played with so many combinations of people, and each group of people creates this sum of all parts. It's like if you're in a relationship with a girl, it will never be the same way it was with other relationships. So it's totally different when you put two people together and they're in a relationship, so it's also the same way with five guys playing music. It's just a unique thing. In that sense, yeah, we're a part of it.
DC: When you came in with Carl Broemel in 2004, it was definitely a different sound.
BK: Yeah, it's an interesting question and interesting discussion. You don't really know how you're effecting-maybe you're not, maybe you are, maybe just the fact you're sitting in a room with somebody and you're like "I love that!"� that can like change the whole direction of something because he's like "Oh you do?" "Oh you love that? "OK let's follow that path," or if somebody plays something and everybody's just like "Oh that's cool..." and you kind of don't go down that path. It's kind of an intangible thing. We don't really talk too much about music. We do a lot of like playing something, and we'll look at each other like "Hmm?" and the other guy is like "Yeah!" or when you look at somebody and you're like "Huh? What do you think?" and they're like "Ehh�" and you just kind of move on. That's kind of the way we work. We're less verbal than most bands.
DC: What direction is My Morning Jacket going to take? Do you have any idea of what direction you're going in or is it something that just happens?
BK: It's more of something that just happens. We don't talk about the direction of the band musically. I don't think we've ever talked about it. I think it starts with Jim's inspiration, and I've heard him say recently-I don't know if I was in an interview with him-but he said something like, "The songs come out of me, and those are the songs that come out of me." We follow that inspiration. Then when we get together we see where we can make it. I think he describes it as he bears the fetus, and we make them into real boys. [laughs] In that sense, I don't think we'll ever talk about it. I think the one thing that we try to maintain is open-mindedness and a pure love for music at its root. We'll always just try to make good music in any way we can, in any style or any form, and be open to anything, just making quality stuff. Thinking about how people will react to the music, or thinking about we should go this direction ... I think that is stuff that gets in the way of making music. It's more just about going with your heart and your gut and being open to it and letting it flow.
Under The Radar (2008)
In July 2008, coinciding with the U.S. presidential election, Under The Radar put together a special Protest Issue. In addition to politically themed articles, bands were photographed with self-made protest signs and the photos ran in the issue. The autographed protest signs were later auctioned off eBay with all the profits donated to the political action group the War Child organization. My Morning Jacket featured in this issue with a protest sign (as seen above).
Blurt Online (2008)
On June 9th 2008 Blurt Online published an interview with the band, done by Andy Tennille. The original interview can be found here.
Keywords: Librarian,
“I love Prince. I adore him. I think he’s the baddest motherfucker on the planet after James Brown died. But to me, I think the comparisons are silly.”
Jim James runs a hand through his dirty blonde locks and shakes his head dismissively. It’s mid-March and the 30-year-old frontman of My Morning Jacket is sitting on a couch in a midtown-Manhattan apartment talking about the supposed influence of His Purple Majesty on Evil Urges, the band’s fifth studio album and the follow-up to 2005’s universally lauded Z.
The week before, James and his bandmates – drummer Patrick Hallahan, bassist “Two Tone” Tommy Blankenship, multi-instrumentalist Carl Broemel and keysmith Bo Koster – torched the stage of the Austin Music Hall at SXSW, debuting eight songs off the new record. The next day, Blogger Nation was abuzz with reports that the dance grooves and falsetto wails on tunes like “Highly Suspicious” and “Evil Urges” were the direct result of James’ obsession with the Purple One. Almost every article that’s hit newsstands in the run up to the album’s release has referenced Paisley Park, so after nearly a week of press meetings, James is ready to set the record straight on why some of the tracks off his newest masterpiece have the sweaty feel of an intergalactic dance club.
“A lot of it comes from the energy and the tightness of this city,” James says. “You hear about so many bands coming to New York to make their ‘New York’ record and all that shit. I feel like we didn’t really come here to make a record about New York, or about meeting girls in bars, or about topical New York things, but it’s just so different here. I love so many other big cities: I love Chicago and I love L.A., but nowhere else but New York do you have this energy with so many different types of people crammed in together. If you’re going to work riding the subway every single day, you’re in contact with every other race, every other religion, every other everything. I just think more people need to experience that.”
As much as the incredible diversity and palpable energy of the City that Never Sleeps influenced the urban vibe on Evil Urges, however, the soul of the album was found 1,600 miles away in the mountains of Colorado.
“Those four weeks will definitely be something I look back on in 20 years as a really special moment, for sure,” says Bo Koster, of the month the band spent last June prepping the new material at Hideaway Studio, a rustic ranch and recording facility 35 miles northwest of Colorado Springs at the base of the Rocky Mountains. “It just reminded me of what I think is important in life and the things that I want to accomplish right now. You don’t often get to have your four best friends in the world that you share your life with in a place like that, all alone. Just us by ourselves, playing music.”
“It was just one of the coolest times for us, as a band,” says Carl Broemel, the Nashville-based guitarist and saxophonist who joined My Morning Jacket with Koster in 2004 following the departure of original members Johnny Quaid and Danny Cash. “We had a little compound, with a barn that we’d rehearse in and a little studio to record in. When the storms came through, we had to unplug everything, so right when we were getting down to work, we might have to stop and go look at the sky for a while. You couldn’t force things. We all lived in the same house and cooked dinner together every night. It was like another level of connection developed between the five of us.”
In a band that measures its inner-relationships in decades rather than years (James and Patrick Hallahan met more than 20 years ago in Sunday school), Koster and Broemel are still the new kids on the block. But a lot has happened since they came aboard almost four years ago: the group recorded and released Z, played countless concerts and toured the world over, opened for Pearl Jam and Bob Dylan and issued Okonokos, a live CD/DVD that documented their two sold-out performances at San Francisco’s historic Fillmore auditorium in November 2005. Shortly after the Fillmore shows, James was hospitalized with pneumonia, exhausted by the band’s relentless touring schedule. The group was forced to cancel its New Year’s Eve appearance at Madison Square Garden opening for the Black Crowes, and all future touring plans were put on hold as James was relegated to bed rest.
“We went through a lot of stuff after Z, just with me getting sick and being fragged by touring again,” James says. “It was a dark time. After it was over, I felt like I got a chance to live some life that really spoke to me, and the songs came out of it.”
Refreshed and re-energized, James fleshed out the songs for Evil Urges during the spring of 2006 while at a log cabin in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. He subsequently brought to Colorado what his bandmates say was the most concise set of demos he’d ever presented to them.
“They couldn’t be any more lean than they were,” says Tommy Blankenship. “It wasn’t half-formed ideas — not that other demos had been - but on earlier records, the demos seemed like they were Jim trying to feel his way through the songs. With this batch, it was like Jim was saying, ‘Here are the songs.’”
“When we got the demos, we all agreed that we shouldn’t hear our own instrument too much, because we didn’t want his ideas on the demos to infect what we would do for the album,” says Hallahan. “But when he played us ‘Touch Me, Part One’ for the first time, we were all like, ‘Where did this come from? Why didn’t you play this for us sooner?’ The rhythms he came up with on that were just too hard to ignore. They were awesome.”
While songs like “Aluminum Park,” ‘Sec Walkin’” and “I’m Amazed” were quintessential My Morning Jacket creations, the silk-sheet sensuality of the two-part suite “Touch Me I’m Going to Scream” and the robotic funk of “Highly Suspicious” were driven by beats James dreamed up after a friend encouraged him to experiment with drum programming tools.
“Normally, I just do four-track stuff, but for this record, I got a computer set up with some drum programs,” James explains. “I really wanted to tighten all the screws down and make these songs more rhythmically propulsive. Hip-hop and soul music are really one of the only things left that unify people right now, musically. I think most of it’s because of the movement and what it does when it gets into your body. So I really wanted to incorporate that into our music. I wanted this record to be this big weird, propulsive thing where you’re like, ‘Should I dance to it? Or should I not dance? Should I rock out to it?’”
As defined as most of James’ demos were, some of the songs on Evil Urges – such as the title track – were birthed the old-fashioned way: on the rehearsal room floor.
“It’s hard to even recall the exact process of writing that song,” Blankenship says, of “Evil Urges.” “Jim came in one day and he basically had these two parts: the intro part and the second verse. It was just one of those times where five people just play whatever comes into their minds and magic happens.”
“That song in particular is probably the best representation on this album of what we do as band when we come together,” Hallahan adds. “Jim came in with two parts and was like, ‘Let’s go play.’ And everybody just clicked.”
In the end, the month James and company spent in the mountains of Colorado was the kind of galvanizing experience that they needed following the trials and tribulations of the previous year. “It was definitely a defining moment for the band,” says Hallahan. “We play music together and share in that bond, but it was just amazing to break bread together and drinking wine looking at a sunset over Pike’s Peak after a hard day’s work. Colorado was a very spiritual, bonding process for us.”
“Jim and I talked for several months about where he wanted to make the record,” says Joe Chiccarelli, the Los Angeles-based producer (Frank Zappa, The Shins, The White Stripes) who manned the knobs on Evil Urges. “In the past, they’d done all these rural, off-the-beaten-track studios, because they liked the isolation of working out in the middle of nowhere. But when I heard the demos, I thought the material was so upbeat and alive and had this great sense of groove to it that I told Jim that it sounded like an urban record to me. I thought they needed to record in a city.”
Finding the right place to achieve the sounds James envisioned wasn’t an easy task. Band members were sent to studios across the country — from Louisiana to the Pacific Northwest — in search of the perfect home for the album. Even when he walked into the hallowed halls of Avatar Studios in midtown Manhattan, where the likes of Dylan, Bowie, Clapton and Springsteen had come before him, James was still unsure that he’d found the right place.
“I thought it was cool with all the history and everything,” he says, “but I was trying to look at the recording of the album from the perspective of a job that had to be done. It was almost like picking out a good workbench that had a good vise on it and all the right hammers and tools that we needed. When it came down to making this record, we wanted it to be precise and we wanted it to be really locked in, and that took a lot of work. That’s one of the reasons we came to New York, because we thought that the energy here and the constraints of working in a city would add to the sense of urgency on the album.”
“You can’t walk out your door in New York and not be kind of swept up into the current of the city,” Blankenship says. “And I think that seeped into things we were doing musically on the album. I think this album is more in your face, in a way. The vocals are real upfront and things generally sound tighter and more immediate.”
Not only did the immediacy and urgency of New York influence the making of Evil Urges, but the focus James paid to the rhythms in writing the songs for the album forced the band to explore new sonic territory in the studio.
“We spent a lot of time in the studio looking for different sounds, because the sounds of the record were just as important as the arrangements of the songs,” Koster says. “Every song was its own baby. Just think about all the different kind of beats Patrick played in a single song. He didn’t have eight rock songs and one or two ballads. Every song had a different feel that required a different approach from him. We all had to do that in our own way.”
The result is an album that’s sonically diverse and builds on the blueprint the band laid out with 2005’s Z. While much of the credit is due to James as the band’s songwriter, the frontman is quick to credit Koster and Broemel as the main reason why My Morning Jacket’s last two albums have been so ambitiously expansive.
“To me, it’s like the ultimate cake we’ve got going on with Carl and Bo,” James says with a laugh. “Tom, Patrick and I are all untrained musicians and they’re both trained in school. They’re both multi-instrumentalists and yet they’re creative and relaxed. During our shows, Bo’s back there doing so much shit, between playing keys and making samples. Carl’s out there playing electric guitar, steel and fucking saxophone. It’s just incredible. They are what make us able to execute the vision completely. I feel like the band was good before they got in, but once they got in, it was like the music came together with all the details filled in. All the colors were there.”
“Bo and Carl’s involvement with the vocals on this album was just incredible,” agrees Hallahan. “They had never done that before with us. When we made Z, they were still feeling out their roles, on and off stage, so this album is really about their hard work. We can throw anything at them now, and they’ll throw it right back at you and make it better than you ever could have expected.”
In addition to the album’s musical diversity, the songs on Evil Urges, James notes, represent some of his most personal lyrics to date. “This record’s been a weird one for me, because a lot of it is tied up in a massive positive relationship that I had that ended right when we started recording the record. So a lot of the songs come from a really positive place but I was really bummed out when I was actually recording them.” Indeed, songs like “Thank You Too,” “Look At You” and the two-part “Touch Me I’m Going to Scream” sound like open letters of love and lust, while the acoustic tenderness of “Librarian” — which James suggests additionally stems from his “bad habit” of falling in love but not doing anything about it — seems to get to the heart of the matter for the songwriter.
As much as the album deals with his tumultuous love life, James also turns the camera outward on Evil Urges, crafting commentaries on social unity (“Remnants”), moral confusion (“Evil Urges”) and the chaotic state of the world (“I’m Amazed”).
“I think the theme that runs through the album is that maybe there isn’t any good or bad,” James explains. “People always want it to be red or blue, good or bad, or black or white, but it’s not always that easy. It’s wild to me to think of people involved in certain religions believe in their minds that they’re doing good things, things that are supposedly going to get them to heaven or get them to the next phase or whatever, when in reality those things seem really horrible and harmful. It’s confusing to me, and it’s a confusing time in the world right now. It’s a weird time to be alive. I think everybody feels it, so my hope is that people can relate to this record. I hope it’s something that is part of the time in some way, but that’s something that time and space will decide.”
“I think this record is a lot more outward looking and less introspective than Z,” Koster says. “That record was more of an intimate record in a way, between the five of us as a band and Jim as the songwriter. The themes on it are pretty deeply personal, but this one has a more universal, almost populist feel. Instead of it being about his individual feelings or emotions or fantasies, I feel like Jim’s talking to people and he’s almost preaching on certain songs on this record.”
And it’s that evangelistic tone that reveals the deeper sources of influence and inspiration woven into the fabric of Evil Urges. The echoes of Prince’s falsetto may have provided a handy reference for the critics, but James is reaching back beyond Sign O’ The Times to the records and artists that informed Prince’s best work.
“It’s just cool how you can be both grooved and be moved spirituality and emotionally, just through listening to Curtis Mayfield. He’s like the ultimate to me. Talk about one of the most brilliant human beings that ever lived: he was trying to unify people through music,” James says. “His playing, singing, structures, arrangements…after I heard Curtis Mayfield, I was hooked. I mean, I listened to the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and people like that way before I ever heard Curtis Mayfield, and they’re all fine and good, but now that I’ve heard Curtis Mayfield, now that we have albums like [Marvin Gaye’s] What’s Going On in our vocabulary, now that I’ve heard Sam Cooke sing ‘A Change is Gonna Come,’ the rest of it starts to seem silly.”
It’s no coincidence that James’ appreciation and greater understanding of the emotional depth of soul music occurred in the same year that he faced his own mortality through illness, overcame his first real adult romantic relationship and celebrated his thirtieth birthday. In the end, Evil Urges almost feels like an awakening, a watershed album that reveals the growth of a man who’s emerging as a more confident artist, bandleader and lyricist concerned with the larger issues and questions that surround him.
“I think Jim has a very clear vision right now of what he wants his music to be and he’s very much in touch with the heart and soul of his songs,” producer Chiccarelli notes. “That’s one of his incredible strengths and what makes him one of the greatest songwriters out there, I believe. He’s willing to let go enough that as long as the whole intent, the feeling and the emotion of the song is right, all the colors and details seem to fall into place.”
“He’s more confident in his role as the frontman of this band and I think it’s reflected in how he approaches his singing on this album,” adds Hallahan. “When he steps up to that microphone, he owns that microphone. Instead of him standing back and hiding behind the reverb, the vocals are very upfront and very present on this album. And he’s more willing to try new things. I’m really proud of him.
“Jim jumped a hurdle in his life, and the proof is in this album. You just hear it — he grew up.”
Keywords: Librarian,
“I love Prince. I adore him. I think he’s the baddest motherfucker on the planet after James Brown died. But to me, I think the comparisons are silly.”
Jim James runs a hand through his dirty blonde locks and shakes his head dismissively. It’s mid-March and the 30-year-old frontman of My Morning Jacket is sitting on a couch in a midtown-Manhattan apartment talking about the supposed influence of His Purple Majesty on Evil Urges, the band’s fifth studio album and the follow-up to 2005’s universally lauded Z.
The week before, James and his bandmates – drummer Patrick Hallahan, bassist “Two Tone” Tommy Blankenship, multi-instrumentalist Carl Broemel and keysmith Bo Koster – torched the stage of the Austin Music Hall at SXSW, debuting eight songs off the new record. The next day, Blogger Nation was abuzz with reports that the dance grooves and falsetto wails on tunes like “Highly Suspicious” and “Evil Urges” were the direct result of James’ obsession with the Purple One. Almost every article that’s hit newsstands in the run up to the album’s release has referenced Paisley Park, so after nearly a week of press meetings, James is ready to set the record straight on why some of the tracks off his newest masterpiece have the sweaty feel of an intergalactic dance club.
“A lot of it comes from the energy and the tightness of this city,” James says. “You hear about so many bands coming to New York to make their ‘New York’ record and all that shit. I feel like we didn’t really come here to make a record about New York, or about meeting girls in bars, or about topical New York things, but it’s just so different here. I love so many other big cities: I love Chicago and I love L.A., but nowhere else but New York do you have this energy with so many different types of people crammed in together. If you’re going to work riding the subway every single day, you’re in contact with every other race, every other religion, every other everything. I just think more people need to experience that.”
As much as the incredible diversity and palpable energy of the City that Never Sleeps influenced the urban vibe on Evil Urges, however, the soul of the album was found 1,600 miles away in the mountains of Colorado.
“Those four weeks will definitely be something I look back on in 20 years as a really special moment, for sure,” says Bo Koster, of the month the band spent last June prepping the new material at Hideaway Studio, a rustic ranch and recording facility 35 miles northwest of Colorado Springs at the base of the Rocky Mountains. “It just reminded me of what I think is important in life and the things that I want to accomplish right now. You don’t often get to have your four best friends in the world that you share your life with in a place like that, all alone. Just us by ourselves, playing music.”
“It was just one of the coolest times for us, as a band,” says Carl Broemel, the Nashville-based guitarist and saxophonist who joined My Morning Jacket with Koster in 2004 following the departure of original members Johnny Quaid and Danny Cash. “We had a little compound, with a barn that we’d rehearse in and a little studio to record in. When the storms came through, we had to unplug everything, so right when we were getting down to work, we might have to stop and go look at the sky for a while. You couldn’t force things. We all lived in the same house and cooked dinner together every night. It was like another level of connection developed between the five of us.”
In a band that measures its inner-relationships in decades rather than years (James and Patrick Hallahan met more than 20 years ago in Sunday school), Koster and Broemel are still the new kids on the block. But a lot has happened since they came aboard almost four years ago: the group recorded and released Z, played countless concerts and toured the world over, opened for Pearl Jam and Bob Dylan and issued Okonokos, a live CD/DVD that documented their two sold-out performances at San Francisco’s historic Fillmore auditorium in November 2005. Shortly after the Fillmore shows, James was hospitalized with pneumonia, exhausted by the band’s relentless touring schedule. The group was forced to cancel its New Year’s Eve appearance at Madison Square Garden opening for the Black Crowes, and all future touring plans were put on hold as James was relegated to bed rest.
“We went through a lot of stuff after Z, just with me getting sick and being fragged by touring again,” James says. “It was a dark time. After it was over, I felt like I got a chance to live some life that really spoke to me, and the songs came out of it.”
Refreshed and re-energized, James fleshed out the songs for Evil Urges during the spring of 2006 while at a log cabin in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. He subsequently brought to Colorado what his bandmates say was the most concise set of demos he’d ever presented to them.
“They couldn’t be any more lean than they were,” says Tommy Blankenship. “It wasn’t half-formed ideas — not that other demos had been - but on earlier records, the demos seemed like they were Jim trying to feel his way through the songs. With this batch, it was like Jim was saying, ‘Here are the songs.’”
“When we got the demos, we all agreed that we shouldn’t hear our own instrument too much, because we didn’t want his ideas on the demos to infect what we would do for the album,” says Hallahan. “But when he played us ‘Touch Me, Part One’ for the first time, we were all like, ‘Where did this come from? Why didn’t you play this for us sooner?’ The rhythms he came up with on that were just too hard to ignore. They were awesome.”
While songs like “Aluminum Park,” ‘Sec Walkin’” and “I’m Amazed” were quintessential My Morning Jacket creations, the silk-sheet sensuality of the two-part suite “Touch Me I’m Going to Scream” and the robotic funk of “Highly Suspicious” were driven by beats James dreamed up after a friend encouraged him to experiment with drum programming tools.
“Normally, I just do four-track stuff, but for this record, I got a computer set up with some drum programs,” James explains. “I really wanted to tighten all the screws down and make these songs more rhythmically propulsive. Hip-hop and soul music are really one of the only things left that unify people right now, musically. I think most of it’s because of the movement and what it does when it gets into your body. So I really wanted to incorporate that into our music. I wanted this record to be this big weird, propulsive thing where you’re like, ‘Should I dance to it? Or should I not dance? Should I rock out to it?’”
As defined as most of James’ demos were, some of the songs on Evil Urges – such as the title track – were birthed the old-fashioned way: on the rehearsal room floor.
“It’s hard to even recall the exact process of writing that song,” Blankenship says, of “Evil Urges.” “Jim came in one day and he basically had these two parts: the intro part and the second verse. It was just one of those times where five people just play whatever comes into their minds and magic happens.”
“That song in particular is probably the best representation on this album of what we do as band when we come together,” Hallahan adds. “Jim came in with two parts and was like, ‘Let’s go play.’ And everybody just clicked.”
In the end, the month James and company spent in the mountains of Colorado was the kind of galvanizing experience that they needed following the trials and tribulations of the previous year. “It was definitely a defining moment for the band,” says Hallahan. “We play music together and share in that bond, but it was just amazing to break bread together and drinking wine looking at a sunset over Pike’s Peak after a hard day’s work. Colorado was a very spiritual, bonding process for us.”
“Jim and I talked for several months about where he wanted to make the record,” says Joe Chiccarelli, the Los Angeles-based producer (Frank Zappa, The Shins, The White Stripes) who manned the knobs on Evil Urges. “In the past, they’d done all these rural, off-the-beaten-track studios, because they liked the isolation of working out in the middle of nowhere. But when I heard the demos, I thought the material was so upbeat and alive and had this great sense of groove to it that I told Jim that it sounded like an urban record to me. I thought they needed to record in a city.”
Finding the right place to achieve the sounds James envisioned wasn’t an easy task. Band members were sent to studios across the country — from Louisiana to the Pacific Northwest — in search of the perfect home for the album. Even when he walked into the hallowed halls of Avatar Studios in midtown Manhattan, where the likes of Dylan, Bowie, Clapton and Springsteen had come before him, James was still unsure that he’d found the right place.
“I thought it was cool with all the history and everything,” he says, “but I was trying to look at the recording of the album from the perspective of a job that had to be done. It was almost like picking out a good workbench that had a good vise on it and all the right hammers and tools that we needed. When it came down to making this record, we wanted it to be precise and we wanted it to be really locked in, and that took a lot of work. That’s one of the reasons we came to New York, because we thought that the energy here and the constraints of working in a city would add to the sense of urgency on the album.”
“You can’t walk out your door in New York and not be kind of swept up into the current of the city,” Blankenship says. “And I think that seeped into things we were doing musically on the album. I think this album is more in your face, in a way. The vocals are real upfront and things generally sound tighter and more immediate.”
Not only did the immediacy and urgency of New York influence the making of Evil Urges, but the focus James paid to the rhythms in writing the songs for the album forced the band to explore new sonic territory in the studio.
“We spent a lot of time in the studio looking for different sounds, because the sounds of the record were just as important as the arrangements of the songs,” Koster says. “Every song was its own baby. Just think about all the different kind of beats Patrick played in a single song. He didn’t have eight rock songs and one or two ballads. Every song had a different feel that required a different approach from him. We all had to do that in our own way.”
The result is an album that’s sonically diverse and builds on the blueprint the band laid out with 2005’s Z. While much of the credit is due to James as the band’s songwriter, the frontman is quick to credit Koster and Broemel as the main reason why My Morning Jacket’s last two albums have been so ambitiously expansive.
“To me, it’s like the ultimate cake we’ve got going on with Carl and Bo,” James says with a laugh. “Tom, Patrick and I are all untrained musicians and they’re both trained in school. They’re both multi-instrumentalists and yet they’re creative and relaxed. During our shows, Bo’s back there doing so much shit, between playing keys and making samples. Carl’s out there playing electric guitar, steel and fucking saxophone. It’s just incredible. They are what make us able to execute the vision completely. I feel like the band was good before they got in, but once they got in, it was like the music came together with all the details filled in. All the colors were there.”
“Bo and Carl’s involvement with the vocals on this album was just incredible,” agrees Hallahan. “They had never done that before with us. When we made Z, they were still feeling out their roles, on and off stage, so this album is really about their hard work. We can throw anything at them now, and they’ll throw it right back at you and make it better than you ever could have expected.”
In addition to the album’s musical diversity, the songs on Evil Urges, James notes, represent some of his most personal lyrics to date. “This record’s been a weird one for me, because a lot of it is tied up in a massive positive relationship that I had that ended right when we started recording the record. So a lot of the songs come from a really positive place but I was really bummed out when I was actually recording them.” Indeed, songs like “Thank You Too,” “Look At You” and the two-part “Touch Me I’m Going to Scream” sound like open letters of love and lust, while the acoustic tenderness of “Librarian” — which James suggests additionally stems from his “bad habit” of falling in love but not doing anything about it — seems to get to the heart of the matter for the songwriter.
As much as the album deals with his tumultuous love life, James also turns the camera outward on Evil Urges, crafting commentaries on social unity (“Remnants”), moral confusion (“Evil Urges”) and the chaotic state of the world (“I’m Amazed”).
“I think the theme that runs through the album is that maybe there isn’t any good or bad,” James explains. “People always want it to be red or blue, good or bad, or black or white, but it’s not always that easy. It’s wild to me to think of people involved in certain religions believe in their minds that they’re doing good things, things that are supposedly going to get them to heaven or get them to the next phase or whatever, when in reality those things seem really horrible and harmful. It’s confusing to me, and it’s a confusing time in the world right now. It’s a weird time to be alive. I think everybody feels it, so my hope is that people can relate to this record. I hope it’s something that is part of the time in some way, but that’s something that time and space will decide.”
“I think this record is a lot more outward looking and less introspective than Z,” Koster says. “That record was more of an intimate record in a way, between the five of us as a band and Jim as the songwriter. The themes on it are pretty deeply personal, but this one has a more universal, almost populist feel. Instead of it being about his individual feelings or emotions or fantasies, I feel like Jim’s talking to people and he’s almost preaching on certain songs on this record.”
And it’s that evangelistic tone that reveals the deeper sources of influence and inspiration woven into the fabric of Evil Urges. The echoes of Prince’s falsetto may have provided a handy reference for the critics, but James is reaching back beyond Sign O’ The Times to the records and artists that informed Prince’s best work.
“It’s just cool how you can be both grooved and be moved spirituality and emotionally, just through listening to Curtis Mayfield. He’s like the ultimate to me. Talk about one of the most brilliant human beings that ever lived: he was trying to unify people through music,” James says. “His playing, singing, structures, arrangements…after I heard Curtis Mayfield, I was hooked. I mean, I listened to the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and people like that way before I ever heard Curtis Mayfield, and they’re all fine and good, but now that I’ve heard Curtis Mayfield, now that we have albums like [Marvin Gaye’s] What’s Going On in our vocabulary, now that I’ve heard Sam Cooke sing ‘A Change is Gonna Come,’ the rest of it starts to seem silly.”
It’s no coincidence that James’ appreciation and greater understanding of the emotional depth of soul music occurred in the same year that he faced his own mortality through illness, overcame his first real adult romantic relationship and celebrated his thirtieth birthday. In the end, Evil Urges almost feels like an awakening, a watershed album that reveals the growth of a man who’s emerging as a more confident artist, bandleader and lyricist concerned with the larger issues and questions that surround him.
“I think Jim has a very clear vision right now of what he wants his music to be and he’s very much in touch with the heart and soul of his songs,” producer Chiccarelli notes. “That’s one of his incredible strengths and what makes him one of the greatest songwriters out there, I believe. He’s willing to let go enough that as long as the whole intent, the feeling and the emotion of the song is right, all the colors and details seem to fall into place.”
“He’s more confident in his role as the frontman of this band and I think it’s reflected in how he approaches his singing on this album,” adds Hallahan. “When he steps up to that microphone, he owns that microphone. Instead of him standing back and hiding behind the reverb, the vocals are very upfront and very present on this album. And he’s more willing to try new things. I’m really proud of him.
“Jim jumped a hurdle in his life, and the proof is in this album. You just hear it — he grew up.”
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