Influences - Patrick Hallahan

Genres
Hip Hop
In a 2008 interview with Drum Magazine Hallahan explains that he's a fan of hip-hop.

"I’ve always been a huge fan of hip-hop, I’m talking phat hip-hop beats.

- Patrick Hallahan
(Drum Magazine interview, August 2008)

Real persons/bands
Art Blakey, John Bonham, Steve Gadd, Bruce Morrow
In a 2011 Twitter Q&A arranged by eMusic Patrick Hallahan was asked about his biggest influences on the drums and listed Art Blakey, John Bonham, Steve Gadd, Bruce Morrow, then stated that the list goes on and on (eMusic).

The Beatles, Led Zeppelin
In a 2008 interview with Drum Magazine Hallahan named The Beatles and Led Zeppelin as early musical inspiration.

Albums
Living Is Hard

"I've been buying up all of these fantastic early-to-mid 20th century Afrobeat collections lately. ‘Living Is Hard’ is my latest purchase, and the only time I've pulled it off of the record player (in the last week) is to flip over to the next side. Simple structure and complex composition... a valuable lesson for any musician/songwriter."

- Patrick Hallahan, talking about Living Is Hard: West African Music In Britain, 1927-1929
(Clash Music interview, November 2008)

Single tracks
Lullabys, Legends, and Lies

Lullabys, Legends, and Lies by Bobby Bare. Bobby Bare, Sr. has, in my opinion, one of the most perfect country voices to grace the music. Mix that voice with Shel Silverstein lyrics, and you have ‘Lullabys, Legends, and Lies’. I've listen to this song AT LEAST once a day for the last three months.

- Patrick Hallahan, talking about ‘Lullabys, Legends, and Lies’ by Bobby Bare
(Clash Music interview, November 2008)

Live bands
Thievery Corporation

"I just ran across a performance by Thievery Corporation on Austin City Limits that really peaked my interest. I was not that familiar with their music, but have been moved by what they do live."

- Patrick Hallahan, talking about Thievery Corporation
(Clash Music interview, November 2008)

Billboard (2011)

On August 2nd Billboard published an interview with Patrick Hallahan, done by Gary Graff. The original interview can be found here.

Keywords:

Playing each of its first five albums in their entirety last October at New York's Terminal 5 has led Louisville rockers My Morning Jacket to "dig deeper" for the shows it will be doing in support of its new album, "Circuital."

"After playing all five albums in five nights... in New York, we kinda became re-acquainted with our catalog," drummer Patrick Hallahan tells Billboard.com. "So now we're really trying to just change up set lists, at least five or six songs every night that are completely different, and trying to dig deeper into the catalog and bring back some oldies and stuff."


Hallahan admits with a laugh that the quintet has "a tendency to put some songs in the doghouse, so to speak. We have a constant flow of things that come in and out of our good graces. This time we're trying to pull some stuff out of doghouses and put them back in. We'll see what happens."



Hallahan explains that My Morning Jacket -- which begins its tour Tuesday (Aug. 2) in St. Louis -- tends to seek a "template" set list "where we're real happy with the flow" and then making adjustments on subsequent nights. He says the group does look up old set lists for the last time it played in a particular city to avoid duplicating rarities and one-offs. Then, on a rotating basis, each band member gets to choose two rarities for a particular show and the rest of the band votes on one to play.


"A lot of it is about whatever we're feeling," Hallahan adds. "If it's a Friday night we might step it up a little bit. If it's a crowd we've known historically as a little more dancey or... enthusiastic, we throw in a few more upbeat tunes. It depends on the evening. We don't really know what we're going to do until we get there and feel the energy of the space."


My Morning Jacket is still buzzing about the No. 5 Top 200 debut of "Circuital," the group's best-ever chart showing. "It took off more than we could have ever imagined, that's for sure," Hallahan says. "Honestly, we try not to think about it too terribly much. Some people rise faster than others and fall faster than others, and for whatever reason our path is one of a slow incline so far, which has been a beautiful thing. To find out we were No. 5 on the Billboard charts, that's nothing to scoff at. That was a damn fine phone call to get."


With "Circuital" out, My Morning Jacket is making a few future plans. The Terminal 5 catalog shows, Hallahan says, were recorded and will likely be released as a vinyl box set and possibly as digital downloads. "We're looking to release 'em at some point. We just have a lot of listening to do, five nights of two and a half hour sets," he says. The group is also hoping to find a way to release the version of the "Circuital" track "Outta My System" that it recorded for a proposed re-launch of the Muppets' Dr. Teeth & the Electric Mayhem band, which was scuttled after the executive who proposed the idea was fired. "At some point we'll release the Muppet version of it," Hallahan promises. "It's hilarious. We had the best time doing it."


For now, however, My Morning Jacket is focused on touring -- through Aug. 23 in the U.S. plus an Austin City Limits Music Festival performance on Sept. 17, then Europe in November and more in 2012. "We'd love to do some South American dates this time. We've never played south of Mexico City, so that would be great," adds Hallahan, who's taking nearly two months off to welcome a baby he and his wife are expecting in late September.


"We're going to try to pace this album cycle out. We had a tentative two or two and a half year schedule where we do three months at a time in various places -- wherever people want us, basically. We'll just kind of see how the path keeps taking us."

Patrick Hallahan

Patrick Hallahan, Boing Boing video 2011

"We got Patrick, our newest and latest and greatest and final drummer, and it just clicked. We're not going through that (process) again. I've known him since fourth grade and we've always wanted to play together."

- Jim James
(JamBase interview, January 2004)

Patrick Hallahan, also known as Phyllis Philsom and Tex Message, from Nashville, Tennessee, is the drummer of the band.

Nicknames: Tex Message (EU), Phyllis Philsom (Z)
Instrument: Drums
Social media: PatrickHallahan (Twitter)
Just one more thing: 

Patrick Hallahan, from the MMJ tumblr, 2011

Influences/favorites
When talking about influences and music he likes, Hallahan lists several artists and musicians. Names mentioned in interviews made through the years include; The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Art Blakey, John Bonham, Steve Gadd, Bruce Morrow and Thievery Corporation. A more detailed post with quotes from Hallahan can be found here.

"I’ve always been a huge fan of hip-hop, I’m talking phat hip-hop beats.

- Patrick Hallahan
(Drum Magazine interview, August 2008)

Patrick Hallahan at the Greek Theatre, Los Angeles, 2008, photo by Leslie Kalohi

Other musical projects
Dan Auerbach & The Fast Five
Hallahan is also the drummer for Dan Auerbach's (of the Black Keys) band, Dan Auerbach and the Fast Five. 


Other appearances
November 22, 2009 - Patrick Hallahan and the rest of My Morning Jacket played themselves in an episode of American Dad entitled My Morning Straitjacket.

Mentioned

Miscellaneous
For details about Patrick Hallahans favorite movies, books and TV shows as of 2008, see 2008 Clash Music interview.

The Aquarian Weekly (2011)

On December 14th 2011 The Aquarian Weekly published an interview with Patrick Hallahan, done by Daniel Michael Alleva, the original interview can be found here.

Keywords:

To begin working on their latest album, Circuital, My Morning Jacket returned to their hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, and set up shop in a church gymnasium. Their intent at first was to begin doing demos for what would eventually become the album. But then, something happened: A honey-coated moment of magic presented itself before the band.

As MMJ drummer Patrick Hallahan recalled, as we spoke via phone just before the Thanksgiving holiday, “We didn’t really go back home to record the album. We set up in that space to record demos. [The demos] ended up happening the way we wanted them to sound, and before we knew it, we were making the album. It kind of came about on its own, at its own will. When you’re presented with opportunities like that, you have to take them.”

The band opted to record the tracks on Circuital as live takes, a decision that Hallahan said required all of the members of MMJ to “be on the same page, whether they like it or not.” The first song they began to work on for the album was “Slow, Slow Tune.” “That was the song we started with,” he said, “and just the sound in that room, everybody just felt that we should continue on in that space and see where it takes us. It ended up being this amazing self-journey for everyone, in this sort of old gymnasium.”

It is fitting that “Slow, Slow Tune” was the first track the band began to work on for Circuital. The song has sparse foundation, which becomes accented with the big and bold guitar parts that are signature to the MMJ sound. In fact, Circuital largely capitalizes on MMJ’s strengths, and is an album that revisits the unique sound they presented on their 2003 album, It Still Moves—a landmark mixture of grunge, southern influence and epic explosiveness that left stereo speakers sizzling in its wake.

Their release prior to Circuital, 2008’s Evil Urges, was recorded in a professional studio in New York City, and had an urban sound that incorporated many funk and R&B overtones; imagine updated variations of a song like “Miss You” by The Rolling Stones, and that was Evil Urges in a nutshell. But the music seemed forced, save for a few tracks, and for what it is worth, the album was an interesting, if not an admirable, failure in experimentation. Circuital, by comparison, is subtler than It Still Moves, but as it progresses over its 45-minute length, the experimentation is kept practical, while the meat of the album projects the pure MMJ style that is often duplicated by other bands, yet never genuinely conveyed with the spirit that MMJ projects naturally.

Hallahan and singer Jim James have known each other since the fourth grade, and between the two, their synergy is undeniably kindred. So, perhaps more than any other member of MMJ, Hallahan would be the best person to ask about where James is coming from as the band’s principal lyricist. Many of the themes on Circuital seem to be influenced by the progress of modern living, and one’s own personal evaluation of life as a series of cycles.

“There’s a fine line when it comes to defining lyrics” said Hallahan. “Because, to be perfectly honest, I didn’t write the lyrics, so I’m still deriving my own definitions of them. I guess they’re kind of a look at life cycles, through the mind of a mid-30s person. That’s quite a bit of time to have lived some life—with still a lot of time left to live life—and I guess this, like any other album, is lyrically where Jim is at the moment.”

One of the tracks on Circuital that seems to be the most reflective from a lyrical standpoint is the funny and refreshing “Holdin’ On To Black Metal,” which is a tribute to one’s days of youth spent listening to heavy metal music, when the world is only as big as a young teenager can imagine. The lyrics are a reflection on yesterday, as James sings, “It’s a darkness you can’t deny/ But it don’t belong in a grown up mind/ Suppose you’ll find this place in a youngster’s eyes…/ Oh, black metal, you’re so misunderstood.”

“It’s sort of an ode to holding on to your youth,” says Hallahan, “but I know there’s still a lot of metalheads that consider metal the predominant musical choice, so we try to not alienate the metalheads of the world by calling that music “youthful,” you know? Because I still listen to a lot of that music today.”

When My Morning Jacket first arrived on the scene, they were unique to the point of grand intrigue for many people, and over the years, they have always made records that have a context that reflects the time and place where they are. They’ve built up a reputation for being premiere performers, and everyone from Pearl Jam to Metallica has sung their praises. Personally speaking, they’ve been the only band in recent memory that can record tender acoustic love songs, and then go out on tour with the Foo Fighters—giving Dave Grohl and company a run for their money. It’s a great testament to My Morning Jacket’s commitment to the music, and they are humble and appreciative about the success they have achieved thus far.

“You just do what you know,” says Hallahan. “You write what you think about and you express what you’re feeling. Not saying that our feelings have never changed, but we have a very strong core with this group of people. We have a formula, and though the sounds may change, the core remains.”

Fredericksburg (2010)

On April 29th 2010 Fredericksburg published an interview with Patrick Hallahan, done by Jonas Beals. The original interview can be found here.

Keywords:

Meet the meat. My Morning Jacket is 32 ounces of savory American Angus prime rib--a bloody center guarded by a shell of greasy char and gristle. It's the best thing on your plate.

Perhaps responsible for introducing the indie-rock world to the joys of excessive reverb, MMJ is--and has always been--more than that gauzy Appalachian haze that floats atop their music.

This Louisville, Ky., quintet is the group that brought depth to the jam-band world and sorrow back to Southern rock.

Lead singer and songwriter Jim James is rightly given credit as the mastermind behind MMJ, something his solo career (as Yim Yames) and work with Monsters of Folk prove without a doubt. But his beefiest work still comes thanks to the MMJ collective--a group that shines just as brightly on- stage as it does in the studio.

The band that has stolen the show at Bonnaroo Music Festival on more than one occasion is back on the road and headed to Merriweather Post Pavilion this Saturday.

"It couldn't be going better," drummer Patrick Hallahan said of their current tour.

Things had been rolling along so quickly that the band took the past year off to catch its breath. The pause did not cost them any momentum.

"There's a new energy in the band," Hallahan said. "There is something cooking, but I don't know what its name is yet."

And that is one of the aspects of the band that makes it so compelling. They embrace the spontaneity of the stage, improvising and feeding off the energy of the crowd.

"We really love that song and dance," Hallahan said. "If the crowd is responding well, we'll go to Mars and back for them."

The flip side of that freewheeling ethos is found in the studied, polished intricacies of the same songs. These are lyrics that reward attention and blunt melodies that swing from rockabilly to Motown.

It is an unusual package that appeals to indie snobs, jam-band fans and folkies alike.

"We're just huge fans of music," Hallahan said. "There are so many things that move us. We don't like to do the same things over and over. We're antsy."

Rather than sticking with one item at the buffet, MMJ builds strength by consuming everything rock music has to offer. It's a neat trick to pull off--something that could go horribly wrong in the hands of a lesser band. Hallahan attributes the band's peculiar success to communication.

He has known James since childhood, and has gotten to know the other MMJ members just as well.

"It probably helps, playing-wise," he said. "We all have the same level of nonverbal communication. It's speaking through music. Knowing the person and knowing how they think."

MMJ is often called a Southern rock band, and while their long hair and sometimes heavy-metal guitar attack certainly fit that bill, Hallahan thinks the geography that influences them isn't that Dixie-fried.

"Regionally, we're all pretty close," he said. "The only similarity is that we didn't have anything to do when we were growing up. We had to make our own fun. We all come from the Midwest, so we had to use our imaginations."

When the band started, it's unlikely that they considered dreaming this big.

MMJ has hit all the rock 'n' roll peaks in the past five years. Opening for Neil Young. Playing with the Boston Pops. Performing on "Saturday Night Live." "David Letterman." Radio City Music Hall. Madison Square Garden. "Austin City Limits." A Grammy nomination.

"We want to better ourselves constantly," Hallahan said. "It's been such a gradual process, not one huge jump. We just kept working."

The AU review (2012)

My Morning Jacket at Tivoli in Utrecht, NL 2012

On February 3rd 2012 The AU review published an interview with Patrick Hallahan, done by Larry Heath. The original interview can be found here.

Keywords:

We caught up with the drummer of My Morning Jacket to talk to them about touring, recording, the muppets and much more!

How are you going, Patrick?

Yeah, I’m doing alright!

Are you home at the moment?

Yeah, I am. I’m in Kentucky.

How is the weather there at the moment?

It’s suppose to be bitterly cold but it’s actually warm and raining at the moment. Nobody really knows what to do.


Well, we’re of course we’re here to talk about your return to Australia. Last time I saw you it was 2008, was that the last time you were here?

I guess so, that was the Big Day Out festival.


What was the experience like?

Oh man, we love coming down there. We always have these amazing adventures down there. The experiences have always been varied, but we always try to have a really good time. The crowds are always amazing, so it the food, so it’s kind of a win win festival for bands.


You’re playing Blues festival, have you had a chance to look at the lineup that you’ll be playing with?

No, I just heard the words Australia and Blues Festival and I instantly said yes.


Now when it comes to the show you’re doing at the moment, you’ve got such an extensive back catalogue of songs to choose from. How do you put a setlist together every night?

This next set of shows, we don’t have any parameters so to speak. I am feeling a cross section of everything. To have that many to choose from, we get into some disputes from time to time.

When it comes to your new record Circuital , I understand that it was recorded at home, but in a church gymnasium, is that true?

Yes, that’s absolutely correct.

Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Yeah, it was older church, only 25 people go to church there. So they have started renting out the place to painters, sculptors, and playwrights – it’s become this little cultural area for all of us. One of our friends Kevin had been recording bands there and he brought it to our attention. At first we were only going to record a few demos in there, but ended up doing the whole album we loved it that much.

It’s interesting too just reading about the record, about how the muppets influenced a couple of songs on the record. How did that all come about?

Well, we were going to be hired as the new electric mayhem band, so we started writing songs before we even knew we were going to make an album. But the guy who was going to hire us was fired and the person that was put in his place canned the whole project. So it all kind of started up writing for the muppets, but we wanted to sound like ourselves in the end.


Hopefully it happens one day, because I would certainly see that.

Yeah!


We’ll get a facebook revolution happening.

Let’s do it.


Looking back at the last couple of months, you guys played Madison Square Garden at the end of the year. Not a bad way to end 2011. What was that show like?

It was such an all encompassing journey, it felt like a dream. It was a very good way to kind of conclude the US tour.

Looking forward to 2012, what can we expect from you guys?

We’ll probably just continue touring, and working on a little side project half way through the year. We were also thinking about when we’re going to kick back and head to the studio again.


Well, we can’t wait to see you when you head to Australia, and my last question for you is, what is your favourite percussion instrument?

That’s a good question. I’m going to have to say that the tambourine would have to be my favourite. I use so often, when I don’t have a drum kit around I’m constantly using it. When you use a tambourine in a song, it takes it to a whole new level. Definitely brings a lot of excitement to song.

We can’t wait to see you in April, and good luck on the tour!

Yeah, we can’t wait either.

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.

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: [laughs] No, my wife just did actually, she was with to Bonnaroo, it was last week and she had a blast. So I would camp the way that they camp, I don't know, we're just being honest.

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. 

PH: When will that be out? Ah, I have no idea, you know what, I guess...

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?

PH: [laughs] We would be honored to be on American Dad again, yeah. Do you like that show? Yeah, I love it yeah, we're actually friends with the guys
Jim James: [walks past interview] That's not true!
PH: You get out of here! You've had your time!

LexGo interview (2011)

Photo from the official band Tumblr, 2011

On April 15th 2011 LexGo published an interview with Jim James and Patrick Hallahan, made by Walter Tunis. The original article can be found here.

Keywords: Circuital, Songwriting

By now, the Louisville lineage of My Morning Jacket is pretty much common knowledge.

The celebrated rock ensemble formed in Louisville, cut its initial recordings in nearby Shelbyville and honored the Derby City regularly as fame took the band from local bars and clubs to festivals and concert halls around the world.

With the release next month of its album Circuital, My Morning Jacket is celebrating those roots. Having cut 2008's wildly popular Evil Urges in New York, frontman Jim James and company returned to Louisville last year, set up a makeshift recording studio in a church gymnasium, and came up with a record that made the band feel, in all senses of the term, at home.

"It was very sweet," James said. "We had one session in the summer. It was so hot. But the heat really brought us together. I feel like you can hear the heat in the air in those songs. We just wanted it to be natural, where we were getting our main performances in one take. It just turned out that this beautiful old church gym where we set up to try some stuff out worked perfectly. And being in Kentucky, close to family and friends, gave us that full-circle feeling."

"For our last couple of albums, we intentionally put ourselves in situations that weren't in our comfort zones," My Morning Jacket drummer Patrick Hallahan said. "We did that just to see what it would yield, because you don't want to get caught in a rut. But then we very much wanted to come back to Louisville this time. Everything started out as a demo session. We didn't even know at first that we would be making an album. It ended up working out very organically."

Much of the music on Circuital has been kept under wraps. But a limited-release single of the title tune was issued this week. It's a spacious-sounding song, mildly reminiscent of the more atmospheric psychedelia from the band's early albums. You hear it in the ominous guitar patterns, James' reverb-accented vocal wail and the eventual rockish detour that defies common categorization.

"The songs themselves always dictate the record," James said. "Then you kind of follow. Before I knew that, I would come in with all these grand ideas about a certain way I wanted things to be. But then at the end of the day, you only have the songs that the universe has given you at that point in time."

The road back to Lexington

Here is the curious thing: For all the roadwork it has clocked since its formation in 1998, My Morning Jacket has played Lexington exactly three times. The first was on a dirt-floor stage in the basement of the long-since-vacated Mecca studios on North Limestone in 2001. The others were opening gigs at the defunct Lynagh's Music Club (now Cosmic Charlie's) in early 2002. The band shared bills with the Ohio rock troupe Howlin' Maggie that January and with the veteran (and Louisville-born) roots, rock and R&B brigade NRBQ that May, during the club's final month of operation.

Hallahan remembers that last show well. It was his first performance as a member of My Morning Jacket. A lifelong Louisvillian, he was pals with James long before joining the band. But his presence has always been felt. He is generously credited as band photographer (under the moniker "Sir Patrick T. Hallahan") on the liner notes for My Morning Jacket's 1999 debut album, The Tennessee Fire.

"We've been so close over the years that we have kind of let each other be," Hallahan said. "I think it's important for the working environment of a band to not micromanage each other. It's easy to go down that path. But we have definitely gotten to a point in our friendship and in our band/business relationship that everything is pretty harmonious."

This weekend, nine years after its last shows here, My Morning Jacket finally returns to Lexington. And just as Circuital reconnects the band with its Louisville beginnings, Sunday's concert at Memorial Coliseum rekindles an underlying Lexington connection.

James was an art student briefly at the University of Kentucky during the mid-'90s. That's when some of the initial sparks of ideas and songs for the band began to take shape.

"I began the My Morning Jacket project in my dorm room at Holmes Hall at UK on my buddy Todd's 4-track," James said. "A few of the first shows I ever played were in places likes Common Grounds, Yat's (a '90s eatery at South Hill Station), open-mike nights and such.

"I worked many jobs in Lexington ... at Fazoli's and Subway, in landscaping. You name it. Walking the streets of Lexington, particularly downtown and up into the beautiful sections of Third Street, filled my mind with so many crazy ideas and ghosts. There are a lot of ghosts in Lexington, particularly where Boots' bar used to be and in the Reynolds Building. After many walks, I have come to find most of them are good."

New Morning

Circuital is set for release May 31, with a lengthy summer tour to follow, starting in June. The Memorial Coliseum date is, in essence, a warm-up for the more formal concert trek to come. But it's also an opportunity for one of Louisville's finest rock 'n' roll exports to reacquaint itself with a neighboring city that played a role in helping the band find its feet.

"I think it's fantastic," Hallahan said. "I just wish we would have planned something like this a little sooner. A lot of us have deep personal relationships with Lexington. It will be great to be back on those streets again."

"I cannot believe how long it has been," James said. "I have deep ties to Lexington and have come back many times over the years. I am always amazed at how much Lexington seems to be growing and how so much of it seems so positive.

"We went to see Sharon Jones at the new Buster's and were blown away by the venue. There is also the volume of local talent, like Ben Sollee (who will open Sunday's concert) and These United States.

"The spirits are deep in Lexington for me."

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.

Patrick Hallahan DJ on WFPK

On the 25th of October Patrick Hallahan visited radio station WFPK to play some of his favorite songs and artists.

1. The Race Is On – George Jones
2. Everybody’s Talkin’ – Bill Withers
3. Cool It Down – Velvet Underground
4. Buggin’ – The Flaming Lips
5. Baby, I Love You – Aretha Franklin
6. Marie Laveux – Bobby Bare & Shel Silverstein
7. Plastic – Shel Silverstein
8. Mississippi Goddamn – Nina Simone
9. Nobody – Randy Crawford
10. Baby, You’re A Rich Man – The Beatles
11. Rudie Can’t Fail – The Clash
12. What It Is – The Temptations
13. Jackie Wants A Black Eye – Dr. Dog

More and source here.

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.

The New York Times (2011)

On May 25th 2011 The New York Times published an interview the Jim James, Patrick Hallahan, Todd Haynes and Tucker Martine, done by Nate Chinen. The original interview can be found here.

Keywords:

At a climactic moment in “Circuital,” the title track of My Morning Jacket’s new album, things take a turn toward the homestretch. “Out on the circuit, on the hallowed ground,” the band’s lead singer, Jim James, wails, a hint of hoarseness creeping into his voice, “ending up in the same place that we started out.”

Bass and drums chug heavily behind him, while a piano spools out major-key arpeggios. There’s an acoustic guitar, briskly strummed, and an electric guitar, all humid twang.

The vibe falls somewhere between fastidious studio product and booming concert recording, a balance that ideally suits My Morning Jacket, a spectacular live band started in 1998 and now approaching the height of its powers. “Circuital” was recorded here in the band’s hometown, mainly in a rickety church gymnasium, direct to analog tape. In a pointed contrast to its last studio album, “Evil Urges,” which was made in a top-flight New York studio with state-of-the-art techniques, it delivers a distillation of the band’s sound, a ruggedly reverberant amalgam far easier to recognize than categorize.

“This was kind of full circle,” Mr. James said of the nature of the recording.

Hence the album’s title, with its suggestion of completion, though “Circuital” could also be taken to suggest a victory lap, given that it opens with a song called “Victory Dance.” Some exultation feels warranted in any case. My Morning Jacket has earned a robust fan base without hit singles or savvy licensing deals, becoming a powerhouse one tour date at a time. (This summer brings headlining slots at Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza and others.)

All this has happened during a period of constriction and fragmentation for the music business — and maybe partly because of it, given the industry’s grudging respect for niche dominion. Sales figures have never been the best metric for My Morning Jacket, but since the band signed with ATO Records, each studio album has been bigger than the last. “It Still Moves” (2003) reached No. 121 on the Billboard 200, followed by “Z” (2005), which hit No. 67. “Evil Urges” (2008) broke into the Top 10; “Circuital,” the band’s sixth and one of its strongest, should keep the trend going.

“ ‘Circuital’ has a really declarative, anthemic sound and spirit,” said the filmmaker Todd Haynes, who will direct a live webcast of My Morning Jacket’s concert at the Louisville Palace Theater on Tuesday, to coincide with the album’s release. “And it feels to me like a new dawn, a new baptism, a return to the start.”

The band’s members — Mr. James, the bassist Tom Blankenship, the drummer Patrick Hallahan, the guitarist Carl Broemel and the keyboardist Bo Koster — returned to their makeshift studio last month to reacquaint themselves with their new songs and prepare for the tour. After a dinner break one night at Jack Fry’s, a former bookmaking parlor turned white-tablecloth restaurant, they headed back to the church, where their gear and instruments lay sprawled across the gymnasium floor.

At one end of the room a heavy curtain framed a stage; at the other end a balcony glowed with a string of Christmas lights. Mr. James stood to one side as his band mates played a round of Bonus Sandwich, the hoops game they invented during the long process of recording.

“Our first session it was 100 degrees, no air-conditioning, no computers, just us sweating,” Mr. James said, grinning fondly at the recollection. “That contributed to the overall thing. We were set up in a circle, and we let it all be.”

The credits for “Circuital” include the phrase “recorded in heaven.” A tour of the church suggested a distinctly faded glory, the feeling of a congregation winnowed by age and attrition. A sign on the wall of the sanctuary read “Attendance Last Sunday 18/Attendance Today 20.” In the basement a cobwebbed Boy Scout meeting room was strewn with dioramas and rummage-sale items. Mr. James, sifting through dusty LPs, decided to borrow a few: Gregory Abbott, Van Halen, Chaka Khan.

My Morning Jacket has always had a slippery relationship to genre: it’s a guitar-driven rock band just as likely to access country, R&B or whatever else. “Holdin’ on to Black Metal,” from “Circuital,” has bleating horns and a fuzz-tone riff borrowed from a track on the 2009 compilation “Siamese Soul: Thai Pop Spectacular Vol. 2 1960s-1980s” on Sublime Frequencies.

Mr. James, a singer-songwriter of protean instinct, receives due credit for the band’s multiplicity. But its hometown might be another important factor.

“Louisville’s an interesting place because there’s not a forced identity,” said Mr. Hallahan, a childhood friend of Mr. James’s who joined the band in 2002. “It’s not really Southern, it’s not really Northern, we’re not really in the Midwest, we’re not really on the East Coast. There’s no expectations. We can kind of be whatever we want to be, and I think that characteristic comes through in this band. We’re not just one way, ever.”
Audio

Mr. James nodded and said, “We’ve always just done what we’ve done and tried to have fun with it and been stoked that we don’t fit into any categories.”

“But it does get annoying sometimes,” he added, referring to the band’s connections to both the jam-band set and the indie-rock scene. “If there’s a hippie twirling a baton in a field somewhere and we’re getting too hard and too heavy, they get kind of bummed out. And if there’s an indie-rocker, and we play more than 30 seconds of a guitar solo, he’s like: ‘Velvet Underground would’ve never done that. Oh, wait — yeah, they did.’ ”

His band mates laughed. “You Wanna Freak Out?” from “Circuital” seems aimed at the image-conscious indie kids among their fan base: “Play it safe, play it cool/If you ever emote, you’re playing the fool/Is that the way you think it is?”

Mr. James favors cryptic, searching lyrics about issues both personal and existential: the stuff of “Dear God,” for example, one of his contributions to the indie supergroup Monsters of Folk, later sampled for hip-hop use by the Roots. (Monsters of Folk is one of several side outlets for Mr. James, whose full-length solo debut will probably be released next year.) “I feel like a lot of what I write about comes from not understanding who I am, and not understanding my place in the world,” he said.

The band sought to frame those questions in songs captured with oldfangled recording techniques.

“Basically, ” said Tucker Martine, who engineered “Circuital” and produced it with Mr. James, “we made a lot of choices to paint ourselves into corners, because I think everyone believed in what would happen when we all came together to find our way out.” Those restrictions were a first for My Morning Jacket, and a reaction to the more antiseptic, pressured experience behind “Evil Urges.”

“Normally we work in a building-block method, where we’ll get the core rhythm take to tape, and I’ll lay my vocal on top of that,” Mr. James said. “There are still songs on this record where additional stuff was layered” — strings, horns, vocals — “but I’d say about half the songs literally have no overdubs. It’s just us playing in the room.”

Sitting in a church lounge, where some of the quieter songs were recorded, the band members laughed readily about the more laborious aspects of the sessions: the arduous load-in, which required the services of a moving company, and the oppressive heat, which comes across almost tangibly on some of the tracks.

“You’re so uncomfortable that it becomes almost meditative,” Mr. Hallahan said, describing what sounded like a Bikram yoga session. “You’re not even thinking about what you’re playing at that point, you’re just reacting to one another. And it becomes this beautiful thing.”

By an accident of timing that sweltering first session was followed by a five-night retrospective at Terminal 5 in New York, for which the band played its discography in sequence. For Mr. Broemel and Mr. Koster, who joined My Morning Jacket after its third album, that meant learning some songs fresh; for the others the experience was more of a trip. “It was like stepping inside a time machine, smelling the smell of some smoky club that only had 30 people at it,” said Mr. Blankenship, the only current founding member besides Mr. James, “but really getting a sense of how strong the band is now.”

The feeling lingered. “When we went back to the church to record, I think we had a better understanding of ourselves,” Mr. Hallahan said. “Because we had a chance to look back and learn the story of the band over again.”

And that story, with its humble beginnings and steady build, ended up guiding the spirit of the album. “I just wanted, energetically, the circle to be complete,” Mr. James said.

He’s not the type to take that idea lightly. During a recent taping of “VH1 Storytellers” in New York he pointed out that “Circuital,” the song, begins and ends the same way. The taping also yielded a hauntingly beautiful version of “Movin’ Away,” the delicate waltz that closes “Circuital,” with lyrics about leaving home for the sake of love. Mr. James closed his eyes, emotionally transported, throughout his performance — only to be informed that a technical snag would necessitate another. The band played the song again as an encore, and it was fine, though a bit of magic had been lost.

Reminded of that moment weeks later in the church lounge, where “Movin’ Away” was recorded, the band waxed philosophical. The idea of an elusive perfect take was apt, as was the idea of a meaningful imperfection. “At the end of that song,” Mr. James said of the album version, “you can hear the cars driving by right here in the rain.”

Clash Music interview (2008)

"Lullabys, Legends, and Lies by Bobby Bare. Bobby Bare, Sr. has, in my opinion, one of the most perfect country voices to grace the music. Mix that voice with Shel Silverstein lyrics, and you have Lullabys, Legends, and Lies. I've listen to this song AT LEAST once a day for the last three months.

- Patrick Hallahan
(Clash Music interview, November 2008)

On November 26th 2008 Clash Music published an interview with Patrick Hallahan, done by Mike Diver. The original interview can be found here.

Keywords: Patrick Hallahan

Celebrated Kentucky five-piece My Morning Jacket released their fifth studio album earlier this year, to excellent acclaim.

‘Evil Urges’ attracted praise from the likes of nationals, monthlies and website alike (although influential stateside site Pitchfork gave it a little kicking); frontman Jim James had stated it was the band’s intention to get away from ‘traditional’ rock sounds, and songs like ‘Highly Suspicious’ proved they’d succeeded.

Clash caught up with drummer Patrick Hallahan in pursuit of brain-picking Culture Clash information…

Movie
The Party, starring Peter Sellers. It’s about an accident-prone Indian actor who's name was put on the ‘invite’ list instead of the ‘fired’ list. This movie, much like most Sellers movies, is pure genius.

Book
‘Appetite For Life: The Biography of Julia Child’, by Noël Riley Fitch. She was such a lovable woman, and lived life to the fullest. I grew up watching her quirky, often hilarious cooking shows, and had to know more about the legend behind the lady.

Album
‘Living Is Hard: West African Music In Britain, 1927-1929’. I've been buying up all of these fantastic early-to-mid 20th century Afrobeat collections lately. ‘Living Is Hard’ is my latest purchase, and the only time I've pulled it off of the record player (in the last week) is to flip over to the next side. Simple structure and complex composition... a valuable lesson for any musician/songwriter.

Track
‘Lullabys, Legends, and Lies’ by Bobby Bare. Bobby Bare, Sr. has, in my opinion, one of the most perfect country voices to grace the music. Mix that voice with Shel Silverstein lyrics, and you have ‘Lullabys, Legends, and Lies’. I've listen to this song AT LEAST once a day for the last three months.

Television show/series
My wife and I don't have cable because we don't watch or need much television. When we do watch, it's always on our three Public Television channels, and it's usually a documentary or Antiques Road Show. We LOVE the British/original version of The Office, too.

Exhibition
I just saw Body Worlds for the second time last month. So fantastic…

Holiday destination
Madison Square Gardens! I'm so excited about this New Year's Eve my stomach hurts.

Gig venue
We've played so many different venues in the last decade it's unbelievable, but the 40 Watt in Athens, GA always comes to mind when I'm thinking of my favourites. We've played bigger and more ornate rooms, but very few rival the spirit of that building and the people who make it all happen. The 40 Watt is a guaranteed highlight to any of our tours. AND, after the show, J.B. is outside cooking amazing sausages with "come back sauce" – it’s so good, you'll be coming back for more.

Live band/DJ
I just ran across a performance by Thievery Corporation on Austin City Limits that really peaked my interest. I was not that familiar with their music, but have been moved by what they do live.

Chicago Tribune (2008)

On October 3rd 2008 Chicago Tribune published an interview with Patrick Hallahan, done by Chris Riemenschneider. The original interview can be found here.

Keywords:

Plenty of rock bands have made exceptional albums but stunk like a dead carp on stage. And then there's the peculiar case of My Morning Jacket.

While fans of the Kentucky-bred, reverb-soaked quintet will argue which of its five albums is best (2003's "It Still Moves" gets the vote here), few would suggest that any of those records live up to the vibrant energy and climactic rush of the group's live shows.

MMJ concerts these days reach upward of three hours and have a mad-whirl quality to them. The albums are great, or at least half-great, but ...

Apparently, the band members themselves understand the different levels of appreciation.

"We always try to experiment when we get into the studio, to try to capture something new and different," drummer Patrick Hallahan explained.

"We tour so much because we enjoy playing so much. The live show is probably a purer reaction to that enjoyment."

Talking by phone from backstage at "The Tonight Show" -- the last big late-night TV show MMJ had not played (including "Saturday Night Live") -- Hallahan made it sound like the group was once again having a blast on tour.

That wasn't a foregone conclusion this time around. Before the making of MMJ's new album, "Evil Urges," frontman Jim James came down with a serious bout of pneumonia that left him hospitalized for about a week. The going line was he had simply worn himself out on tour. (No surprise, then, that he isn't doing any interviews for the current swing.)

MMJ had also lost different members over the years because of its demanding road treks. Bassist Tommy Blankenship is the only other original member. A childhood friend of James, Hallahan said the singer and the rest of the band have since learned "a hidden secret" to stand up to the rigors of the road.

"You learn lessons as you go along, so we've learned to stay healthy more and get good rest and not knock down anything that would tire us all the more," he said with a laugh. "Nobody gave us the memo. We had to figure it out on our own.

"These are long shows, so you have to stay healthy. We could do this for a long time if everybody exercises and eats right. It's amazing what that can do for a band."

The longest of the My Morning Jacket shows famously came this summer at the Bonnaroo festival, where the band played a four-hour late-night set and reportedly didn't lose the crowd, even when it started raining.

"It was a magical, electric night," Hallahan recalled. "It was just a case of Bonnaroo providing us with a platform to do that. We're playing close to three hours every night on our own. When you play that long, another hour is 1not so bad once you hit your stride."

The Bonnaroo set was rounded out with a madcap array of cover songs, ranging from Bobby Womack's "Across 110th Street" to Erykah Badu's "Tyrone" to, for a closer, Motley Crue's "Home Sweet Home." Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett (whose band played before MMJ's set) joined the band for its own would-be classic, "One Big Holiday."

"He told us he always listens to us before he goes surfing, and he turned out to be a super nice guy," Hallahan said.

Campus Circle interview (2008)

Patrick Hallahan at KCRW, 2005

On September 17th 2008 Campus Circle published an interview with Patrick Hallahan written by Yuri Shimoda, original interview can be found here.

"I'd probably get a tattoo of a man running quickly while on fire."
My Morning Jacket drummer Patrick Hallahan sums up the experience of recording their fifth full length album Evil Urges, in the form of a tattoo design.

"It was a difference between what we wanted to do versus what we had to do. That was the big difference between recording out at the farm and recording in new York", he continues. For a band of admitted control freaks, relinquishing a bit of power during the recording process for only the second time in 10 years since forming was akin to lighting themselves on fire.

My Morning Jacket's original lineup, including vocalist Jim James and bassist Two Tone Tommy, recorded their early work (1999's The Tennessee Fire, 2001's At Dawn) at the farm of first guitarist (and James' cousin), Johnny Quaid. In 2002 James recruited childhood friend Hallahan and MMJ set to work on their ATO debut, It Still Moves, at the Quaids' farm where, as Hallahan says, "We controlled every variable out there."

The band's relentless tour schedule eventually led to Quaid's departure. After the addition of Carl Broemel on guitar and Bo Koster on keyboards, the quintet went to Catskills to collaborate with producer John Leckie (Radiohead, Muse) on the critically lauded Z (2005). They also appeared in and contributed to Cameron Crowe's Elizabethtown, a film that paid tribute to their home state of Kentucky.

Music was a big part of growing up in Louisville. Hallahan says, "Music was always a staple in my house. My dad would play guitar and sing to put me to sleep. My grandparents were musicians so whenever I stayed at their house, they were always practicing. It was our entertainment instead of TV."

The entire band cites an eclectic range of influences

PopMatters (2008)

On September 29th 2008 PopMatters published an interview with Patrick Hallahan, done by Chris Riemenschneider. The original interview can be found here.

Keywords:

Plenty of rock bands have made exceptional albums but stunk like a dead carp on stage. And then there’s the peculiar case of My Morning Jacket.

While fans of the Kentucky-bred, reverb-soaked quintet will argue which of its five albums is best (2003’s “It Still Moves” gets the vote here), few would suggest that any of those records live up to the vibrant energy and climactic rush of the group’s live shows.


MMJ concerts these days reach upward of three hours and have a mad-whirl quality to them. The albums are great, or at least half-great, but ...

Apparently, the band members themselves understand the different levels of appreciation.

“We always try to experiment when we get into the studio, to try to capture something new and different,” drummer Patrick Hallahan explained.

“We tour so much because we enjoy playing so much. The live show is probably a purer reaction to that enjoyment.”

Talking by phone last week from backstage at “The Tonight Show”—the last big late-night TV show MMJ had not played (including “Saturday Night Live”)—Hallahan made it sound like the group was once again having a blast on tour.

That wasn’t a foregone conclusion this time around. Before the making of MMJ’s new album, “Evil Urges,” frontman Jim James came down with a serious bout of pneumonia that left him hospitalized for about a week. The going line was he had simply worn himself out on tour. (No surprise, then, that he isn’t doing any interviews for the current swing.)

MMJ had also lost different members over the years because of its demanding road treks. Bassist Tommy Blankenship is the only other original member. A childhood friend of James, Hallahan said the singer and the rest of the band have since learned “a hidden secret” to stand up to the rigors of the road.

“You learn lessons as you go along, so we’ve learned to stay healthy more and get good rest and not knock down anything that would tire us all the more,” he said with a laugh. “Nobody gave us the memo. We had to figure it out on our own.

“These are long shows, so you have to stay healthy. We could do this for a long time if everybody exercises and eats right. It’s amazing what that can do for a band.”

The longest of the My Morning Jacket shows famously came this summer at the Bonnaroo festival, where the band played a four-hour late-night set and reportedly didn’t lose the crowd, even when it started raining.

“It was a magical, electric night,” Hallahan recalled. “It was just a case of Bonnaroo providing us with a platform to do that. We’re playing close to three hours every night on our own. When you play that long, another hour is not so bad once you hit your stride.”

The Bonnaroo set was rounded out with a madcap array of cover songs, ranging from Bobby Womack’s “Across 110th Street” to Erykah Badu’s “Tyrone” to, for a closer, Motley Crue’s “Home Sweet Home.” Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett (whose band played before MMJ’s set) joined the band for its own would-be classic, “One Big Holiday.”

“He told us he always listens to us before he goes surfing, and he turned out to be a super nice guy,” Hallahan said.

That list of covers and Hammett’s guest appearance should debunk a myth about MMJ: It’s not a jam band. Sure, James and Co. often enlist three guitars on stage at one time and can play songs that stretch over 10 minutes, but that enormity rarely feels excessive. The songs generally follow a strict, carefully orchestrated structure. And unlike most jam bands, the main instrument in this case is actually the singer’s voice, with its lonely-howl beauty.

Named after a jacket with the initials “MMJ” that James found from a burned-down bar, My Morning Jacket shows off its musical versatility on “Evil Urges” as it never before has on record. The songs range from straight-ahead, anthemic rockers such as “I’m Amazed” to the haunting country twang of “Sec Walking” to the wall-of-sound epic “Touch Me, I’m Going to Scream, pt. 2.”

The oddest of the bunch is a futuristic funk romp called “Highly Suspicious,” which finds James singing a Prince-like falsetto.

“It’s not a very serious song, and there wasn’t a lot of thought behind it,” Hallahan said, defending the love-it-or-hate-it track. “We really did it to make people cock their heads more than anything. And maybe to make people dance and have a good time—nothing wrong with that.

“Everything about this album has been fun. From when I first heard the demos to the finished product to how the songs have grown live. There’s a fun, uplifting spirit to these songs.”

Because James moved to New York and the other members are living in different cities, MMJ got together to make “Evil Urges” in two wildly different settings: a cabin in the mountains of Colorado, and a hi-fi studio in Manhattan.

“We purposefully went for the complete opposite setting to take ourselves out of our normal element, force us to do something different, hoping the album would sound different,” Hallahan said.

Mission accomplished. Now, the real test will be how these songs are transformed onstage.

LEO weekly (2008)

On August 13th LEO weekly published an interview with Patrick Hallahan, done by Mat Herron. The original article can be found here.

Keywords:

Offstage, Patrick Hallahan is the jokester anyone with an ounce of good ol’ boy would saddle up to a PBR with. A first-class cutup, he always seems at ease with his environment, which, in this case, is the dining room at Kashmir Indian Restaurant on Bardstown Road.

Onstage, My Morning Jacket’s drummer alternates between sweet, soulful beat doctor and uncaged gorilla, pummeling that C&C five-piece kit like it owes him money. This year was MMJ’s biggest yet: an appearance on “Saturday Night Live” and a sold-out Radio City Music Hall gig, four stars in Rolling Stone and L.A. Weekly’s declaration they are the best live band in the world sure didn’t hurt. And now, 6,000-plus tickets already sold for Saturday’s show at The Great Lawn to bring it on home.

As Hallahan explains, the gravity of these achievements isn’t lost on the boys. Truth be told, they’re as blown away as their hometown fans are. Maybe more.


LEO: I want to start with the drums. Sometimes I’ll talk to musicians, and there will be a show or a band or an event that compels them to play music. How did you decide that you wanted to be a drummer?

Patrick Hallahan: It wasn’t really a concert or an event. My grandmother was in a lounge act. They would play hotel lounges and I guess maybe weddings, and they were rehearsing in her basement constantly. That’s where they had band practice. I guess she was watching me one day, and I was just down there. I would go over and feel the guitar amp and feel the vibrations coming off of it. I thought it was great that there was sound coming out of this box. I eventually gravitated over to the drummer, and it just kind of clicked with me right away. It wasn’t really a profound moment. I just knew that’s what sounded good to me, what made the most sense.


LEO: From there did you know you wanted to be in a band? Did the ambition start there?

PH: Well that day, (the drummer) gave me a pair of drumsticks, which I still have. They’re tiny. I’d smash them in half now. But yeah, I was 5 years old and started playing in the air to my parents’ records and taught myself how to play drums with that. (I’d) start with — I don’t know why I did this or what made me do it — but I would start like, “Today, right now, I’m going to learn how to time up my hands with this (song).” I’d sit there and get my right and left hands in time with what they were doing. “Today, I’m going to start working my right foot, learning how to work in bass-drum timing with this.” I was trying to figure out the hi-hat, open and closed, cutting-off-the-vibration maneuver. So I started doing that in my room for years. I finally played on a drum kit in sixth or seventh grade and kind of knew what I was doing right off the bat.


LEO: With this record (Evil Urges), what messages were you trying to send?

PH: I think if you asked everybody in the band that question, it would be different. Of course, the lyrical message is gonna be from Jim’s (James) standpoint, because he writes all the lyrics. From my standpoint, this album was all about displaying growth and the want for exploration, trying to stay out of a rut, trying to evolve spiritually, physically and emotionally and musically. This album … I really wanted this album personally to be an endeavor, something fresh, something out of the ordinary from what people would expect us to play based on previous albums. That’s what it meant to me: the next step.

LEO: Describe the rehearsals for the album. Did everyone essentially try to change up the way they played this time around?

PH: Everybody was pushing themselves to take themselves out of their comfort zones, and play some styles that maybe they hadn’t played before. Every album kind of starts out with Jim sitting in a room by himself and making some demos, and he presents the demos to us, and we think about them for a month or so, and then we get together and start hashing them out. Some of the stuff that he came up with rhythmically on the drum machine I thought was so good that I just wanted to mimic it. Or not mimic it, but mimic the robotic feeling of it, and put a little bit of a spin on it but stay the course with it. A lot of it was based on trying different sounds, trying to make an album sound like an album but made up of different parts, instead of a concept. This is more of a gift basket, more than a concept album.

LEO: Were you listening to anything specific that maybe crept into what you were playing?

PH: (Laughs) It’s weird. I think everything I was listening to was non-drum-oriented — a lot of old jazz singers. I was playing my drums like I thought Dinah Washington would sing. I don’t know (laughs). I think they were just my initial reactions to his demos, so yeah, just trying to come up with weird, different ways of approaching it. You, as a musician, when you hear something, you probably immediately go to something that’s comfortable at first. I just have these beats that I always go to, and I’m like, “Damn it! Gotta get out of there for just a second.” So yeah, I’d go to a lot of music like Fela Kuti, a lot of African big band music, with just these rhythms that repeated themselves over and over again, never really deviated too much, just rose and fell with the song.

LEO: You were in New York and that environment making Evil Urges.

PH: Ended up there, yeah.

LEO: Did the feel of the songs change from the time you were working on them in Colorado to when you tracked them in New York?

PH: That’s a good question. Some of them did not change at all. Some of them didn’t even really change from the demo version. A song like “Highly Suspicious,” we just found it so … (laughs) … I don’t know what the word would be. Absurd. Hilarious. Amazing. And it didn’t change from the time the demos were made until then. I mean, there were more fluctuations band-wise, but the core was there. But yeah, everything kind of changes, the feel of things changes more than the song parts do.

If you listen to the demos we made in Colorado, they were much more like, “Yaaaaaayyy.” We weren’t on a timeline; it was beautiful outside. Our days consisted of waking up, making breakfast, playing whenever we wanted, however long, all day long, and then make dinner and maybe go back and play for a while and watch movies the rest of the night. Whereas New York was like, you wake up, you get on a train, you gotta get there by midnight, because you only have 12 hours from the moment you get there to the moment you end, before you have to start paying overtime. So there was a different feel, because there was a sense of urgency, because we wanted to get it done, and we had timelines and deadlines. It wasn’t as comfortable. But again, we wanted to take ourselves out of our element, out of our comfort zone and out of our normal routine and put ourselves in a different environment.

LEO: Were you surprised by some of the reactions that “Highly Suspicious” has gotten?

PH: No, because I was prepared for both (laughs). I was actually surprised how many people liked it, initially, live. I definitely thought that was one of the farther stretches on the album. I knew we liked it. We’d play it back to back all the time, just because it was fun. Yeah, I wasn’t really surprised either way, because I knew it was probably going to split the listening base in half. Some people were gonna go, “I hate ‘Highly Suspicious’!” Or, “Yeah, that’s great that they’re reaching out! That’s really funny, and man, it rocks out at the end!” I don’t know. It just is what it is (laughs). The moral of that story is you can’t please everybody.

LEO: With Okonokos (a live album), a lot of the studio songs take on a life of their own live. What sorts of things do you think about when you’re on stage playing? What goes through your head?

PH: It all depends on the day and where we are on the tour. I think more times than not, the reason we’re out there doing that is to go play live. That’s the payoff for missing your family or living out of your suitcase for a month. That’s the icing on the cake. I love playing with those guys. A lot of times, if everything’s going right, I’m not really thinking about too much of anything, closing my eyes and (being) in this euphoric place. If everything’s going right, a good show is a blink of an eye, because you’re not focusing on, “God, that doesn’t sound right,” or “Oh my God, my seat’s about to fall over,” “Jesus Christ it’s hot out here.” Everything is in its right place. You’re just in a trance, more or less.

LEO: The band will be 10 years old next year. What’s the secret?

PH: I’ve been with them since 2002, so I have seven of those 10 under my belt. We’re very lucky to be good friends and trust each other. I think it’s just important to surround yourself with people you love and trust, and get it to a point where everybody understands each other’s stand in a situation and what their role is. I think the five of us are definitely all about the same things when it comes to being in a band and being a group of people and wanting to do the right thing. I think honesty and a good work ethic will keep anything together for a long time.

LEO: What was “Saturday Night Live” like?

PH: Man (long pause). I don’t get too terribly nervous about playing. I don’t get too terribly blown away by things. I don’t know, but “Saturday Night Live” was one of those things, I just felt my stomach-acid level rising with every step, getting closer to that building, and by the time I got in there, I was just blown away by the fact that we were just standing in there, first of all, because they’re such a part of my childhood, personally, just growing up with the show and watching my favorite bands play it. The rest of the guys feel the same way, too. You can’t really top this. It was just one of those milestones that I never thought would be possible.

When we got in there and played, it became so natural after a minute, but the initial travel in there was just so nerve-wracking. The people were so warm, and the show was so accommodating to everything that it made everybody feel at ease. That’s another thing: Sometimes television’s very cold and regimented, and they’ve been doing it this way for so many years, and they don’t want to think outside the box. They let us control how it sounded, how it was lit, to a certain point, what songs were played. It was one of the most fantastic experiences of my life.

LEO: And Radio City Music Hall? Sold out in 22 minutes …

PH: I don’t even have an answer for that. Honestly, and I think that’s the best answer, because we didn’t even know how to process that. That’s beyond anything. And the show was just electric. It was really special to have that kind of call-and-response reciprocity in a venue like that. They were giving back everything that we were giving to them, and that made us give more, and it just became this push-pull dance. It was perfect. The venue itself is like being in the belly of a whale. It just looks like a giant ribcage leading up to a mouth with this beautiful light show. The history surrounding that place — I don’t know, I’m meandering about details, but to give you an answer, I can’t really do. Between that and “Saturday Night Live,” you have me at a stalemate.

LEO: What performers influenced you in terms of putting on a show?

PH: Well, there’s the obvious answers to that, watching the Keith Moons and John Bonhams, and they were a huge part of how I looked at approaching a rhythm section. Watching Stevie Wonder play, watching the music take over his body. I think there’s a certain conduit that runs through people, from wherever that great musical source is in the sky, and you just watch it hit people. You know when the flow’s going through that conduit, you could see it through Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, when people close their eyes and lose themselves, their mouth’s open, their head’s movin’, they’re lost in the moment. I get off on watching performers like that, that aren’t necessarily putting on a show, but are so into what they’re doing that they don’t care what facial expression, or what they’re doing. I think watching those people play like that made me realize that it’s all right to lose yourself. It’s kind of like — this is a silly comparison — but watching old clips of Michael Jordan, and you see him sticking out his tongue when he’s going up for this beautiful dunk, flashes of cameras everywhere. He’s not thinking, “I’m going up to this dunk, and I’m going to stick my tongue out.” That is the point when the conduit goes through his head, and he’s not thinking. It’s this beautiful moment, where he’s gonna make this happen. I wanted to feel that conduit.

LEO: On most of the tour dates, you guys are playing alone. What led to that decision?

PH: I think (laughs), honestly part of it is because making a setlist can be so difficult sometimes, because, when we’ve released this number of albums, and we’ve been around for almost 10 years, there’re just a lot of songs that you want to play, and we’re just getting to the point now where it doesn’t feel right playing 90 minutes. Sometimes it does. But when we’re in a good moment, we don’t want to stop, and we just wanted to see how that would go, just to put on our own show for once, and get up there and play for as long as we wanted to and make it an evening. It’s like throwing a dinner party. Inviting people in and playing for them for that long, just to see what happens. There’s a couple co-headliners in there. We’re playing with The Black Keys.

LEO: The Louisville Leopard Percussionists, how did you guys find them?

PH: We always try to treat the Louisville show like an event, not just a band playing on a stage. And initially, everybody wanted to … keep the “Evening With” motif going throughout the whole thing. I was kind of throwing out ideas about regional opening acts and kind of like, eh, what could we do different. Our manager’s wife works for HBO, and she had just been in town, and they had just done this documentary on the Louisville Leopards. He said, “Well, have you thought about asking the Louisville Leopards?” and we were like, “The Louisville Leopards?” None of us had really heard of them before. They sent us a DVD of the documentary, and it was like Niagara Falls on the bus. It’s such a beautiful, moving thing to watch this group of kids get together, led by this inspired person to teach all of these kids who aren’t even reading music. They’re taught through learning parts at a time, by themselves, and then as an ensemble. And it was so moving, we had to ask them to do it. We didn’t know too much about it in Louisville. We were certain people were just like us and really hadn’t had a chance to see them. What better way to get this knowledge out there than to have them up there? Also, with the current state of musical education, or the lack thereof, in our school systems, music classes are going by the wayside every day, and we have to champion these organizations that are getting these kids excited about music again. It’s gonna be cool.

LEO: You’re a huge basketball fan …

PH: Massive.

LEO: Favorite player?

PH: Of all time?

LEO: Of all time.

PH: Ahhh (long pause). I’m doing a three-way tie, and you can’t stop me: Julius Irving, Michael Jordan and George Gervin. If they could all form one super-being. Then there would be everybody versus the Master of All.

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.”