-- Joe D'Angelo
While they don't hail from a Kentucky coal mine, the music made by the Louisville quintet My Morning Jacket has parallels to both Janis Joplin's more somber moments and Loretta Lynn's depressed states.
Singer/songwriter Jim James emotes like a man of constant sorrow on moping tunes of lost love like "Death Is My Sleezy Pay," "Bermuda Highway" and the title track from the band's latest album, At Dawn. His haunting, detached vocals, drenched in reverb, evoke Neil Young's anguish folk on 1970's After the Gold Rush. The comparisons are undeniable on "Hopelessly," but give way to a drawl more Southern on the bluesy waltz "Honest Man."
James and bandmates bassist Two-Tone Tommy, keyboardist Danny Cash, drummer Patrick Hallahan and guitarist Johnny Quaid, James' cousin, formed in the late 1990s in Louisville. They released their debut LP, The Tennessee Fire, in 1999 on indie-cred fountainhead Darla Records. At Dawn wars released in June 2001, and the buzz surrounding them became fervent a few months later, culminating in them becoming among the "must see" groups at the annual South by Southwest music conference in March. Around the same time, they released a split EP with one-man band Songs: Ohia.
My Morning Jacket owe a lot to their sleepy Southern upbringing in Louisville. They claim to derive inspiration from the former indie-rock hotspot — home to influential rockers Squirrel Bait in the late '80s and Will Oldham's Palace projects a few years later — and find their environment fertile grounds for creativity.
"Back in Louisville ... it's a metropolitan city but there isn't that much to do," Cash explained, "so people have to invent things to do, like bands, art."
Obtaining the twangy, crippled creek feel on At Dawn was easy considering where the 15-track LP was recorded — on Quaid's grandparents' farm.
"The surrounding is so peaceful and relaxing — we feel at home there," he said. "It's not a music-oriented, driven area ... It's a small town. Good vibe. I feel creative there."
Grandma's farm also has other, non-musical perks. "We have home-cooking every night. [My grandparents] tuck us into our bunk beds and read us bedtime stories," he jokingly added.
James' songs are harrowingly confessional, but he admits that they don't all stem from personal experience. Whether they're truthful or imaginative, James keeps one constant in mind.
"I like to make them as fantastic as possible," he said. Before you start vacating the premises to make room for his ego, hear him out. The bard isn't referring to the quality of his craft, but to an inexplicable element that flows naturally but something he can't quite put his finger on.
"When I say fantastic, I don't mean good," he continued, "because I don't know if they're good or not. But I've always been inspired by things like "The Muppet Show," the "Wonderful World of Disney" and Roy Orbison — stuff that's really magical.
"Sometimes I don't really think about it. I just sit down with the guitar, and it just kind of falls out. I don't even know what it means until three months later. But other times I'll write directly about something that's happened to me. I like to just let it come."
My Morning Jacket, who will wrap up their tour with the Doves Wednesday in Los Angeles, signed a new deal with the Dave Matthews-owned imprint ATO Records in September, and the BMG-distributed label will issue an MMJ EP in the U.K. in November, followed by a domestic full-length slated for next spring or summer. With MMJ perched to make their biggest impact yet, the members aren't shaken by the prospect of playing to larger audiences. However, the possible consequence of being taken out of the country — having the country taken out of them — is daunting. So far steps steeped in trepidation have worked, and, if My Morning Jacket is what everyone's wearing next spring, the bandmembers will likely follow that same path to success.
"We've all dreamed about doing this for a long time, and we're a little bit nervous and skeptical about the whole thing," Quaid said. "We don't want to be changed, really. We want to grow and evolve, but we were kind of a little bit scared coming out of Kentucky, doing everything ourselves all the way down the line. And we were just really cautious — that might be a better word — about getting in with the right kind of people that will allow us to grow and evolve as opposed to letting someone get a hold of us that's going to fit us into a mold or something that we're not."
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