THERE’S music talk . . . and then there’s music talk with Jim James.
Few artists have such a profound relationship with their craft as My Morning Jacket’s mercurial frontman.
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For the Kentucky-raised, Los Angeles-based singer, “music is the invisible architecture that holds up the entire universe”.
He hopes that the ten songs on the band’s vibrant, genre-hopping tenth album, simply titled is, will help people “navigate the chaos in the world”.
That said, James believes music also means “a bird chirping or the wind blowing the trees”.
He says: “There’s this thing which nobody understands — we try to call it God — but, to me, the force of love and the force of music hold up everything. They’re what we’re all made of.
“You could listen to a new song every minute of every day and never hear them all.
“I love so many different genres and they all feed my subconscious and they feed into the soul of the universe. Then the universe filters musical ideas through this guy named Jim.”
Since starting out from Louisville more than 25 years ago, James has led My Morning Jacket on a cosmic journey, earning a reputation for thrilling, transcendent shows.
In the live arena, his group of sonic explorers has been able to draw on a boundary-pushing body of work, including their 2005 breakthrough album Z.
If the overall vibe is psychedelic rock with plenty of reverb, MMJ have a shape-shifting quality which finds them employing elements of pop, country, soul, reggae, you name it.
If their vision has always sprung from singer/songwriter James, he has finally begun to learn how and when to let go.
This explains why, for the first time, he has brought in an outside producer, namely the esteemed Brendan O’Brien, who counts Bruce Springsteen and Pearl Jam among his charges.
When it came to making album No10, the follow-up to 2021’s self-titled release, James realised, thanks to various forms of therapy, “how much my ego has been controlling my entire journey”.
He confesses: “I felt like I had to do it all or it wasn’t good enough. I had to produce it, play it, sing it, write it and engineer it — all this stuff!
“I used to base my entire self-worth on music. I obsessed over it and would beat myself up if I wasn’t working on it.”
After two full band sessions for what eventually became is “with me producing”, James sensed that things were not going to plan.
He says: “We had over a hundred demos and we needed help. There was some cool stuff but the album wasn’t going where we wanted it to go.
“So we came up with this idea of meeting producers — people that could be coaches — and I just loved Brendan’s vibe.
“With him, it’s all about the music. He doesn’t need to be your guru or your best friend but he’s full of great ideas AND great criticism.”
“Right off the bat, he was hilariously frank. You’d play him a song and he’d be like, ‘Ah, I don’t really see the point of that one’ or, ‘It’s OK but it’s too long’.
“You’d play him another and he’d say, ‘Oh, man, this one’s great!’ ”
James admits that he found the whole experience “mind-blowing and liberating” and that the resulting album feels like a fresh start.
He says: “Once I started working with Brendan, all these new songs started coming out. Some of my favourite ones on the record were written right at the last minute.
“Normally, if I’m not playing, I’m sitting at the desk, tweaking everything, so it was amazing to step back and focus on my own parts.
‘I sing into my phone’
“And Brendan was really respectful of our history, our sound and my love of reverb — our trademarks.”
This process coincided with James changing his relationship with music in general, meaning that he’s able to engage with it when the mood takes him.
“Now I can go for months without going to the studio or picking up a guitar,” he says.
“But when I feel the universe speaking through me — in dreams or while I’m doing the dishes or whatever — I get inspired.
“If a song comes to me in the middle of the night, I’ll wake up and voice memo it as best I can. If I’m out at dinner, I might run into the bathroom and sing into my phone.”
James says new-found ability to let things go — and the new album’s joyous music — has benefited from him making peace with himself.
“I took that first step about four or five years ago during the pandemic,” he says. “When I found this therapist, I realised I’d been at war with myself my entire life.
“I’ve been depressed, suicidal and I’ve hated myself. So how could I ever sit in judgment of anything going on in the world if I can’t even get right with myself?”
Without mentioning names, he alludes to the sandy-haired incumbent at the White House, back for a second term.
“We see a lot of chaos in the world springing from people who have not made peace with themselves,” continues James.
I can’t tell you how grateful I am for the beautiful moments we share.
Jim James
“You look at someone like him and he seems like a very unhappy person, not a very peaceful person.”
“And the more we fight and yell at each other online, the more advertising dollars are sold and the more clicks everybody gets.
“Everybody gets sucked into that but we need to remember to take care of ourselves and the people around us.”
Among the people around James are his bandmates, all of whom have been members of My Morning Jacket for more than 20 years.
Bassist Tom Blankenship is the only other founder member apart from the singer, and the other members are guitarist Carl Broemel, drummer Patrick Hallahan and keyboardist Bo Koster.
James says: “I can’t tell you how grateful I am for the beautiful moments we share, like when we huddle together before a show and say how much we love each other.”
But, as with so many bands, it has been a rollercoaster ride for
MMJ. “We almost imploded many times,” he affirms. “My depression almost ate me alive as did injuries, illnesses, fatigue — and I was a terrible communicator for years.
“Some bands try their best and still break up. For us, there is an element of luck, as if the universe wants us to continue.”
It’s strange too that James thought the acclaimed Z, one of Rolling Stone magazine’s top 500 albums of all time, might have been My Morning Jacket’s last.
“Z was a really heavy time in my life,” he says. “I had several friends commit suicide at that time and I was contemplating it myself.
“So Z felt very much like a sign off — it’s the last letter in the alphabet, the end. For a while, I thought it was a way of saying goodbye in a really simple way.”
Twenty years on, he says that is represents “the exact opposite”.
‘Minute-long ukulele riff’
“The title symbolises presence, nowness. There has been a beautiful healing and the band has never been more peaceful and more functional.”
One of the songs, written “half a lifetime ago” for Z, has finally come kicking and screaming into the sunlight on is.
“Of all the things that it could have been called, it’s so weird that it’s titled Half A Lifetime,” says James of the exhilarating, riff-driven anthem.
James says: “When we were doing the Z 20th anniversary, I started working through old files to see if we had any bonus songs.
“I found the session for that song, originally known as The Milking Song or Zebra Sauce, which none of us had heard in 20 years. I made a rough mix — the guys and Brendan loved it.”
Other standouts include first track Out In The Open, which started as “a minute-long ukulele riff” and blossomed into an emphatic anthem.
Its lyrics serve as a mission statement about “being open and truthful” despite the risk of exposure.
Elsewhere, there’s the playful pop of Everyday Magic and the airy, radio-friendly I Can Hear Your Love.
Things get altogether darker for the grinding, funky Squid Ink, which comes with a telling explanation from James.
“I was thinking about how much fear there is in the world and how a squid shoots ink into water to protect itself. We’re all swimming in these murky waters.”
With so many potential new live favourites in the bag, My Morning Jacket have dates booked across the US for most of 2025.
I’ve seen the Rolling Stones several times over the last few years, as well as Dylan and McCartney. It’s so insanely inspiring to see these artists.
Jim James
James is a formidable performer and takes inspiration from the greats who are still going into their Eighties.
He says: “I saw Joni Mitchell at the Hollywood Bowl and I’ve never loved her more.
“I’ve seen the Rolling Stones several times over the last few years, as well as Dylan and McCartney. It’s so insanely inspiring to see these artists. They just get better and better.
“I only hope that we have the good fortune to still be playing live and making records when we’re 80 years old.”
He reserves special praise for Bob Dylan, who is receiving much attention right now because of the biopic A Complete Unknown.
“For whatever reason, the universe [there’s that word again] chose to speak through him in a way that was so connected to almost everybody.”
Finally, I ask this intriguing soul for his views on a hot topic, the impact of AI on the music industry and the world in general.
His answer is typically thought-provoking. “I have no desire to have a robot help me with my music. It’s a puzzle I want to solve myself.
“But I like to fantasise about the peaceful possibilities. Perhaps if aliens come or AI takes over, they will be wise and say, “Y’all are really f***ing this up, let’s take a pause for a minute.
“Everybody learn to play along and love each other. That’s my AI fantasy!”
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