Photograph by Danny Clinch
For more than 25 years now, My Morning Jacket has resisted labels. Whether the Louisville-based quintet is described as an alt-country roots band, an indie art-rock group, or a festival jam band, they’ve always experimented sonically and transcended genre limitations.
With the upcoming release of their tenth album, is, MMJ continues to push artistic boundaries. Leader/singer/songwriter Jim James relinquished production control for the first time in their career, and they recruited Brendan O’Brien to produce the album. O’Brien has specialized in revitalizing veteran acts like Pearl Jam and Bruce Springsteen by streamlining their sound and dialing up big melodies with a sonic glow.
O’Brien considered more than 100 of James’ song demos and selected ten nuggets for the project, all under five minutes long, which is concise for this band. But the editing process rewards listeners with an powerful, eclectic recording that caroms between the opening, anthemic barrage of “Out in the Open,” the country-tinged “Everyday Magic,” and the rockslab rhythm of “Half a Lifetime” to the shimmery funk of “I Can Hear Your Love” and the hazy, psych-pop vibes of “Time Waited,” an existential love song that’s being released as the album’s first single.
Known for their epic live shows, going back to their renowned festival sets in the early 2000s, MMJ is playing new songs alternating with cuts from Z, their pivotal fourth record, on the current tour, which stops October 20 at MegaCorp Pavilion in Newport. Since this year marks the 20th anniversary of Z, the band digs into dynamic contrasts between the old and the new.
MMJ concerts resound with a moody majesty—all reverb-washed guitar, charismatic abandon, and exultant sing-alongs led by James’ keening tenor. In the early years, they’d open for Bob Dylan on tour. And in places like a Louisville parking lot, they’d rip through a ferocious set with twin guitars blazing, lion mane hair flying, and a feisty twang that echoed Neil Young’s Crazy Horse looped over the Allman Brothers.
Then came the Bonnaroo years, where MMJ repeatedly rocked the Tennessee fest in headliner sets, establishing their rep as an extraordinary live band. It’s a period best illuminated by the bootlegged 2004 Thunderstorm show, when even torrential rain couldn’t slow their cosmic, freewheelin’ flow.
Bo Koster, MMJ’s longtime keyboard player and an Ohio native, recently spoke with Cincinnati Magazine from his home in L.A. while on tour hiatus. Besides his full-time gig with MMJ, Koster has also toured with Roger Waters and Ray LaMontagne.
Can you describe your Ohio roots and regional connections you share with your Kentucky bandmates?
I have lots of friends from Cincinnati, since I went to Ohio University and I’m from the Cleveland area. As a band, we shared cultural connections. It’s funny, we’d talk sometimes about how in the Midwest, at least in our generation growing up in the 1990s, it just wasn’t cool to toot your own horn. The cool thing was to be humble and let other people sing your praises. It’s just funny how different the world is now, how everybody just puts themselves out there. It’s the only thing they know how to do.
Back then there was a label infrastructure and people who could sing your praises for you. There were radio stations and tastemakers and blogs and magazines, and the label would funnel your music through those channels and you didn’t have to be so responsible for your own self-promotion. Not to go on a tangent, but I think that change has made the world infinitely less cool.
What was it like working with Brendan O’Brien as producer, and how did he get involved?
We’ve worked with a lot of great producers in the past, but it was always in conjunction with Jim, as he would co-produce. But this time Jim gave up most of the control to Brendan, and we all did. We decided as a band it was time for that in our trajectory, and Jim was really ready on a personal level to let go of some control and see what that would do. He’s done it one way for a long time.
We thought about producers, and we really wanted someone Jim respected and landed on Brendan. All of us respect his body of work. Brendan ended up going through all those demos and chose the songs we recorded except one or two that the band fought for. His taste in songwriting is very good, so we felt we landed on a lot of good songs we liked as well and some we overlooked.
What skill set did O’Brien bring to the project, and how does that fit in with James’ songwriting and arrangements?
The thing about Brendan is he understands songwriting and what makes a good song. He said during the process, “I don’t know what it is, but I just have the ears of everyman. The things I like most people like.: Which is kind of cool, you know, so he funnels everything through that. I mean, we have a tendency to get a little weird, and he would say, “No, this song is undeniable and a lot of people will like this regardless of what kind of music they listen to.”
He engineered some of the biggest records of all time. He also has a knack for dealing with people and not getting bogged down in the weeds. So it was kind of like working with a master of his craft, which is really helpful. We say it was like having a great coach in the room.
Brendan was apt to cut out the fat, and if there was a hooky part he wanted to double that part. We were all for it. We’ve made a lot of records in a lot of different ways, and we were ready for this approach. I think the results are really cool, with ten songs that can wash over you in 40 minutes.
You’re also celebrating the 20th anniversary of Z on this tour. Does that record have special resonance for you? Is there another MMJ record that maybe stands out more?
I love all our records for different reasons, just looking back at the eras of your life. But I have a sweet spot for Z because that was the first record Carl Broemel made with the band. I really felt proud of that record after we made it. You don’t realize at the time, but it can be hard to get that feeling after every record—it’s just the nature of making records. Sometimes you feel like you hit a home run, and other times you feel like maybe we missed the mark on some aspect. But we had two new guys with a different palette, and it just made the band a little more versatile.
The Waterfall sessions are special to me, because we recorded up at Stinson Beach, California, with a lot of experimental songs. It was just a fun time, and we took a lot of time and tried a lot of things on that record. And there’s a spiritual element to the record that really reminds me of that part of the world around Stinson Beach and Muir Woods.
MMJ is often viewed as primarily a guitar band, though the sound has evolved over the years. How does your role as keyboard player fit into the band dynamics?
We do still lean heavily on the two-guitar assault, but we’re open to all instruments and all orchestration and so we’re always trying new things. Jim writes a lot of songs on keyboards, and Carl plays pedal steel and saxophone. We’re just fans of music in general. We’re not very dogmatic in that bands have to be only be guitar, bass, and drums.
It’s a great band to be in for a keyboard player. I mean, a lot of bands have a keyboard player in the back, and you watch this guy but can’t hear one note he plays because it gets lost in the mix. But they treat me like an equal. It’s like the keyboard is connective tissue bringing it all together. I like to think that my role is the glue guy.
MMJ has headlined many festivals and is sometimes described as a jam band for sharing improvisational arrangements and lengthy songs. How do you think MMJ fits into that scene?
We’re not guys who listen to a lot of jam bands. I mean, we like the Grateful Dead, who are undeniable, but I wouldn’t say that any of us came up in that culture or scene. We came up more in an indie rock, ’90s type of scene. But none of us were in jam bands prior or listened to a lot of jam band music or went to jam band festivals. At this point we really appreciate the aesthetic of the culture and what it stands for—in terms of switching up the setlist, making it fun for the fans, and taking it to new places as much as we can in the live show. We really embrace that part of the jam band culture.
I think a lot of jam bands write songs for the intention to jam on, where our intention is to write songs and then we’ll jam on them. With the jam band, the intention is to jam—obviously, that’s not binary, I mean a lot of these bands write great songs. But we’re song-focused, and then we figure out how to screw around and improvise later.
I know you’ve toured with several other artists as well, including Roger Waters. What was that experience like playing Pink Floyd songs with the man who wrote those classics?
Roger is the smartest guy in the room, the sweetest guy in the room, and the toughest guy in the room. In terms of artistry, he’s one of the greatest of all time. Not just a musician, but a poet and a visual artist, and he always has something to say. He isn’t writing love songs about his break-up, he’s tackling humanity’s most important issues and quandaries.
I always think of this show I saw with Dr. J, the basketball player, and he was retired at this point—and David Letterman asked him what it was like when he was the coolest athlete in the world. And Dr. J leaned back in his seat and said, “Man, it was epic.” That’s kind of how I feel about my stint with Roger. It was epic to play that music with those guys all over the world and spend time with Roger, just be in that orbit. It still seems like a dream.
My friend John and I grew up experimenting with drugs and stuff at a young age and listening to Pink Floyd. It was such an important part of my artistic journey to hear those records at a certain age. I’m sure the first time everybody hears Dark Side of the Moon or “Shine On” has a spiritual experience. I grew up playing classical piano and listening to jazz music, so Rick Wright [original Pink Floyd keyboardist] was kind of a musical kindred spirit.
I personally found Roger to be loving and compassionate with those around him. I mean, you don’t write the lyrics to “Us and Them” or “Echoes” without true empathy and emotional love for humanity, and that comes out when you’re with him personally. But he’s also a tough son of a bitch.
Roger invented that big arena-like show. He’s really the first to take it to Broadway-type levels with the early flying pigs. He’s not afraid to stand up for what he believes in, which really makes you want to follow him. You listen to some of the things he wrote and said back in the ’70s, and his ideas about money, people, and life are timeless.
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