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My Morning Jacket
Rock group

My Morning Jacket is a rock group that is impossible to pigeonhole, for they move easily from one sound to another. The group has drawn from whatever music it likes, creating a unique sound that might be considered alt-country, psych-rock, or just plain weird reverb rock.

Jim James, the group's founder and main singer-songwriter, began playing guitar in high school in Louisville, Kentucky. He was playing with a band called Month of Sundays and became more interested in exploring his own songwriting. Soon James was writing songs that didn't fit that group, and he went out on his own as My Morning Jacket's only member.

James shaped My Morning Jacket into a band in 1998 when his cousin Johnny Quaid was recruited to play with him. The band solidified further that year with the addition of Two-Tone Tommy on bass and J. Glenn on drums. Danny Cash was a late arrival who reportedly taught himself to play keyboards solely to be able to audition for the band. "We just kind of guffawed our way into playing all the time. Every single day! And making records too," James told Pitchfork. The group's debut album, The Tennessee Fire, was released by the Darla label in 1999.

Enjoyed Unexpected Success Abroad
My Morning Jacket got its first break not in the United States but in Europe, when the group was championed by a disc jockey in the Netherlands. They were eventually invited to Europe. A documentary about the band was filmed, which, James told Rolling Stone, was "about how weird it was for us to come from Kentucky, where no one gave a sh*t, to Holland, where people cared. It was surreal."

Quaid remarked that the group's popularity abroad may have come about because they were not based in a major city. "Kentucky probably sounds like an exotic place, and it might hold some kind of mystery for them," Quaid speculated in an interview with PopMatters. "The people there are really open-minded and really searching for new, up-and-coming music. They really have their ears to the ground."

Of the band's holiday 2000 EP release My Morning Jacket Does Xmas Fiasco Style, James told Pitchfork, "We always wanted to make a Christmas album, even if it was kind of fun and goofy. We wanted to make it like an old one." The EP included cover versions of music by artists ranging from Elvis Presley to Nick Cave.

Like the fictional rock band Spinal Tap, My Morning Jacket has been through a succession of drummers. J. Glenn left the band after the debut and was replaced by K.C. Guetig. Patrick Hallahan began playing with the group prior to their July 2002 tour with the group Guided By Voices; he and James had been childhood friends.

Critics Tried to Pin Down Band's Sound
The 2000 release of the EP Chocolate and Ice and the following year's full-length At Dawn marked the full flowering of the band's experimental tendencies. Reviewers heard in the band's sound echoes of Neil Young, Brian Wilson, and the Flaming Lips, and they tried attaching various genre labels to the group. They agreed, however, in commenting on the band's use of reverb. Like guitar legend Duane Eddy, the group has recorded in a grain silo to get the best reverb sound possible. "Jim actually has a chemical imbalance where he cannot survive without reverb," quipped Quaid in an interview with PopMatters. "It's like oxygen to him."

The band cited a variety of musical and cultural influences that have informed their music, some of them visible in their live shows. "We all grew up listening to Zeppelin, the Stones, and AC/DC, and we all air-guitared to all of those things in our rooms with the lights out, jumping off our beds and everything," Quaid told PopMatters. "We just try to re-create that every night. You close your eyes, and you're 13 years old again, jumping off your bed to a Led Zeppelin song."

James has listed Etta James, Nina Simone, The Band, The Muppets, Roy Orbison, and Led Zeppelin as musical influences, and My Morning Jacket has acknowledged its influences openly by performing a range of covers in its live performances. As a result, they often perform songs as diverse as "Hot Legs" by Rod Stewart and Bill Monroe's "Blue Moon of Kentucky." The list also includes songs by Erykah Badu, Berlin, Elton John, and Black Sabbath. "I think covers are a good way to connect with people who are unfamiliar with you, and a good way to have fun all around," James told Pitchfork. "Good music means a lot to me," James told VH1.com. Bands he considered overrated included Grand Funk Railroad, Foreigner, and Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Emerged from Obscurity
With continuing support in Europe, My Morning Jacket emerged in the United States from the regional bar and house party circuit in 2002. Their new success was partly the result of critical praise by reviewers from publications including New Musical Express, Blender, and San Francisco Weekly. Music writers continued to struggle to classify My Morning Jacket. The band has been labeled alt-country, but James rejected that idea. "The only label for us is rock and roll. That encompasses everything," he told Pitchfork. "I guess our mission is just to bring some mystery and some fun back to rock and roll. It seems like there is no mystery or fun nowadays. It's all so serious. I just don't feel any real emotion from some of the more widely accepted artists these days."

At Dawn was a favorite of Dave Grohl, by 2003 a member of the band the Foo Fighters. Grohl asked My Morning Jacket to open for the Foo Fighters during a 2003 tour. That same year, the band released its much-praised full-length recording It Still Moves. "If alt-country heroes decided to go to space, this is what it would sound like," wrote an Esquire reviewer of It Still Moves. "From the album opening ‘Mahgeeta,’ the band travels a beautifully winding and spooky road."

"Nothing says complete artistic freedom like 12 songs that average six minutes in length," contended John Schacht in Paste. "The main characteristic of My Morning Jacket songs … is that there are often no main characteristics…. That's both the group's appeal and its Achilles' heel, depending on your inclinations."

The band was continuing to tour in support of It Still Moves when, in early 2004, two members abruptly announced they were leaving the band. Quaid and Cash quit, and the band filled their spots for the continuing tour with Carl Broemel and Bo Koster.

Both men who left My Morning Jacket said they were tired of touring and wanted to be at home. The band also publicly stated that the new musicians appeared to be a good fit for the group.

Before convening the revamped lineup of My Morning Jacket for the recording of their 2005 release, Z, Jim James and company released two compilations of previously unreleased material. The first, The Sandworm Cometh: Early Recordings, Chapter 1, contained the band's compelling reworkings of the Elton John classic "Rocket Man" and the Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit." The second, Learning: Early Recordings, Chapter 2, contained highly imaginative reworkings of Berlin's "Take My Breath Away," Hank Williams's "Why Don't You Love Me?," and the Pet Shop Boys' "West End Girls." Clearing the vaults of the unreleased material prepared listeners for the new direction the band took with Z. The band used far less reverb techniques in the recording of the album, which All Music Guide critic Johnny Loftus favorably compared to Elton John's early 1970s efforts Honky Chateau and Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. According to Loftus, the recording marked a watershed in the group's body of work: "Z is intuitive, intensely creative, classicist-minded, nearly flawless. It's music that's extruded from Jim James' id, and that's bearded, too."

Following the release of Z, the band paused briefly to revel in their new era of creativity, releasing the critically lauded live set Okonkos, which culled songs from the entirety of the band's studio releases and recast them for a lucky audience attending the show recorded at San Francisco's legendary Fillmore Auditorium. The album featured an eleven-minute version of "Dondante," but successfully eluded categorization as just another live recording by a self-absorbed jam band, a too-easy label that the band finally put to rest with the release of 2008's Evil Urges. While featuring lengthy sonic experiments, the release also contained songs more easily classified as inspired by Prince, including "Highly Suspicious." The band toured extensively to promote Evil Urges, including a highly regarded appearance on the Public Broadcasting System series Austin City Limits, where the audience seemed to enjoy the band's seamless transition from jamming to country to blues Southern Rock to psychedelia.

Selected discography
The Tennessee Fire, Darla, 1999.
My Morning Jacket Does Xmas Fiasco Style, Darla, 2000.
At Dawn, Darla, 2001.
Chocolate and Ice, Badman, 2002.
My Morning Jacket/Songs: Ohia (split CD), Jade Tree, 2002.
It Still Moves, ATO, 2003.
The Sandworm Cometh: Early Recordings, Chapter 1, Darla, 2004.
Learning: Early Recordings, Chapter 2, Darla, 2004.
Z, ATO, 2005.
Okonkos, ATO, 2006.
Evil Urges, Red, 2008.

Sources
Periodicals
Esquire, September 2003, p. 114.
Paste, October 2003.
Rolling Stone, October 2, 2003, p. 44.

Online
"An Interview with Jim James of My Morning Jacket," Louisville Eccentric Observer, http://www.leoweekly.com/archives/071603/music-interview-jim.shtml (November 26, 2003).
"Explain Yourself!: Jim James of My Morning Jacket," Pitchfork, http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/watw/03-04/my-morning-jacket.shtml (November 26, 2003).

"Featured Release: My Morning Jacket," It Still Moves, RCA Records, http://www.rcarecords.com/featuredrelease_mmj.html (October 31, 2003).
"Kentucky Mystique," PopMatters, http://www.popmatters.com/music/interviews/my-morning-jacket-031013.shtml (February 13, 2004).
"My Morning Jacket," All Music Guide, http://www.allmusic.com (May 19, 2009).
"My Morning Jacket," Pitchfork, http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/interviews/m/my-morning-jacket-02/ (November 26, 2003).
"My Morning Jacket: Southern Men & Bear Necessities," VH1.com, http://www.vh1.com/artists/interview/1479666/100903/my_morning_jacket.jhtml (October 31, 2003).

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