Our first two records are a lot quieter and more studio-based. We kind of had this feeling like we wanted to make a more quote-unquote 'rock' record. Then Patrick joined and really brought a new Herculean power to the band.
— Jim James
The songs always tell you something, but always for different reasons.
I guess people have a hard time dealing with humour in music. But sometimes life is depressing, and sometimes life is fun, is about just laughing with your friends, and I wanted to express that as well as the darker stuff.
I just think bad vibes and hate and Trump are getting so much airtime, we need to speak out loud for peace and equality and fairness and make sure we all know that there are a lot of us out here in the world that just want love.
It's hard to say what an album is about - because each one is usually about a lot of things to me, but then I hope it also can mean a lot of different things to someone else. That's the beautiful thing about music.
I like to be productive - it's very hard for me to go on vacation because I just feel like I'm losing time.
I really believe what people have said before, that God is love. For me, it's music. For you, it might be writing, or for somebody else, it might be soccer or whatever.
I feel like the sky in my mind is bigger when I meditate. It helps you fight the classic battles we're all fighting: trying to find love, trying to find satisfaction in your career.
Pilates is amazing. It makes you conscious of how you have been doing something incorrectly for so long, even something as simple as just standing there.
Moving and motion tends to make things pop up. But things pop up for me, really, at just odd intervals or at random times that aren't really convenient, so I'm a big fan of the voice memo recorder on my phone. That's the only way I can remember things.
When I was maybe three years old, I was obsessed with this song 'Leader of the Band' by Dan Fogelberg. My mom took me to the mall and bought me a 45 of it. We would listen to that song all the time.
Live music is incredible because you get to be with people, and you get to have this tactile, real-world experience, but at the end of the day, if your eyes are closed and you're getting swept away, it's like... I don't know.
I've gotten into doing electronic books and audiobooks, so I have an iPad. I still love reading a real book, but when you travel, it's better than carrying around a bunch of books.
Somebody brought up the idea of reissuing 'Tribute To 1' because it was out of print on vinyl.
Lou Reed's spirit and the way he did things was so important. Him and his music mean so much to me as the years go by.
I got really hooked on this riff in the middle of this song called 'Minor Miracles' by my friend Eric Johnson from Fruit Bats. I got the tracks for that from him, and that turned into 'Here in Spirit.'
'It Still Moves' is really the only record in our catalog that I've always felt I wanted to remix. Part of the fun of that record was that we recorded it all to tape, and it was all super-duper organic.
Sometimes, I want to make a record that's so schizophrenic and so all over the place, and then other times, I want to make a record that's very coherent and very short and together.
For me, 'Evil Urges' was like a video game. If you play 'Super Mario Brothers,' there's a level where it's like a snowscape, and then there's a level where it's a desert and a level that's like a jungle.
Love is love. Let's take it any way we can get it.
Almost every time I go to the ocean, I think about throwing my phone right into it. Sometimes, you pull that thing out of your pocket, you look at it, and you're like, 'What was I just going to do with this? Was I going to take a note? Was I going to check my email? Was I going to take a picture?'
The first two My Morning Jacket records were basically demos.
I think maybe the vehicle for me was 'Sam Cooke's Greatest Hits.' It has a song called, 'Touch the Hem of His Garment.' Do you know that song? I kind of got obsessed with that song and started exploring and getting more of his old recordings with the Soul Stirrers and really getting into that super, super deeply.
After I wake up, I always meditate.
I'm grateful to be successful, and I'm grateful that we can make a living, and I hope we can maintain our integrity forever. That's really my only dream. The notion of bigness or smallness, I feel like that comes and goes in such waves that are kind of out of my control.
'Circuital' was just so much about us as a band. We captured every song live, including the main vocal. That is probably my favorite My Morning Jacket record because it's really the essence of us being us. The solo record is just a completely different essence of just me trying to figure out stuff.
My aunt played upright bass in the Louisville Orchestra, and I was always really impressed by her musical ability. I found it really fascinating as a kid that one could play music for a living.
I was always kind of against streaming, but I've been traveling so much, and I usually carry a huge hard drive of digital music with me, but I haven't had time to deal with it, so I've been doing streaming. And I had this incredible breakthrough of weightlessness where I've really been loving streaming music.
I've got a studio at home, and I'm always recording.
I just love being in the studio, and that's kind of what I do when I'm not on the road. I'm just in the studio messing with stuff, and I love playing all the instruments.
I was talking to my publisher, Jamie Ceretta, who's one of my closest confidants and allies when I'm working on new music. I feel like I can always count on his judgement because he'll tell me if he doesn't like something. It's sometimes hard to get people to tell you if they don't like something.
I tried to score a few films with this composer Brian Reitzell here in L.A. We made a bunch of music we really loved, but we got fired from the film for being too weird.
When I make a record with My Morning Jacket, I love what those guys do, so I don't have a need to play bass or drums or anything, because we're doing that as a unit.
I think probably the first time I recorded anything was mid-2010.
Fleet Foxes are a really talented band. They make beautiful music.
Big religion was started with one goal in mind: to make money. And I'm not knocking anyone's faith, because I think there are a lot of good values to be found in any faith. But when any faith starts to get in the way of love, that's where you can tell that greed and fear have stepped in and that those things come from man.
I don't think about taking risks anymore because there aren't any risks to take.
There's these things we do that take us into the zone - and we go in that place that I feel like is the place of love that you reach when you're in love or making love, or you're having a good conversation. I feel like that is God.
I grew up on, and kind of came of age, during the grunge movement and was introduced to Neil Young and Bob Dylan and grew up on that path.
I exercise all the time, every morning, and then I do music in the afternoon. I walk two to three miles a day and do Pilates twice a week.
I went to college for, like, a year and a half with the intention of doing some kind of art therapy or some kind of teaching of art, because I feel like art is a more free area in school than music is. I feel like music is too mathematic for me. Music school's so hard. It's math.
When you think about climate change, that means that we won't have an Earth to be lonely on.
'The Muppet Show' was huge. I watched it all the time as a kid, and I really loved the way they used music on that. I also remember hearing the radio in the car as a kid, like Stevie Wonder and Simon and Garfunkel.
Ever since I got back surgery, everything in my life has been about reduction. I've got the lightest backpack I can carry and the lightest MacBook.
I heard the Abbey Lincoln song 'The World is Falling Down,' and it just resonated with me so deeply.
Anyone who knows music knows that Neil is about as real as it can get, and this along with seeing him perform 'Harvest Moon' on 'SNL' was my first experience knowing what real music really felt like.
There's so much chaos and trouble in the world right now, and we need to broadcast as much peace and love, too.
