My Morning Jacket - "It Still Moves" video

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MY MORNING JACKET
It Still Moves
RCA Records
September 9, 2003


The music of My Morning Jacket combines restless experimentalism, heartfelt emotion, and unforgettable songs. Their soaring collective interplay is rooted in a decade of friendship and music making. This Louisville, Kentucky quintet is perhaps the most acclaimed new group to emerge from Mid-America in the past two years: New Musical Express called My Morning Jacket "the band to fall in love with in 2002."

In suburban Louisville, well below the music industry radar, My Morning Jacket forged their own style and sound over the course of countless gigs in small clubs, house parties, and community centers. "We’ve created what we do just out of wanting to create,” says Jim James, MMJ’s lead singer and principal songwriter. “None of us have much musical training to speak of."

Yet Jim has been making music for most of his 24 years—often jamming with his cousin, MMJ guitarist Johnny Quaid. In high school, the two played in different bands but always kept in touch. When Jim began writing songs with a new group in mind, Johnny was the first on board. In 1998, with the addition of bassist Two-Tone Tommy and a now-departed drummer, the band began rehearsing on the farm owned by Johnny's grandparents. When Danny Cash found an MMJ flier advertising for a keyboard player, he began teaching himself to play with the express aim of joining the band. Drummer Patrick Hallahan, although the last to arrive, has been Jim James' best friend since they were both ten years old. A veteran of several Louisville bands, Patrick joined My Morning Jacket just in time for the band’s July 2002 tour with Guided By Voices.

Indie rock in Louisville, Jim James recalls, was mostly hardcore. “Me and my friends who were in bands back then, we had this other little freak scene where we kinda just supported each other. And I think it was set in our minds that we wanted to do something different, something special."

Given his age, James cites some unusual influences including Etta James, Nina Simone, The Band, Roy Orbison, and Led Zeppelin. “I’m into the good stuff! I know people listen to lots of music for lots of different purposes. If they’re cutting the grass, they listen to one thing; if they’re washing the dishes, they listen to something else. But I just like music that’s amazing and time-less.” (On stage, MMJ have been known to cover everything from “Hot Legs” by Rod Stewart to Bill Monroe’s “Blue Moon of Kentucky.”)

Since the release of the debut album The Tennessee Fire in 1999, My Morning Jacket have issued a profusion of independent recordings including three EPs, a couple of seven-inch singles, and several compilation tracks. But At Dawn (Darla Records, 2002) is the group’s most accomplished and compelling disc to date: 70-plus minutes of memorable melodies and eclectic arrangements sparked by the soulful singing of Jim James. At Dawn‘s 13 tracks range in style from the gentle folk-rock of "Lowdown" to the freak-blues of "Honest Man” to the drum-less acoustic ballad "Bermuda Highway." The swooping multi-tracked guitars of "Xmas Curtain" offer a taste of the band’s full-throttle live explorations. As the San Francisco Weekly noted: “The reverb-heavy mix that transforms James' voice into an unnerving siren song gives the band a cathedral-size space to stretch out in.”

Like My Morning Jacket’s previous releases, At Dawn is self-produced. The improved sound is the result of years of homegrown recording experiments and the recent addition of some new equipment to the Shelbyville, KY studio owned and operated by Johnny Quaid. “It was definitely a growing process,” Jim James recalls. “There’s just a path I have to follow, and I kind of lead everybody along. It’s an unexplained force. I don’t even know what it is—I just know it’s right when we’ve done it.”

My Morning Jacket got their first real break when their Darla Records debut, Tennessee Fire, was released in Europe. Jim: “There was a journalist in the Netherlands who got hold of our first disc through the distributor there. He wrote this big article, saying how it reminded him of the music he loved when he was growing up. That got a fire started and a lot of other journalists in-terested. We made all the Dutch critics’ Top Ten lists.”

In 2000, My Morning Jacket made their first tour of Holland and Belgium. They’ve been back several times since, and were even the subject of a Dutch documentary film. “Here we were a local band from Louisville, playing for nobody,” says Jim. ”We’d never even toured much out-side of Kentucky. All of a sudden we’re in Holland, three or four hundred kids are showing up for every gig, and there’s a documentary film crew following us!”

“It made us feel we were doing something people actually liked—which was something we’d never felt before.”

Back in the USA, the band found growing critical acclaim as they spent most of 2002 on the road. On tours with Guided By Voices, Ben Kweller, and Doves, My Morning Jacket have played more than 30 shows with each headliner.

In a review of their South by Southwest performance in Austin, Texas, Blender praised My Morning Jacket’s “Neil Young–inspired guitar freakouts, thunderous rock & roll stage moves and warm, intricately woven melodies that recalled mid-period Pink Floyd…” “My Morning Jacket plays richly wistful songs that emerge from somewhere between Neil Young and Merseybeat,” wrote The New York Times of MMJ’s show with Swearing At Motorists (3/29/02, Mercury Lounge, NYC).

In November 2002, MMJ will make their first live appearances in England and Scotland followed by a two-week tour of Europe. By the year’s end, the band will be hard at work on their first album for a major label, ATO/RCA Records. A spring 2003 release is anticipated.

“Like Robbie Robertson said in The Last Waltz, the road is a damn near impossible way of life,” says Jim James. “It’s lonely, and you miss the people back home. But we love playing rock & roll. That’s what we’re here to do.”