In a sense that early MTV period was a natural precursor for what’s going on now in the music industry, where between the iPod generation and the festival mentality, all these different genres exist comfortably right next to each other. It is more common for people to look at their tastes as a mixtape instead of saying, “I only like rock or I only like R&R or hip-hop.”
PH: Yeah, I agree. I think definitely, with this record, the similarities between the songs come about because the same three people are playing the instruments. Those are the links between the songs and the style. But song to song there might be a rock song, a more funk song, something more straight ahead or something more intricate. But either way I think it’s time for people to just…I think it’s good for bands to give people more credit and say, “You can handle this.” I don’t think it’s super weird to have variety. I think the main thing all those artists on MTV had at the time was that they were all really catchy. You could sing along with all these bands pretty quickly, and I think that some of that gets lost in maybe some of the indie rock stuff now. Some of it’s pretty forgettable here and there.
When it came to recording the Spanish Gold album, it sounds like Dante had a pretty good sense of the songs when he started this project. In terms of the recording of the album itself, did you find that you pretty drastically rearranged the songs when you went into Dan’s studio or did you remain pretty sympathetic to the original arrangements?
DS: It was a bit of both. Some songs are more completed than others.
PH: Some were more ideas that turned into actual songs. The final product came out of working them out over a period of time.
DS: Yeah and there’s always a thing where you bounce an idea of another musical or maybe you might try something different that sticks. It was just three of us most of the time, so we could try stuff in a number of different ways and then pick you know like, “Man that one is firing off really well,” whether it was maybe the original thing or just you know. So it was a little bit of both.
PH: The songs kind of tell you what they need. You just have to get out of the way of a song and let it guide the process. It’s going to tell you whether it likes being heavy or slow or fast. It’s just like we were kind of being serviced to that process.
In terms of the actual recording, I also know that Jim Eno from Spoon had a hand in this. At what point after your initial sessions did you bring him in?
DS: We brought Jim into the mix because we wanted to mix a few songs to start trying to get some label help to pay for some things because a lot of this was out of pocket. We didn’t end up using him because we weren’t finished with the album yet and we had what we needed to get from him just because we were going. We ended up going back to the original engineer, Collin Dupuis, at Dan’s Studio Easy Eye Studio in Nashville. Collin helped us find the initial sound and everything and for continuity sake we decided it would be best to work with him. We already had a great existing relationship with him we went back to that studio to finish and he came up to Louisville for a session at Lalaland. [The album credits Jim Eno and Sam Patlove (The Octopus Project) as additional engineers.]
Dan was something of a godfather to this project in that the first time you toured together you were part of his band and he gave you the facilities to hash out the blueprints for Spanish Gold. Did he have any advice for the sessions that kind of lent any particular weight or did he leave any particular thumbprints on the album?
DS: From a personal standpoint, Dan’s always been kind of like a big brother to me. He’s always been really encouraging. Dan produced all the records that I’ve worked on with Hacienda. So our relationship kind of kept developing through those records. It’s pretty collaborative. So when this came about I basically sent him demos and said, “I’m thinking of doing this and what are your thoughts on it?” And he basically told me that he believed in it, liked it and thought it was definitely worth pursuing. When you get that kind of encouragement from somebody who you respect it’s pretty simple to say okay. I think for any artist to step out and try a new project you think to yourself, “Do I really want to devote this much attention, money, effort and time?” But he basically supported me and said, “Yeah I think it’s good enough and I think you should definitely give it a go.” So that was the main thing and that kind of gave me the confidence to give it a shot. He was really supportive and generous with us and let us go into the studio and work.
PH: I don’t want to downplay Dan’s role but I don’t really think he was much of a godfather figure. He’s like a friend and a confidant. I think either of us would have done the same for him if he was in this position and if the tables were turned we would have done the same exact thing for him. His involvement with my relationship with Dante is strictly that of a liaison. He put two like-minded people together because we’re like-minded with him.
DS: Yeah I think this is sort of a perspective thing. Obviously Patrick and Adrian have their respective careers. Patrick has been playing with My Morning Jacket for so long and Adrian was in Grupo Fantasma. He actually didn’t know Dan at all, really. But almost everything I’ve worked on has been because of Dan or somehow involved with him. So there is always that connection and he definitely is somebody I go to for advice and somebody I kind of bounce something off of and say, “What do you think man?” But yeah he wasn’t involved in the studio with us while we were cutting tracks or anything.
Shifting from the studio a little bit to the live show as you guys kind of whip that into shape, besides kind of bringing these songs to life, do you have any other thoughts on how to present this material? Are you guys going to add in any covers to kind of flesh out the set or is it going to be kind of let this list exist as it can with music?
DS: We will definitely represent the record as best we can and then we’re probably going to have some fun with a cover here and there. We did a version of the Ghetto Brothers’ 1971 hit “There Is Something In My Heart” that we released as a special 7” for Record Store Day. The original album was reissued a few years. We’re all big fans of that record and we were able to do a cover, which was pretty cool. So we’ll do stuff like that. And some high energy, we’re pretty high-energy people for the most part. If you’ve seen Patrick live it’s pretty high energy. I imagine will bring that.
PH: I would just like to add that we would like to focus on this band and this band only. I don’t think we have any reason to ever bring other band’s stuff into the mix. We really believe in this project, that it has legs of its own and I think it’s going to be fun to watch the recorded world go into the live world and see what comes out of it.
Finally, Patrick, last year My Morning Jacket toured with Bob Weir as part of the AmericanaramA traveling festival. You performed together regularly and reprised the collaboration in Mexico earlier this year. What were your takeaways from playing with him?
PH: The first time we played with him it was like playing with someone who is so fearless onstage. He has something timeless about him and a very useable discovery mode the way his brain works. He’ll just jump out there and do anything. It really taught us to loosen up. We were already pretty loose but, it was amazing to watch him go and just go with anything and just take direction and give direction. You can tell he’s a natural collaborator.
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