Speaking of Bonnaroo, one of my highlights of that festival will always be My Morning Jacket’s 2004 performance in which the weather turned in the middle of your set and you guys played during what felt like a typhoon. What are your memories of that?
I thought I was going to be electrocuted and die because it was really the first time I played in that kind of weather. I think it was a heightened moment of “This could be the last chord you play” but we were all swept away in it and we weren’t going to stop in the middle of a song. That’s all I can remember. I remember that feeling of “Oh fuck it, let’s just keep going. everything’s safely grounded, supposedly.”
Supposedly.
What they tell you is that you’re safe. As long all the musical equipment doesn’t have a short circuit and you get a lightning strike consecutively then you should be fine. If everything’s safely grounded than you should be fine but something could break… [Laughs].
Let’s talk about your new album. Was there a different approach or animating principle in the transition from All Birds Say to 4th of July ?
I tried to expand the instrumentation of it and the intensity a little bit. It’s not like a super intense album but I amped it up a bit. When I started making All Birds Say we just sort of stumbled into it—I was at my friend Teddy [Morgan’s] house in his garage and we were doing an improv thing called “winthorp” where we just drink wine and make noises and record for a while and then listen back to it and never use it for anything. So we were doing that and I was like, “Hey I have a song,” so we recorded “Carried Away” [which appears on All Birds Say ]. It was just me and the drums and then we added everything to it.
We started that haphazardly and then on this record we were like “Okay, let’s start where we left off with the last one.” It’d be cool to have more people together so I had Bo [Koster] there all the time this time instead of having him overdub things. And then I had my friend Jordan [Caress] play bass, so we had an actual bass player, Teddy and I didn’t have to play the bass now. We made it more of a band performing in the studio.
I also tried to break up the songwriting structure a little bit. Bo and I wrote a couple of the songs together and then the song “Fourth of July,” that came out of a lot of improv in the studio and I wrote the lyrics later, so I tried to change the process a little bit. I think it turned out good. I like it, and it seems like a different beast than the last record.
You mentioned the song “4th of July.” There are a lot of songs named “4th of July.” I’d like to name two of my favorites and see if either resonates with you. There’s the version by X on See How We Are and-
Can I guess the other one? Galaxie 500?
That is the one. Is either of those relevant to you now or in your formative years?
Yeah I love Galaxie 500. I’m not super familiar with X, I know they have a song called “4th of July” and I think I’ve heard it but I was more into Galaxie 500. I wasn’t thinking about stealing the title from them but I certainly do love those bands. That Luna record Rendezvous is amazing. I love that album.
Who were your early songwriting influences?
I learned a lot of songs growing up. I learned Big Star songs and I really liked Galaxie 500, I played some of those songs. One of my favorite songwriters is Ron Sexsmith. When I heard his record Other Songs, I thought, “I need to make my own record” because I loved his record so much.
McCartney in the Wings era songs, I really get a kick out of those too. I also listen to his record Ram a lot. I think it’s an incredible album. It’s not that we’re tired of the Beatles, we just know it so well. Then when you hear a record like Ram or something that maybe you don’t know as well, you’re like, “Oh this is such good stuff” that it hits you almost like you’re hearing the Beatles for the first time. I also love the Faces and especially Ronnie Lane’s songs. Ronnie Lane has some great solo albums that he did after the Faces that I really love right now—_Ronnie Lane’s Slim Chance_, I love that album so much.
What about as a guitar player?
I look to Neil Young and I love the guitar player Clarence White who played with the Byrds. He kind of pioneered the B-Bender style. There’s a record that Clarence recorded, a live show of him playing in a bar called Nashville West and that’s one of my favorite guitar playing records. He played on Sweetheart of the Rodeo but his live stuff with the Byrds is really insane, he’s such a great guitar player.
But more currently, sometimes I’ll be thinking, “What would the dudes in Radiohead do right now?” because they play guitar but they don’t play “guitar guitar” and I like that too. I like that approach of non-traditional things like Tom Verlaine or Dean Wareham [from Galaxie 500 and Luna]. I love his guitar playing too.
Sometimes it’s good to pretend you’re someone else. You can pretend you’re in The Velvet Underground when you’re in the studio. Or you can crack your brain open—I definitely have tendencies that I notice in things that I play so I’ll be like, “What if I only had two strings? Or what if I was playing on Loaded or something?”
Basically what I’m saying is that I like really good guitar players and I also like guitar players who don’t give a fuck that they’re playing the guitar. They could be playing anything. I feel that way when I see Neil Young, I feel like he could play anything and it would sound awesome. He plays the pump organ and it’s incredible.
No Comments comments associated with this post