You recorded 4th of July intermittently over what time span?

Probably 3 or 4 years but it didn’t take that long, it was just short spurts. We did three tracking sessions that were a couple days long and then I worked at home and went to Teddy’s studio and we added to it. We mixed it at his studio.

One day I was working with Bill Reynolds from Band of Horses, helping him at a session at his house. He records and produces a lot of albums there and I went over there to help out with the project and I was like, “Hey, don’t worry about paying me for this. Will you do a re-mix?” I was bartering and he said, “Of course.” He remixed “Sleepy Lagoon” and then once I heard that I was like, “I need him to remix the rest of it too.” So that kind of thing made it take longer but I’m glad he did. Bill and his friend Jason Kingsland mixed half the record and Teddy and I mixed half the record, so it was a long process. But once I got those mixes I finally decided that it was done, although I had to cut a song because it wouldn’t fit on the vinyl.

To what extent did the later sessions re-inform the earlier ones?

It all got mixed together, the old sessions and the new sessions. We tracked everything in this really cool time capsule of a studio called the Creative Workshop which is in Berry Hill here in Nashville. It’s owned by this songwriter named Buzz Cason and he built it in the mid-70s. That place glues the whole record together. We may have lived an insane year between the times we recorded but that place anchored the record. When we walked in, all the gear was the same, so it wasn’t really that big of deal to take a break.

It’s crucial for me to take time working on a record because I’ll get all hot and bothered on a song and then after nine months I’m like, “That song is kind of stupid, I don’t think it will make it on the record.” So having some perspective is really important to me because it makes the record better. Your new song is always your favorite and then you kind of go “Well it’s pretty good, it deserves to be there” or “Ehh fuck it, let’s just cut that one.”

You mentioned you had to cut a song because it wouldn’t fit on vinyl. Were you conscious of those time constraints going in and did that sort of thinking impact your choices from the start?

Definitely. I love putting the artwork together and I love listening to records. With the technology of MP3s and CDs I feel like records are so fucking long now. You just have a tendency to be like, “Oh it’ll be 16 tracks.” 16 tracks? That’s insane, it’s just too much. So I was like, “Let’s just go with less is more here.” Also, I really wanted to put a 10-minute song on the album and I just felt like that was something I was happy with and I was willing to cut something else to make room for “4th of July.”

To me, that’s a tendency of a good record. It’s good to have limitations and it’s good to take time to really make sure you like it because when I’m doing this I’m doing it for fun, I’m not doing it because there’s some deadline. No one at a record label is like, “Where’s your next record, brother?” I’m doing this in a vacuum and trying to figure it out. I always have in mind getting the actual record, putting it on and flipping it over. What’s going to be the first track on the second side is important.

Since you mentioned the industry side, your song “In The Dark” found its way onto Pretty Little Liars. How did that come about and what, if anything, did that placement yield?

My friend Chris does the music direction over there and I sent him the record like I would send my record to anyone that I know that’s close with My Morning Jacket or just a friend. He told me, “I think I found a place for your song” and I’m like, “Awesome.” But I’ve never seen the show.

And did you receive a bunch of tweets from tweens?

The show did tweet “This is that song” or whatever. I did see that but it wasn’t something crazy. Maybe I don’t follow the right people, I don’t know.

Who will be joining you as you tour behind the album?

When I played some shows in Nashville and Louisville I had a full band, which was Tom Blankenship and my friend Russ Pollard on drums and Adam Landry on guitar and Danny Mitchell on keyboards.

I’m not going to take the full band out in the fall although the full band is going to play at One Big Holiday which is our festival in February. In October I’m playing with Daniel Martin Moore—he opens and then he I play together and he’s going to open. Then I’m going out with Dave Simonett, the singer from Trampled by Turtles in November. He and I are going to hang out and play music together and hit the road.

JoJo Hermann sat in for a couple songs on one of those band dates. Have you known him for a while?

I’ve known him for a bit. Our tour manager Trey used to work with Widespread Panic so we had lunch a couple of times. JoJo and I played golf together and I was like “Hey, do you want to come down and play?” He said yes and that was great. It’s fun to meet someone who shares the same lifestyle as you and then you can play some golf and some music. It’s a good way to get to know someone.

Jumping to another project, Ray LaMontagne’s new album is on my short list of 2016 favorites. The four of you joined him on tour and although you didn’t play on the album, you certainly did it justice. Can you talk about how you approached it?

The approach was to try to do justice to it and maybe try to amp it up a little bit. I think the record and the recording is great and one of the things we do a lot as a band is we make a studio record and we go on the road with the thought, “Well, for the studio it’s okay for it to be so sparse but let’s double some things, lets expand some things, let’s make a few bits longer because it’s a fun part to play.”

We only rehearsed with Ray for a week or so and he just wanted to see what we would do naturally, he didn’t give us a whole lot of direction. Every once in a while he’d say something but I just think we know Jim well and we know Kevin who recorded the record with Jim and we’re friends with everybody who played on it. So when we heard it, it was like “Oh yeah, I got it. I know what to do here.” I could hear my pals playing the music and I thought, first of all I could do it justice and second, hopefully expand upon it a little bit as we go out.

I’m glad you like the record, I think it’s a pretty special piece of art. Sometimes it would go over people’s heads when we were on tour. Not every night but sometimes, though. Sometimes it really seemed to resonate and other times people seemed a little distracted but I think maybe that’s a good thing. It takes a little work as a listener to make it through so it was kind of interesting to see.

Looking ahead, is there an ETA for the next My Morning Jacket album?

We are going to record in the spring. That’s all I really know.

My understanding had been that you were going to release an album from the songs left over from the sessions that yielded The Waterfall. Did something change or was that just not the case?

I keep telling people I’m so glad I’m not a politician because changing your mind is an artistic thing. It’s kind of what I was doing with my record, going back after I had time to reflect and saying, “Okay what do we want to do now?”

When we finished The Waterfall there was a batch of songs that we were really happy with and we started using them. “The First Time” was in a Showtime show [ Roadies and we put out “Magic Bullet” on our own. Those were two of my favorite songs from the extras.

We’ve been working on a song or two on the road already with Jim. He’s got some new ideas, so we’re going to go record some more and we’ll discover if we’re going to use any of those songs that didn’t make it on The Waterfall. Maybe we’ll re-cut them, I don’t know. But yeah, enough time has elapsed that we feel that it’s our duty to go back in the studio. That other plan’s not the plan anymore.

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