On August 31 My Morning Jacket guitarist Carl Broemel will release his official solo debut, All Birds Say (ATO Records). A set of serene, modern-folk songs with beautiful instrumentation, the album was a true Broemel family affair. Recorded and arranged with his classical musician father just as Broemel was about to become a dad himself, it’s a reflective piece of work that muses heavily on the bonds of blood and meaning of life.
In addition to Carl singing lead and playing various guitars, pedal steel, baritone sax, violin, and autoharp and his father Robert contributing bassoon, clarinet, and sax, the album also features MMJ’s Bo Koster on keys, Richard Medek on drums, David Jacques from John Prine’s band on stand-up bass, and The Raconteurs’ Patrick Keeler on snare for one track. The record was co-produced by Carl and close friend Teddy Morgan.
Broemel, who joined MMJ in 2004 and was included in Rolling Stone’s 2007 list of “New Guitar Gods,” spoke from Essex Junction, VT a few hours before My Morning Jacket performed on the Champlain Valley Lawn. Over the course of an intimate 45-minute conversation, Broemel fills us in on All Birds Say, starting a family, working with Jim James, and he even opens up about recording the new Jacket album in a Louisville gymnasium.
What was the inspiration or starting point for your new solo album?
It kind of started when I lived in Los Angeles, even before I met these guys in My Morning Jacket. I was writing and playing some shows here and there, but mainly just playing guitar in bands. So I’ve just slowly been working on it piecemeal over the last four years. I moved to Nashville and met a couple of new friends, Teddy [Morgan – producer] and Richard [Medek – drummer]. I played a solo show at the bar down the street from where I lived and met those guys; like the first two people I met when I moved to town. And we started hanging out and working on songs and I showed them the songs [on the album] and they got really excited and wanted to work on it. So we just started recording in Teddy’s garage and it went from there. It wasn’t like, “I’m gonna go make a solo record now.” I just slowly put it together and then last year I put the finishing touches on it and started thinking about putting it out and started giving it to people.
So you started this loosely in L.A. and moved to Nashville where it really got off the ground, is that right?
Yeah, I’ve always dabbled in songwriting but never had a complete record to put out, so I don’t know, it’s kind of an experiment for me. I think one of the most important things about the record for me is that I got to work on it with my dad. He’s a bassoon player; he played in the Indianapolis Symphony for 30 years. So we got to collaborate on a lot of the instrumentation of the record. He played clarinet, bassoon, and baritone sax. There’s a song on there I wrote about him and my mom called “Retired.” Just looking at my parents inspired the record. And my wife and I just had a baby so we were expecting, and just the whole perspective of waiting for a baby to come not only gave me a deadline – I figured if I was gonna do a record I should probably get it finished before he comes – but also it’s kind of in the subject matter, too. Like the song “Life Leftover,” just knowing that a baby was coming was pretty intense.
It sounds like there’s a real family thread that ties this album together, between working with your dad and now you becoming one; is that one of the defining themes on this?
I think so, definitely. Watching your parents get older, they’re retired, just like the next step of life. And then at the same time, becoming a parent is intense. Especially for someone who lives a life like I do where it’s like a permanent adolescence. You’re allowed to live that way if you so desire, but I don’t wanna do that. So yeah, just growing up, even though I’m 36 [laughter], just being really conscious of growing up in that way. And a lot of the songs were inspired just by my wife and love songs and just songs about my friends and all that, it’s not all family songs. Like “Carried Away” I wrote right after I joined this band [My Morning Jacket], so that’s a pretty old song.
How much songwriting do you get to do with My Morning Jacket?
Jim [James] writes the songs. Sometimes he’ll come with a really fleshed out idea and we take his demo and make it into a band version of that. But sometimes he comes in where it’s very nebulous and he’s just got ideas and he walks us through what he wants. So our part in the creation of the music is more arranging and writing guitar parts. Which I actually love doing. I feel like I’m really good at helping like that and being in that role in a band. I feel like I’m at home in that space. Being a songwriter is a little bit more of an experiment and a little more frightening and scary.
Was this album a response in any way to you not being able to flex those muscles as a songwriter or lead singer in the band, obviously there’s not a lot of room for that in MMJ?
Not really, not in any kind of negative way. I had slowly been gaining confidence as a guitar player and just in general and I think it’s important for everybody in My Morning Jacket to do other things and try to expand themselves in ways that will hopefully just increase the meaning of the band and complement it.
You mentioned that My Morning Jacket is making a new record, I’ve been under the assumption that’s why you guys have been touring a little bit less?
Yeah, and we just needed a break in ’09. We were just kind of worn out and needed to re-stoke the fire, not in a bad way. And also, it fortunately coincided with our baby coming, so I wasn’t putting up a fight when people were talking about taking a break. We did get together in Louisville for a few weeks earlier this year and got started, and we’re gonna go back in November and see if we can finish the recording.
What else can you tell me about the new My Morning Jacket record in regards to when it might be available or how it might be different from previous albums?
Hopefully [the new album will be done] in the spring or summer, I bet summer of next year. The whole idea with the record is to try to leave us without too much of a strict timeline, but it’s going pretty well so I feel like it’s safe to say summertime of next year we’ll have a record out, but then again, I wouldn’t count on it. We kind of set up and put all the pieces together. We started working with Tucker Martine and our friend Kevin Ratterman who’s in the band Wax Fang; he’s helping with engineering and putting the studio together. We just built the studio in a gymnasium to try to make it a live record where we’re all playing and Jim is singing and we get a take where everybody did something at the same time. That’s kind of the goal; we’ve been able to get a couple of songs done that way. I’m pretty excited about it. It’s one of those things where once we get a song it’s like everybody knows it. Instead of wondering, “Hmm, is this actually it?” Everybody is like, “Yes that’s done.” So it’s harder to get it done that way, but when you get it done it’s pretty satisfying.
Is there any sense stylistically for where things are going with this new album?
I think it’s gonna sound different than the last record, that’s safe to say. It just feels right for the time that we’re in and where we’re at as friends. We’re trying to make every record different, if we can. At least approaching the process differently and going to a different space. Like going from crazy being in New York like last time where we were all living in the city and it felt like we were going to work everyday and pounding away at the songs to being in Louisville and being very relaxed and just sleeping at each other’s houses and going for coffee and going to the gymnasium and shooting baskets; it’s gonna be different just based on that.
Your album All Birds Say will come out at the end of this month. Over the course of your musical career, have you ever fronted a band?
No, not really. The band that I thought I was gonna be in forever was called Old Pike. My friends from high school and college, we were in that band forever, and I would write songs for the band and sing some, but I wasn’t the main singer. So I had done it before, but I’ve never started my own band. I like the role of gunslingin’ guitar player who makes the songs work, I think I’m good at that.
The title, All Birds Say, what’s the significance there?
It’s kind of a funny story. We were in Europe a couple years ago, and we like to go walking and check out a lot of parks and stuff when we’re on tour just to get some exercise and check out the cities, and it seemed like last time we were in England there were lots of birds flying around, a lot of crows, so we were all kind of laughing because we thought they were all coming after me because my name is “Carl” and they were all going “cah, cah.” So we were just laughing that all the birds were trying to get me. So I kind of latched onto that and thought it was something that could be a title, like “All Birds Say Carl,” but I dropped the “Carl.”
Jim is a pretty compelling singer and frontman, have you learned anything from him and brought that into your album?
Just being in the band has changed me. It’s kind of indescribable in a way, but playing guitar with him [Jim] and being able to share that experience of writing and playing together, that’s gonna change me for sure. These guys really changed me. I don’t even know how, but being in this band and getting the confidence to finish a record and give it to them and know that they honestly liked it, and honestly supported it, really made it happen.
In the press release that came with your record it has a list of influences, and I’m feeling all of those, Neko Case, Neal Casal, Ron Sexsmith, but I’ve been getting such a George Harrison and Paul McCartney vibe on all of this, is that something you felt as well?
If you’re gonna learn how to write songs, you might as well learn from the best. Obviously I’ve sat and learned a ton of Beatles songs. So I think that’s inevitable, especially for singing. I always loved the way Paul and George sing, and John obviously too, but [my] songs just sort of come out with a little bit of Paul McCartney in them.
Is there anything else you feel was pertinent to the process of creating your solo album?
I feel like it’s my Nashville record in a way. It got started and finished there, in my new city. To me that’s a big part of it. I moved to town, met my friends, did a bunch of musical projects with them and then started in a garage and finished down at the record plant [Creative Workshop, owned by Buzz Cason who has written a bunch of songs including “Everlasting Love”] down by the Triple-A baseball stadium in Nashville where they’re still making actual records. It was really cool to watch it come off the press and be like, “Wow, I just made a record.”
