Photo by Dean Budnick
Although My Morning Jacket has been relatively quiet on the touring and recording front in 2016, guitarist Carl Broemel has been quite active. Broemel spent much of the summer on the road with his MMJ bandmates, Tommy Blankenship, Bo Koster, and Patrick Hallahan backing Ray LaMontagne on his Ouroboros tour, performing the album in its entirety most every night (while Jim James did not join them, he certainly had his hand in the project as he produced the record). In addition, Broemel has released his own album, 4th of July, the follow-up to 2010’s All Birds Say and he will be gigging in support of it through November. The following conversation explores both of these efforts, with a brief detour into the realms of MMJ’s past and future (with some quality Pretty Little Liars talk too).
Before we talk about your new album, I’d like to take a few moments to discuss My Morning Jacket’s Lockn’ set, which was a highlight for many people. What were your expectations going into that and how did you and the band approach it?
I didn’t really think about it too much because we had never been there before. We were thinking, “Oh we haven’t done this festival. It’s going to be Phish and Ween and us headlining every night and it’s going to be awesome to be in that company.”
As far as what our expectations had been, we thought it was cool to do something new and we were stoked by the fact that they had us playing last one night. We went into it with the thought, “Let’s see how this goes.” One of the coolest things was that while the four of us had been playing all summer with Ray but we hadn’t really seen Jim in a while. So it was really good to see him and we had a quick rehearsal in Nashville and worked on some new things to try. Then we rolled in and played. We had a blast.
We haven’t really played a lot this year but every time we played it felt really good. We did the Shaky Knees festival, we played Red Rocks, and we did a couple short runs that weren’t long enough for anyone to be tired. Lockn’ fit into that too. We were feeling real fresh and excited to play and I think it was a good day for us. I walked out on stage and I was like “Holy shit, there’s a lot of people here.” I hadn’t know how big the festival was. We rolled in a few hours before we played, so we didn’t get a chance to scope it out. Anyway, I had no expectations and we were just stoked.
Do you think about context when you go into a big show like that or do you just do what you do and come out blasting?
We kind of do and we kind of don’t. It’s not that we were pre-meditating it in a huge way but we were aware of the context of which we were going to go play. Phish is playing, Ween is playing, a lot of bands that improvise are playing so we felt like we were free to improvise and free to do something weird. Nobody has to tell us that twice. “Feel free to let it all hang out here because people are open to that.” I think that’s a good mental space for us to be in.
We approached that one a bit like a fun, late night Bonnaroo show. That was the closest we could think of how we were going to go for it. It seemed like people were into it. We hadn’t seen Jim in so long so that when we got up there, we were ready to go for it. It was fun.
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.
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.
