John Lennon in the College Tower

Interview With Two Tone Tommy Of My Morning Jacket.

By Mason Neely and John Totten

I've seen MMJ half a dozen times over the last 3 years, but my first
chances to see the band did nothing short of change my life. Those performances fostered such joy and laughter and happiness and
have created the standard for every concert I've seen since. Days before a tour that will take MMJ through Bonnaroo, Knoxville, Athens, GA and a stint opening for Wilco, Two Tone Tommy, a staple in MMJ’s amazing live shows took time out of his day to talk to me on the phone from his home in Kentucky.

What is the atmosphere like when you are on tour? It sounds like it can be pretty exhausting and hectic.

Yeah, it definitely can be. We’re all in pretty good spirits most of the time. It’s definitely exhausting. It’s all how you pace it, how well you take care of yourself. Try not to drink every night, try to get some sleep. Same kind of stuff. It’s no difeerent than working a normal job in a lot of ways. Trying to take care of yourself and making sure that you have some time to yourself.

So MMJ is known to put on one of the best live shows ever. What is it like to be in the moment, on stage with those guys and the crowd is hanging on every note?

Its amazing, I’ve been in this band for a while now. It’s still amazing. It’s everything anybody would it imagine it to be. For me, growing up outside of Louisville- the biggest city in Kentucky which isn’t even that big, you always have these dreams of being on stage or just playing music in general. I still have that feeling when I’m on stage that I’m in my bedroom and I’m 13 or 14 years old and I’m listening to a Zeppelin record or I’m 16 years old and I’m listening to some Louisville hard core. Those air guitar moments, that’s really what its all about you know? That feeling of being a kid or adolescent. You have fun on stage in that way.

How long have you known Jim James?

Seven years? Something like that, I was in a band called Winter Death Club with Johnny Quaid. The year before MMJ started, so I met Jim when he would come out to record on the farm and we played some shows together.

Is there a good balance between you and the other guys in MMJ and the way Jim handles his solo careeer?

Is there any weirdness?

Yeah.

No, not at all. He’s definitely the song writer so… He gets to go out with M. Ward and Bright Eyes and do the whole Monsters of Folk thing. There are two different sides to him as a musician and to the band as well.

Is there a special connection with Bonnaroo festival or the crowd? Has it broadened the bands audience?

Yeah, I hear that from people more often than anything else, like “dude I saw you I saw you at Bonnaroo, it was fuckin’ awesome” more than I hear “I saw you guys headline somewhere” or I saw you open for the Foo Fighters or whaterver. It’s always “I saw you at Bonnaroo” so I definetly think we probably picked up a few more fans doing it. And we’ve done festivals everywhere. We’ve done Redding and Leeds, Glastonbury, we’ve done festivals in Japan, Norway and it’s definetly the best festival we’ve ever played as far as the they way they treat the artists, the vibe of the crowd. You don’t have to worry about some weird drunken brawl. Everybody’s there for the same reason, to enjoy the music and to have fun. It’s not like that at every festival. I think the vibe is the biggest thing, it feels great being there

What was it like to lose Johnny Quaid and Danny Cash and then get these new guys and go through the process again?

It was pretty difficult. It came basically two or three months after It Still Moves came out. It was tough. The five of us were like a family and whenever I thought of the band before I joined, when it wasn’t even really a band yet, it was just three people, I always thought of MMJ being Jim and John. John did all the recording.

What is the update on the next record?

We finished recording. We spent all of March in a studio outside of Woodstock NY. The records been mixed and I believe the mastering is going to be finished this week.

Do you know what it’s going to be called?

Its going to be called Z, the letter Z.

Is this the first record that you guys haven’t recorded in your homes?

Yeah, that was one of the biggest changes.

Was that weird?

It was definetly weird. ‘Cause we didn’t know what to do. We were looking for spaces in Louisville, looking for places outside of Louisville, someplace where we could set up the gear we already had and do the records as we had always done them. Having two new members, it was time to mix things up and after producing it ourselves and recording ourselves being out of the farm we just decided to change everything. Just set it up to be a completely new experience for us, lock ourselves away from everybody for a month and focus on recording and hanging out. It was definetly a great experience we couldn’t have asked for a better place to play, a better person to work with, with John lerck? producing.

Most home tapers overdub everything. It sounds like that would be hard with MMJ because of the energy?

Yeah it’s definetly a live band. We always have recorded the albums ourselves. The first record was either done on four track or quarter inch eight track. At Dawn was one inch sixteen track, neither one of those were done live. Most of it was overdub. Drums and bass were done at the same time on At Dawn. We did that record on a three day weekend. It Still Moves was the first record that was done live with all of us in the same room, with very little overdubs. So we kind of gave up a tradition on this one too. Again being a two inch machine, and everything was done live. There were a few guitar overdubs but for the most part everything was done live, even some of the vocals were done live

Do you have a lot of creative input on the songs arrangements?

Yeah, I think most of the time they stay pretty close structure-wise to what they were on the demo and sometimes they’re radically different. Especially on It Still Moves, that whole middle part on “Run Through” with the weird distorted synth and the drum and bass thing was kind of a happy accident that happened while we were rehearsing. And that stuff still happens.

Early reviews of the band talked constantly about reverb in the recordings. Is there ever the impulse to move away from that, to compress stuff or dry it out?

Yeah, a little bit. I think the reverb’s always going to be there, especially vocal-wise. And the drums obviously sounding as big as they do, and that’s always done with a big room. On the last three records they were done in a garage with the mic in the stairwell next to the garage. But on this album there’s definitely a song or two that have very compressed sounding nonreverb drums.

How did the dates with Wilco come about? Is it a good pairing?

Yeah, we’re huge fans of the band and it’s a great opportunity. They’re on our short list of bands we’d like to tour with. It’s quite the blessing that we’ve been given the chance to do it.

When you open for a band like Wilco, that can be pretty delicate, do you guys go full throttle? There’s a chance that MMJ can upstage people like that.

Well thank you. We’ve open up for bands like Guided By Voices and Foo fighters where we’ll go just 45 minutes at full throttle, just non stop. In your face rocking out. And we’ve opened for Beth Orton or Doves, where we have to kind of mix it up like what you said. I think the Wilco tour will be the same thing. The same way that they do. Where you mix some slower tunes in there with the more rockin’ ones. We have also closed a show with Black Sabbath when we open for Beth Orton which probably wasn’t the best idea but certainly funny to us.

Posted by john at June 3, 2005 02:06 PM | TrackBack