My Morning Jacket
Apr 25, 2011
The Louisville lineage of My Morning Jacket is pretty much common knowledge. The celebrated rock ensemble formed in Louisville, cut its initial recordings in nearby Shelbyville and honored the Derby City regularly as fame took the band from local bars and clubs to festivals and concert halls around the world.
With the May 31st release of its album Circuital, via ATO, My Morning Jacket is celebrating those roots. Having cut 2008's wildly popular Evil Urges in New York, frontman Jim James and company returned to Louisville last year, set up a makeshift recording studio in a church gymnasium, and came up with a record that made the band feel, in all senses of the term, at home.
"It was very sweet," James said. "We had one session in the summer. It was so hot. But the heat really brought us together. I feel like you can hear the heat in the air in those songs. We just wanted it to be natural, where we were getting our main performances in one take. It just turned out that this beautiful old church gym where we set up to try some stuff out worked perfectly. And being in Kentucky, close to family and friends, gave us that full-circle feeling."
"For our last couple of albums, we intentionally put ourselves in situations that weren't in our comfort zones," My Morning Jacket drummer Patrick Hallahan said. "We did that just to see what it would yield, because you don't want to get caught in a rut. But then we very much wanted to come back to Louisville this time. Everything started out as a demo session. We didn't even know at first that we would be making an album. It ended up working out very organically."
Much of the music on Circuital has been kept under wraps. "The songs themselves always dictate the record," James said. "Then you kind of follow. Before I knew that, I would come in with all these grand ideas about a certain way I wanted things to be. But then at the end of the day, you only have the songs that the universe has given you at that point in time. This is the most live record we've ever done".
The single, "Holding On To Black Metal" impacts Alternative on May 17th.
Upcoming Tour Dates:
- 05/20-22 - Gulf Shores, AL @ Hangout Festival
- 06/02-05 - Ozark, AR @ Wakarusa Festival
- 06/02-05 - Hunter Mountain, NY @ Mountain Jam
- 06/09-12 - Manchester, TN @ Bonnaroo Music Festival
- 06/17 - Chicago, IL @ Auditorium Theatre
- 06/22 - Los Angeles, CA @ Pantages Theatre
- 06/24 - Oakland, CA @ Fox Theater
- 06/26 - Seattle, WA @ Paramount Theatre
- 06/28 - Portland, OR @ Edgefield
- 06/29 - Vancouver, BC @ Orpheum
- 06/30-07/03 - Quincy, CA @ High Sierra Festival
- 07/11 - Toronto, ON @ Kool Haus
- 07/12 - Montreal, QC @ Metrpolis
- 07/14-17 - Suffolk, UK @ Latitude Festival
- 08/04 - Morrison, CO @ Red Rocks