By Andrew Lee
DAILY BRUIN SENIOR STAFF
alee@media.ucla.edu
With cars rolling in and out the narrow passageways and tireless
music fans awaiting entrance into the venue, the parking lot
outside Anaheim’s Chain Reaction is a place where artists
with any sort of profile can expect to be noticed by fans. In the
middle of an interview with the band My Morning Jacket’s lead
singer Jim James, exactly that happens: a skinny red-shirted
teenager with a dirty blonde mop-top stops to drop a few words into
the conversation.
“I just want to say that this guy is one of the best
singers in modern music. Your voice, your voice is one of the most
incredible”¦”
It’s not often that the headliner of the night’s
show, in this case, Ben Kweller, takes the time to offer such words
to his opening act. But in the case of Louisville’s My
Morning Jacket, those who have been exposed to their music have
regularly been overwhelmed by its eerie power.
“Most of the music I like is older,” James said.
“I’m a big fan of old rock ‘n’ roll, like
Roy Orbison, Etta James and Nina Simone. I think just listening to
stuff on the radio back then too, stuff like James Taylor and Simon
and Garfunkel, kind of gave me my love for that kind of sad
folk-rock.”
The band’s music bears the influence of these groups, but
few have heard it. Though My Morning Jacket plays some of the most
authentic American music today, the group is still just the opening
act at U.S. venues, while it plays sold-out shows in Europe.
“I think they’re a lot quicker to catch on in
Europe,” James said. “I think they give stuff a chance
more easily and sooner.”
The members of My Morning Jacket, which includes James,
guitarist Johnny Quaid, bassist Two Tone Tommy and drummer J. Glenn
all hail from Louisville, Ky. There they practice and record their
music inside a barn right outside the town, giving their
country-tinged music an eerie, spacious sound that echoes the dusty
remnants of some lost American spiritual. James’ earthy yet
soaring voice has often been compared to that of Neil Young.
“I really like reverb and ambience, and making a record
just sound really strange and weird, so you can actually hear the
rooms that people were in when they were recording,” James
said. “You can listen to the record and picture us standing
in a room and you can kind of hear the floor creaking.”
“At Dawn,” My Morning Jacket’s last
full-length LP, was released last year by independent label Darla.
Since then, they’ve been in touch with different labels,
releasing a split album with the country band Songs: Ohia on Jade
Tree.
“I’ve been finding out that it seems like
there’s a lot of good people out there. I used to think that
everybody (in the record industry) was bad and out to get everybody
else,” James said. “Though I’m sure there still
are a lot of people that are really evil in the record industry,
we’ve met a lot of nice people lately and it kind of has
given me hope.”
James isn’t a natural-born rock star. He points toward Jim
Henson’s “The Muppet Show,” James Taylor, and
Etta James as some of his musical influences, and agrees that he
could never live in a city as big as Anaheim or Los Angeles. But
the rigors of a rock ‘n’ roll life haven’t
deterred him yet.
“It’s tough, and lonely, and hard,” James
said. “But we’re kind of on a mission to see what we
can do with our music. Just bring back that kind of friendly,
mysterious rock ‘n’ roll the way it used to be played.
It’s hard sometimes, but it’s fun.”