I think reading is one of the greatest forms of magic available to us on the planet. Reading is so important.
Jim James
I feel like everybody's got their health issues and their battles, and yeah, mine go up and down. It's never really over.
Once all the power goes out, there will still be human beings standing together around a campfire, playing acoustic guitars.
Moving and motion tends to make things pop up. But things pop up for me, really, at just odd intervals or at random times that aren't really convenient, so I'm a big fan of the voice memo recorder on my phone. That's the only way I can remember things.
The band can't exist without the crowd, and the crowd wouldn't be there if it wasn't for the band, and it really is something magical that people need.
I got really hooked on this riff in the middle of this song called 'Minor Miracles' by my friend Eric Johnson from Fruit Bats. I got the tracks for that from him, and that turned into 'Here in Spirit.'
My aunt played upright bass in the Louisville Orchestra, and I was always really impressed by her musical ability. I found it really fascinating as a kid that one could play music for a living.
I feel like the world gets so consumed and gobbled up by action, and the pace of life is so frantic, and people feel like, in order to move somebody, you have to do something shocking or violent or something insane and fast.
There's so much chaos and trouble in the world right now, and we need to broadcast as much peace and love, too.
While I'm working on something, every single part of me is in it. But then, once it's done, I leave that place behind. I usually don't like to revisit it. So it's almost like listening to a different person.
I'd write songs like 'One Big Holiday,' and we'd play it and say, 'It's too heavy for 'At Dawn.' Let's save it for the next one.' We had more time for that, but when you mix a song, the general rule of thumb for us is a song a day or usually a day and a half.
I always think of albums as the format. I think it's perfect. I don't think you can tamper with that. It's not just sound, the analog, which is so much richer. It's the format. You're constrained by just 45 minutes, and it's perfect to me. I don't want to listen to any more than, and I live and breathe music.
I've gotten into doing electronic books and audiobooks, so I have an iPad. I still love reading a real book, but when you travel, it's better than carrying around a bunch of books.
Pilates is amazing. It makes you conscious of how you have been doing something incorrectly for so long, even something as simple as just standing there.
I grew up on, and kind of came of age, during the grunge movement and was introduced to Neil Young and Bob Dylan and grew up on that path.
Live music is proof that there's some things the Internet can't kill. In our lifetime, we're going to see more and more things start to disappear and get gobbled up by the Internet, but live music won't be one of them.
I don't think about taking risks anymore because there aren't any risks to take.
Youth is wasted on the young. And it doesn't even matter if you sit a young person down and tell them, 'You're so healthy, take advantage of it before it's gone!' They still can't hear it.
That's the bulk of my lyrical output - being confused and trying to find answers to my confusion.
I've got a studio at home, and I'm always recording.
When I was maybe three years old, I was obsessed with this song 'Leader of the Band' by Dan Fogelberg. My mom took me to the mall and bought me a 45 of it. We would listen to that song all the time.
Somebody brought up the idea of reissuing 'Tribute To 1' because it was out of print on vinyl.
Almost every time I go to the ocean, I think about throwing my phone right into it. Sometimes, you pull that thing out of your pocket, you look at it, and you're like, 'What was I just going to do with this? Was I going to take a note? Was I going to check my email? Was I going to take a picture?'
The gospel funk soul era, that's what I'm obsessed with - pretty much all the '70s through early '80s.
'Circuital' was just so much about us as a band. We captured every song live, including the main vocal. That is probably my favorite My Morning Jacket record because it's really the essence of us being us. The solo record is just a completely different essence of just me trying to figure out stuff.
For a lot of people, life's been pretty good. There hasn't been true terror right in your face.
I've just had this idea pop in my head of trying to learn a new song every da, and try and play it that night. That's been fun for me because it's a little bit of a scary adventure, playing a song for the first time in front of people and letting it just be what it is.
I'm grateful to be successful, and I'm grateful that we can make a living, and I hope we can maintain our integrity forever. That's really my only dream. The notion of bigness or smallness, I feel like that comes and goes in such waves that are kind of out of my control.
We wanted 'At Dawn' to be what it was: kinda spaced-out.
I exercise all the time, every morning, and then I do music in the afternoon. I walk two to three miles a day and do Pilates twice a week.
For me, 'Evil Urges' was like a video game. If you play 'Super Mario Brothers,' there's a level where it's like a snowscape, and then there's a level where it's a desert and a level that's like a jungle.
I think maybe the vehicle for me was 'Sam Cooke's Greatest Hits.' It has a song called, 'Touch the Hem of His Garment.' Do you know that song? I kind of got obsessed with that song and started exploring and getting more of his old recordings with the Soul Stirrers and really getting into that super, super deeply.
It's a joy, the process itself, even instrumentally, playing and constructing music. It's just so beautiful to me.
There's these things we do that take us into the zone - and we go in that place that I feel like is the place of love that you reach when you're in love or making love, or you're having a good conversation. I feel like that is God.
I just love being in the studio, and that's kind of what I do when I'm not on the road. I'm just in the studio messing with stuff, and I love playing all the instruments.
I think we're going to look back on the Internet in 50 to 100 years as a big mistake.
I love playing music with people, but I also just love the art and meditation of being alone and working on stuff.
I was talking to my publisher, Jamie Ceretta, who's one of my closest confidants and allies when I'm working on new music. I feel like I can always count on his judgement because he'll tell me if he doesn't like something. It's sometimes hard to get people to tell you if they don't like something.
I listened to 'En la Ceremony' and had always wished it had some flamenco guitar.
I love making each record sound different.
'What's Going On' is one of the greatest albums ever made. I definitely wasn't aiming to make my 'What's Going On,' you know what I mean? That album is definitely deep in my DNA. I've probably listened to that more than maybe any other album ever in my entire life.
You want to make a record that stands the test of time and that people enjoy.
Fleet Foxes are a really talented band. They make beautiful music.
I feel like the 'Supernova' record, those songs are very me. It's a more honest representation of me than any record I have made prior to that.
All the Southerners think we're Yanks, and all the Yanks think we're Southerners, and all the Midwesterners think we're East. Everybody's always wrong about Louisville. That's kind of why I love it so much.
Preservation Hall is the sound of joy. When they start playing, people start moving.
I really believe what people have said before, that God is love. For me, it's music. For you, it might be writing, or for somebody else, it might be soccer or whatever.
I was always kind of against streaming, but I've been traveling so much, and I usually carry a huge hard drive of digital music with me, but I haven't had time to deal with it, so I've been doing streaming. And I had this incredible breakthrough of weightlessness where I've really been loving streaming music.
I think anyone who knows the audio process knows what mixing and mastering is.
When people are recording, and they're like, 'I want to get the drum sound of the Beatles,' I hate that.
