The men of My Morning Jacket have been thinking big lately. The group’s last appearance in Tennessee was a three-hour-plus performance at Bonnaroo ’08 that included special guests, an unlikely crop of cover songs and a horn section. They’re scheduled to ring in 2009 with a New Year’s Eve concert at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
The band’s concerts, sometimes billed as “Evenings with My Morning Jacket” are often just that: sprawling musical happenings that draw equally sprawling crowds of hippies and hipsters alike. When they return to Nashville this month, they’re taking on the formidably sized Riverfront Park — with no supporting acts. But the size of the show isn’t what concerns multi-instrumentalist and sole Nashville resident Carl Broemel.
“The thing we’re worried about is people not getting there in time. They usually have the buffer of an opening band. Hopefully they’ll realize that’s what ‘an evening with’ means.”
The band’s become a sort of stealth force in modern rock: their tunes might bristle with sweet Southern soul and humility, but they’ve never denied their arena-sized ambitions.
“It’s funny. I can remember there being a couple of moments where we’re like, “OK, do we go big with this?’ ” Broemel says. “Like doing Okonokos (live double album and DVD). We were deciding whether do to it at all. And we were like, ‘Well, if we’re going to do it, let’s go for it.’ ”
The group seems more open to whims than ever, judging both by their freewheeling recent performances and the nearly anarchic spirit of their latest album, Evil Urges. The disc includes a truly surreal left-field moment with its third track, “Highly Suspicious,” a deranged funk/metal jam punctuated by frontman Jim James’ Prince-esque vocals and sudden bursts of laughter. The album became the band’s first to debut in the Billboard top 10.
Their willingness to experiment, regardless of the stakes, is reminiscent of former jam-band giants Phish, and perhaps that’s one of the reasons they’ve cultivated a similar fan base over the years. When their major-label debut, It Still Moves, was released in 2003, it made waves primarily in indie-rock and music press circles. Today the band’s appeal arches over fans of alt-country, mainstream rock and jam bands — they’ve fittingly played the similarly diverse Bonnaroo five times.
“When it feels like more people are coming, no matter what avenue they come from, whether they’re bootlegging or listening to the radio or streaming stuff from the Internet, or they just like guitar rock, we’re cool with it,” Broemel says. “I think it will change more. As more people get introduced to us, it will evolve and that’ll be cool. We don’t care about being hip, necessarily. We’d like to continue to be a band that we think we would listen to.”
Though most of the members reside in Louisville, MMJ frequently find themselves in Nashville to work on various musical projects. Their last Bonnaroo performance required a two-day rehearsal in town. James recently recorded a duet with Nashville singer/songwriter Cortney Tidwell for her forthcoming album. Broemel is particularly excited about the band’s upcoming contribution to a Shel Silverstein tribute organized by Nashville rocker Bobby Bare, Jr.
“We’re going to get to go to RCA Studio B, which will be a really awesome day, just to knock out a song or two. Nashville’s awesome for that. I have friends that are recording engineers. I got to pop in when my friend was working at Quad Studios, where they recorded Harvest. It’s a secret, awesome, really important music town.”
Broemel says he’s not heavily involved in the local music scene, but it’s not due to a lack of interest, just a need for some non-musical downtime. But he also feels at home when caught up in the rush of activity and attention the band has recently enjoyed.
“It’s kind of been a whirlwind lately, but the crazier things get, the more relaxed I feel,” he explains. “I just enjoy it and see what happens. This next tour will be different from the one we did before. We’re always excited by things that feel like they’re progressing, whether they’re bigger or smaller, or whatever. That’s the stuff that we savor.”
