Jim James On Louisville & Its ‘Hot, Steamy, Funky, Beautiful Spiritual Vibe’

While known as the home of the Kentucky Derby to horse racing fans, Louisville, Kentucky, is known to indie rock fans as the home to My Morning Jacket, the experimental, psychedelic band fronted by vocalist/guitarist and producer Jim James.

The ethereal-voiced singer/songwriter, who has also released several solo albums and has a new LP on the way, caught up with Pollstar to chat about the city with a “hot, steamy, funky, beautiful spiritual vibe” that helped birth My Morning Jacket.

James’ next solo album is due out this summer, with more solo tour dates to be announced soon. My Morning Jacket is also working on its next LP and the band has a handful of festival appearances lined up including Oceans Calling in Ocean City, Maryland, and Hulaween in Live Oak, Florida, along with a seven-night residency at San Francisco’s The Fillmore in October and MMJ’s annual Riviera Maya, Mexico, getaway, One Big Holiday, in January.

Pollstar: For someone who’s never been to Louisville, how would you describe the city and the music scene?
Jim James: I mean, it’s such a beautiful city. It’s so full of so many different artistic people doing so many different things. There’s such a vibrant food scene [and] a vibrant music scene. I tell people, if you’ve been to New Orleans, it’s got a similar hot, steamy, funky, beautiful spiritual vibe. … I feel like Louisville, Houston [and] New Orleans have a similar kind of steamy vibe … the styles of music and people playing and there’s always something going on. I really love how much nature is woven into the city. Whenever I come back home to Louisville after I’ve been gone for a while, it’s almost like you’re entering this steamy jungle. There’s so much nature and so many beautiful people doing beautiful things.

The city clearly has an impact on your music, with an influence of nature and spirituality. How has Louisville shaped who you are as a person and as a musician?
Well, it’s kind of cool because Louisville kind of forces you to do it your own way because it’s not New York and it’s not L.A. and it’s not Chicago and it’s not Nashville. It’s this really unique place that I feel gives artists who are from here a really unique voice because half of the magic that’s woven into what people do comes from the struggle of having to find a way to do their music outside of the box. … I realized from an early age … “I’m going to have to find my own way to do it.” And I feel like that really gives you a unique perspective.

There’s a lot of cool local venues here like the Whirling Tiger and the Zanzabar and the The Monarch where people can come get together and work on what they’re working on and bring community together to play. And there’s also a lot of outdoor things happening too. WFPK, the local radio station has always been really supportive of local music and they do lots of concerts outdoors and stuff like that. So there’s always a lot of stuff brewing. There’s just a lot of unique spirits floating around Louisville … It’s not even like people are even making the same type of music in Louisville versus New Orleans, but I feel like there’s just a similar spiritual vibe. Like the ghosts are thick here. (laughs) There’s a lot of energy in a really cool way.

Growing up, did you have a favorite record store in Louisville?
Well, there’s a great record store called Guestroom Records that’s really amazing. They just opened up their second location. They are really, really great, sweet people and they’ve been doing a lot of really cool listening parties. We’ve done signing parties with them for releases and stuff like that. They have a really cool way of tying music into events for the community to get people together. Especially in this digital age, I feel like they do a great job of giving people a reason to go to the record store even beyond getting a record … they do a lot of cool events and listening parties and stuff like that. So, they’re a great resource for the community.

Any venues that were your old haunts?
Yeah, there were a bunch of them. There’s one that was a legendary kind of punk venue called Tewligans, that became the Cherokee Blues Club that we played at. … People would throw all-ages shows really anywhere they could. … My band before My Morning Jacket was called Month of Sundays. And we played really anywhere they’d have us. (laughs) You know, “There’s a show at this pizza place next week. Y’all want to play?” There were high school battle of the bands [shows] and house parties and stuff like that.

When you first launched My Morning Jacket, was the fan base there from the beginning in Louisville?
Well, when we started it was always tough as kids to get a big movement going … There was a smaller scene, but it took a while for things to catch on. At least for us, we had to have something happen outside of Louisville before a larger number of people took notice. We had this weird thing happen where early on in my Morning Jacket, our first album, The Tennessee Fire, got really popular over in Holland and Belgium and we got invited [there] and they had a camera crew follow us and they made this little documentary about us. And I think that was weird enough that and had never happened to a band from Louisville that enough people started going, “What is this band; what’s going on?” And then that kind of opened the door to people being like, “Oh man, I like these guys; go see these guys.” And WFPK, the radio station, started to play our music and started to take notice of us just because something different was happening outside.

When My Morning Jacket was starting out, was there a certain venue in Louisville that you had your eyes on playing? That you knew if you could play there, then you’d made it?
Definitely The Palace theater. That’s kind of the big one in Louisville. It’s a beautiful, old theater from the ’30s that’s just so epic and so it’s one of the most beautiful theaters I’ve ever seen in the world. And one of my earliest memories was seeing The Flaming Lips open for Candlebox at The Louisville Palace. And I just loved The Flaming Lips so much. I was probably a sophomore in high school when I saw that show. And that was definitely one of the first times I had one of those big dreams of “Like, man, what an amazing thing it would be to play the Palace someday.” You know, you kind of get those romantic notions, because we were playing to 15 people in a pizza joint. (laughs) So you hope that someday you can play for thousands of people at the Palace.

Would you say that’s your favorite venue in the city?
You know, I don’t really have favorite venues anymore because I’ve realized that everything changes every day and as a performer, at least, you’re so helpless to the spirit of the day, and the spirit of the world and all you can do is go in with your best intentions, but there’s so many things out of your control. So it’s like, you can have a great show at the Palace or you can have a really, really hard show at the Palace or you can have a great show at Red Rocks or you can have a really, really difficult show at Red Rocks. I feel like we played so many shows for so many years now that I’m more about the energy. You can have a great show or a really, really hard show anywhere and so we’ve kind of tried to focus more on how do we make the energy good? How do we take care of ourselves the best we can? How do we look out for each other and try to get our vibe right and try to get our spirit right so that we can walk on the stage, whether that’s for 30 people or 30,000 people and kind of just go with it with all we got and also kind of go with the wind, knowing that the power could go out or your guitar could break. So many things can go wrong and so many things can go right.

Would you say as far as focusing on getting the energy right, is that mostly about taking care of your mental health before the show and just being present?
Definitely. Yeah, we’ve tried to really put a lot of focus on taking care of each other and being there for each other. We’ve all had our own roads of mental health journeys. I quit drinking four years ago and found a great therapist that I really love and have just tried to get myself on a more positive path. And that helps me walk into every show in a more positive mind frame and kind of accept what the universe is going to throw at me versus letting myself get derailed easier. So we always get in a huddle before we go on stage … say a prayer of thanks to the spirits of the land and the musical spirits and try to make sure that the energy that’s present and the spirits that are present know that we’re there with an open heart and that we want to bring peace to people and we want to be a vehicle of love and a safe place for people to be.

That’s beautiful. And congrats on four years of sobriety and on finding a good therapist.  
Thanks.

You and Teddy Abrams, who is the conductor and music director of the Louisville Orchestra, recorded the collaborative 2019 album The Order of Nature live at Louisville’s Festival of American Music. Any other performances in Louisville that have really stuck with you?
Oh, I mean too many to count. It’s just like every week I see one of my friends’ brilliant bands play. There’s so many great local bands around here. From seeing somebody play for 10 people to now we have the Bourbon & Beyond and Louder Than Life festivals in Louisville, which have been huge for putting Louisville on the map. And just seeing all these world-renowned bands come through every year has been really huge, too. I think it’s been inspiring to everybody here to kind of up your game a little bit. The venues I named already and there’s Headliners Music Hall and Iroquois Amphitheater and there’s concerts on the waterfront and in people’s backyards – I mean pretty much every week somebody that I know is playing some amazing music somewhere.

Louisville seems like such a special place – I definitely got to get out there soon.
Last year we did a five-night run at The Palace where we tried to also direct people to local businesses and stuff like that. And I think that’s a cool thing that we’re going to try to do semi-regularly, some kind of hometown show where we’re also trying to encourage people, especially if they come in from out of town, to check out this restaurant or this record store. And I think that’s a cool thing about what’s happening with Bourbon & Beyond and Louder Than Life, too. A lot of people are coming to Louisville who maybe have never been before and are seeing how many cool things there are here to do.

Any up-and-coming local bands you think readers should keep an eye on?
There’s so many great bands. A couple of my favorites [include] Producing a Kind Generation … Future Killer is a really great local band. Lacey Guthrie is one of my favorite local artists. There’s a new singer, Grace Rogers, really really beautiful stuff.

What’s next for My Morning Jacket and your solo career?
I just finished a new solo album that’ll come out this summer. I’m excited to put that out into the world. I’ll be playing some shows for that in December. And, we’re working on a new My Morning Jacket album that we’ll probably record in November. Not sure when that’ll come out, but we’re working on another one.