the making of z by my morning jacket - featuring jim james

Intro:

Dan Nordheim: You’re listening to Life of the Record. Classic albums, told by the people who made them. My name is Dan Nordheim. 

My Morning Jacket formed in 1998 in Louisville, Kentucky by Jim James, Johnny Quaid, Tom Blankenship and J. Glenn. After signing with Darla Records, they released their debut album, The Tennessee Fire, in 1999. Danny Cash joined on keyboards before the release of their second album, At Dawn, in 2001. Patrick Hallahan took over on drums as they signed to ATO Records. Their third album, It Still Moves, was released in 2003. At this point, Johnny Quaid and Danny Cash decided to leave the band so they held auditions and recruited Bo Koster and Carl Broemel. For their fourth album, they hired producer John Leckie and began recording outside of their home studio for the first time. Z was eventually released in 2005. 

In this episode, for the 20th anniversary, Jim James reflects on how the album came together. This is the making of Z. 

Jim James:  Hey everybody, it's Jim James from My Morning Jacket, and we are talking about our album Z. It was a crazy moment because, John (Quaid) and Danny (Cash) had just left the band, and Carl (Broemel) and Bo (Koster) had been brought by the universe into the band in this really magical way. But we still hadn't recorded together, we hadn't had any proof of if it was gonna work or not. So it was simultaneously a really exciting time. And it really, I think everybody was nervous too, you know, cause everybody really wanted it to work. And it was just such a crazy,  yeah, just time of turmoil and I was battling my own depression and the cumulative depression surrounding me of a couple of my friends that had committed suicide around that time. And so there's like all this really heavy, dark energy and all this really light, hopeful energy that maybe the band could keep going and maybe we could do something special.

When John and Danny had to leave the band, we were heartbroken, but we also understood, you know, touring isn't for everybody. And so there was, it was a harmonious departure, but we were very sad and we didn't know what we would do. And it was very much a family affair, you know, I mean, John was literally my cousin and Danny I had known forever. I mean, Patrick and I have known each other since fourth grade. Tom and I had known each other a little while then. We were all these Kentucky boys together in this band, you know, and when John and Danny left, Patrick and Tom and I were really, we thought maybe we'd give it a go as a three piece or something for a minute, you know, maybe try that. But the idea of entertaining, trying to get new people in, we were, I was really against it. But our publisher, uh, Jamie Cerreta who still to this day I work with, he just kind of begged me to do some auditions. And he was like, “man, if you just come to LA and do some auditions, if they don't work, then fine. You know, then whatever, then do whatever you're gonna do.” But he's like, “Will you do it for me?” And I was really begrudging about it and I was like, “Ah, God, alright, I'll do it. It's not gonna work. It's a stupid idea, but I'll do it.” So Tom and Patrick and I flew out to LA. And it really was just the universe speaking. It was like Bo and Carl were the first two people that came in and they knew everything that we asked them to know plus more, and their vibes were great. And then it was hilarious. Everybody after that was pretty bad (laughs). And it didn't, everybody after them was what I thought the auditions would be like. So that part was really beautiful because I really felt like it was like, okay, you know, the universe is speaking and, and here's these two people ready to go. And it really felt as if the universe wanted the band to keep going. Patrick and Tom and I have a great chemistry together as the rhythm section of the band or whatever, but you know, we didn't know if Bo and Carl would work. I don't think we knew we could make a great record, but we just knew that we could record, you know, like we were fine cause we'd been doing it. But the question of whether it would work as a band or not was still up in the air. And I felt like we needed somebody who could serve as a guardian of all this new energy. And, you know, I started looking around and taking meetings and I'm a pretty old school guy and I was kind of, you know, took a bunch of meetings with a lot of really cool old school, legendary producers. And there was something about John Leckie that, the one really cool connection was the Radiohead connection. He had worked on The Bends with Radiohead and one of my dear friends who had just committed suicide, The Bends was one of our big bonding records together. And he, I had written a song about him for the record, and somehow John Leckie came into the conversation through The Bends or whatever, and that felt like a really cool connection, you know, and then Pink Floyd Meddle and the stuff he did with John Lennon. I mean, you know, John Leckie’s record is insane, you know, and, but it was so cool meeting him cause I met him when I was over in London and he was just such an interesting, fascinating character that I'd never been around anybody like that before, you know, I'd never been around. And he was such a gentleman and he was such a soft-spoken kind person that also hilariously could drink us all under the table and smoke us all under the table. You know, he was always the last man standing at the end of the night. And, you know, just being around him and knowing what he had seen and what he had been around, I was like, “Okay, this guy can help us and also come from a completely different point of view, you know, that hopefully can bring the five of us together with his knowledge and his ears.” And I was ready for a change and I was ready for a new thing. And we were so lucky to have the studio for the first three records and we always did our own little things to change the sound and got a new tape machine or whatever. And this was definitely the biggest leap we had taken, but I mean, John's discography speaks for itself as far as his ears and his abilities and stuff. So that was really fascinating coming in with him and just right off the bat, you know, the, the sounds he's getting and the way he's micing things and the way that, the way that he is, you know, immediately you're hearing things coming out of the speakers. And it was crazy, we synced together two 24-track tape machines, so we still were all on tape, but we ran out of tracks and it was just cool that he was willing to do that with us too. Like, he wasn't trying to talk us into going into the computer yet. And he was never, not one time did he ever lose his composure or yell or get angry or he was always so zen and that's something we've always been blessed with as a band too. Like, nobody ever gets mad or yells or throws a temper tantrum or throws something across the room or whatever. And that isn't always the case when you work with new people. You know, you sometimes you bring somebody in and they're throwing their ego around and it can be really disrupting and hard. But John was just like, just such a calming wise presence.

Yeah, we never liked being labeled as a southern rock band, but it's funny, you know, because it's funny, Louisville's such a funny place cause everybody always thinks it, it is what it's not. You know, it's anybody from the north thinks it's the south, anybody from the south thinks it's the north. And I've never liked having any kind of label. Cause it's funny, when we first came out, our first record was so verbed out and kind of trashy sounding and lo-fi sounding, and I didn't really even really understand what that meant, you know? And people were like, “Oh, this band sounds like Galaxie 500 or The Velvet Underground, or whatever.” And I mean, I knew The Velvet Underground, but I didn't know a lot of the music they were talking about. And then, It Still Moves, was more rock and roll, and they're like, “Oh, this band's like a rock and roll band, like Lynyrd Skynyrd or whatever.” And we were like, “God, you know, we're not trying to be this Lynyrd Skynyrd band, you know?” And that's no shade on Lynyrd Skynyrd, they've got a lot of great songs. You know, Allman Brothers have lots of great songs, there's lots of great southern rock band. And I'm sure those bands probably felt the same too, you know? I'm sure those bands were like, “Man, we love, we love Motown, we love jazz, we love it all. You know, like, why do people have to be so simple minded in their labeling?” I had really been getting into more dance music around that time and I was becoming friends with these guys, Craig (Pfunder) and Mark (Palgy), who are in a band called VHS or Beta here in Louisville. And they were DJing a lot at the time. And Patrick and I would go dance with them and listen to them DJ and sometimes they let me come up and DJ with them. And I was just really getting in more into, yeah, just all different kinds of dance music and I saw Purple Rain for the first time, you know, nd seeing Prince and feeling Prince, that was something truly jaw dropping for me. Just seeing this way of just moving air in a different way, you know? Cause I still wanted to, it's not even like I wanted to make like some kind of dance record, but I wanted our music to shift and make a change. And I was listening to lots of Fela Kuti and Prince and things that were more circular and less traditional song structures and stuff like that. And still maybe had guitars in them, and guitars were important, but not in the same way that they were. Cause for a while there, for those first three records,I was really into, you know, really falling in love with Neil Young and the Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix and Dylan and The Band and stuff like that, like organic rock and roll. And I was falling in love with the guitar and all the different things you could do. It's funny to think of when you're a younger person, and all these things are happening for the first time. You know, it's that zen beginner's mind or whatever, you know, you're like, “I've never fucked around with a guitar this way or whateverm, I've never,” you know, we really fell in love with the idea of creating our own south of France experience like the Stones had, doing Exile on Main Street or whatever when we were out in Shelbyville. But then I always want to try and change things, but you don't always know how. But that moment in time, dancing a lot and really getting into Outkast and Prince and just seeing there's like new ways to, “Let's try and move the air in a different way, you know, and try to put more rhythmic elements in and more synthesizers and less guitars, but hopefully in a, still in an organic way.” 

“Wordless Chorus” 

I didn't know the term back then, but it's one of my favorites, I don't know if you'd call it a term, just that the concept of “both and,” you know, “both slash and,” that's usually life. You know, it's both beautiful and glorious and painful and difficult and, you know, I think as a kid, I think most of us, we think we're gonna solve some puzzle, and then life's gonna be great. You know, we're gonna work it all out, you know, like as a band or whatever. Yeah it's like, “Oh my God, if we finally get a major label deal, then I'll finally be happy, then I'll finally be able to love myself.” You know, all of these things that you're chasing, you know, I think for all of us, it's just a matter of like accepting the “both and” of life and trying to hold it all as best we can. You know, sometimes it's easier than others, obviously, but back then I was so lost in the story of Jim and Jim's struggles and Jim's, you know, shots at glory and all this stuff that, yeah, I couldn't see very far out of the boat. Yeah and there's a lot of pressure cause I really wanted to make something great and I really wanted to, you know, I think we all hold ourselves up to our heroes. I think everybody does that no matter what field you're in, you hold yourself up against your heroes and you want to hope that you're doing something like as good as your heroes did. And that's a really difficult thing. Well, first off, I was trying to make “Wordless Chorus” and a lot of the things that I've made, I kind of look at them almost as a abstract art, you know, like visual, like a visual abstract art painting that you walk up to in a museum and you have no idea what the fuck it's supposed to mean. It strikes you or it doesn't, and it makes, might make you think of blueberries, might make me think of strawberries. You know, I love that about abstract visual art. So like a lot of my songs or lyrics or whatever, a lot of the time I don't really want the person to understand and a lot of times I don't even understand. And I like, I'm kind of playing with it until I think it feels cool and I want it to move the person or whatever. But it’s like, for a lot of the time I was like, I'm not a narrative songwriter. I'm not a songwriter like John Prine, who's gonna tell you a story from start to finish that's clear and easy to understand. I was like, so I was trying to look at it from like this abstract art way. But that middle line, it was funny cause I'd written it the opposite where I was like, “They are the innovators and we are the imitators.” Cause I was like so tired of getting compared to different people. I was always being compared to somebody else. And when I was at my most depressed, I was like, “Man, I'm just fucking, I suck and all, you know, all these, I'll never be Bob Dylan, I'll never be Prince or whatever.” I was kind of in this hole. And then I had like a couple good days where I'm like, “No, fuck that.” You know, like, “I'm trying my best, I'm, you know, we're trying our best. Let's just flop that line and almost make it more of like a, you know, a hip hop shout or something. Like, more of like a, let's try and make it a more celebratory thing or whatever.” 

“Wordless Chorus” was really cool because that was probably the first song I ever wrote on a synthesizer. And my buddy Craig Pfunder from VHS or Beta here in town, he had a Juno synthesizer, that he let me borrow. And I was doing all my demoing and work on the 4-track then, just a cassette 4-track in my bedroom at my apartment and some of the songs on the first two records that were recorded on the 4-track. And so I was always messing in the 4-track and I plugged this Juno synth and I didn't know anything about it. I didn't know what any of the buttons did. What, I didn't know what the difference between a square wave and a, you know, I didn't know any of that stuff. So I just plugged it in and turned it on and just pressed the button and the first thing I pressed was like, (sings synth riff) “boop, boop, boop boop.” And I was just kind of pressing that, vibing out on it and just kind of wrote the riff of “Wordless Chorus” with that thing. And I was just like in a trance with that thing. Like I didn't do anything to it, I didn't like touch any faders, I didn't like tweak any knobs, you know, I just kind of fell in that. And I recorded that on the 4-track. And it was funny cause I didn't have a drum machine or anything yet, but I had this little keyboard from Walmart that had like drums on it, so I like was playing the drums by hand on the keys of the little keyboard thing. So I love that first demo of “Wordless Chorus,” cause it's just pretty hilarious, how bad my rhythm is, like trying to like, figure out the structure of this thing. And it's just so cool though when I listen to it and I've got such a fondness for it cause I didn't have any click track or grid or computer screen to make things right. I was just like trying my best to do this thing on the 4-track. And I like just kind of got into the harmonies and it was just so cool being in this new world of like, you know, there was not a guitar in sight for a minute. And that to me was just like, again, that beginner's mind thing, you know, that thing where if we can keep finding that throughout our lives, that's the doorway to beauty and exploration and that thrill that we get when we fall into something and we see it again like a child, you know, that was just like such a thrill. Different albums have been different, but a lot of albums, I had a real clear vision of what I wanted the ultimate thing to be, and I would make the demos pretty detailed. And yeah, like “Wordless Chorus” that a lot of the guitar and a lot of the rhythmic structure was really influenced by Fela Kuti. At that time, I had just discovered his music and I was really like, just again, like put in this trance state that when you hear his music, it's like this giant snake eating its own tail over and over again. It just goes round and round and round. And I was really interested in like, trying to make songs that kind of went round and round and round versus in a straight line, you know, I feel like a lot of music kind of goes in a straight line. There's a beginning and an end, and that's great too, you know, whatever, that's, neither is better or worse, but I never felt the thrill of that kind of thing, until I discovered Fela Kuti’s music. And so I, that really came into like the rhythm of “Wordless Chorus” and that guitar line and those kind of things. And that kind of entered in, that was a big part of this record. Even on a slower song like “Dondonte” or whatever, I was trying to find some of that hypnotic round and round thing. Whether it was meant to be joyful or mournful.

Dude, yeah that was so fun. I mean, that was like, cause I was really like thinking about, yeah, I knew Prince a little bit and I had like, heard Prince on the radio and stuff, but when you see Prince for the first time, you like when you fucking like see that power. Like I saw a bootleg VHS of like the Sign of the Times concert, you know, that I think they're re-releasing that soon as like an IMAX thing. And then I saw Purple Rain, you know, and, and I was just like, “Oh my God.” You know, like, and also around the time that same time there was like, I was really connecting a lot of that energy to Mick Jagger. You know, like a lot of my favorite Mick Jagger howling and, you know, I feel like, Marvin Gaye and Mick Jagger and Prince and Nina Simone, I mean, there's a lot of people that do it, but there's these people that like, they shatter all the definitions of humanity. You know, they shatter all of the labels, all of the labels of race or gender or sexuality or all these things, they just shatter 'em. You know, they just take a rock and throw it through the glass. And I had this moment when Tom and Patrick and I were, we had rehearsals for a while before Bo and Carl came. We rented this old, cool rundown Victorian house down in old Louisville. And the three of us were just kind of rehearsing. And I just had this moment where we were doing “Wordless Chorus” one day and I was just like, just howling, you know, like, I just like started howling through this guitar amp or whatever and they were playing and we were just kind of all in that trance. Cause we usually trance out whenever we're working on a new song. We'll say like, “let's, you know, whatever, this is the verse and this is the chorus. But once we do that a few times, just play, you know, and see what happens. You know, just play while we're having fun. And whenever you stop having fun, just stop and we'll figure it out.” So yeah, we were just kind of in this trance and I was just like howling and hooting and hollering.

It was like some kind of fantasy land or something cause it was like we were still in Kentucky, cause we went to another studio out in the middle of nowhere. But it was as if somebody had waved a magic wand and turned our rinky-dink ramshackle studio into this insane, you know, multimillion dollar mansion on this mountaintop, that was kind of like The Shining, I mean the, the place up there called Allairem this beautiful old hunting lodge from the twenties or whatever, like 80 foot ceilings and just this magnificent old place that, you know, we wound our way up the driveway. It was snowing a lot of the time. And you wind, wind, wind up the driveway and you kind of get up there and you're like, “Oh my God.” Like, you know, and we were snowed in and when you saw it in the daylight, it's just like, just such a cool place. So it was funny cause we were locked in there out in the middle of nowhere, kind of like we had always done out in Shelbyville, but just in this completely different way. And it was so, it was really exciting cause we had John there and Bo and Carl there and you know, so we had all this new energy but we had the anchor of Patrick and Tom and my’s friendship and relationship to kind of anchor it all. So it was a really good mix, but it was funny cause we were really isolated and kind of out there and we really didn't go into town much or experience much. It was funny when the one time we went to like a bar or something, we almost got in a fight with the locals cause there was like, they were just, I don't know why they were being such assholes to us. And they were like, and there was like this moment where I like took my full beer and like threw it all over the pool table and like the guys were like chasing us out the door and there's like this, this moment of near catastrophe. But that was kinda the only time we ever went into town. But we had a lot of fun up there on the mountain.

“It Beats for You” 

“It Beats for You” was cool cause I think that was the only song that we had played before the album. Cause I was messing around with this low C acoustic guitar tuning where I was tuning the whole guitar down to C and I wrote a couple songs in that. And for whatever reason we had just, we were messing around with that. And I think we even played it at Bonnaroo or something before we recorded Z and we never, we didn't do that a lot back then cause I was always afraid of people. I was really precious about everything and I was, didn't want somebody to hear something for the first time on YouTube or some MiniDisc recorder or whatever. But that one was another one where I was like, I wanted to create like a new environment where it was like, again, kind of rhythmic and circular and hypnotic, but also mysterious and uplifting. But cause originally it was just kind of an acoustic song, you know, if you took the song and muted all of the instruments except the acoustic guitar and vocal, that was how I wrote it. Just sitting at the 4-track in my bedroom is just kind of more of an acoustic song. But then I was like, “No, and then I had this beat come in. And I was like, let, yeah, let's do this over this beat.” And then, you know, I was explaining that to Tom and Patrick and then they started playing and then Tom wrote his bassline and, you know, it all started happening. And I was like, “Oh yeah, these are two cool worlds that can work together that we haven't done before.” You know, where there's like this rhythmic industrial kind of machine beat going with this kinda mysterious melancholy acoustic guitar over the top of it. But then it explodes and, and hopefully it takes you to a hopeful place.

We had just met Andrew Bird around that time, and I was just, you know, floored by his whistle and the way that he played the violin and looped the violin. And I had never seen a looping pedal. You know, I didn't know what that was. I don't even know, you know, if people were really using those at that time. He was one of the first people I ever saw that used a looping pedal, you know, and I remember seeing him and just, you know, all of our jaws dropped. And we met him and he's such a beautiful, strange, interesting person. You know, he's such just a completely different planet than we came from, you know, and it was like fascinating to make a new friend that way, where you're like, have this immediate bond, but you're like, just could not be more different. You know,  could not come from different schools and different places. And to this day, we're still pals. And I think if he was sitting here, I think he would agree with me that that's like one of the things I love most about our friendship is how strange it is. You know, cause a lot, I feel like a lot of your friends, you kind of like, you're on the same channel or you're from the same planet. But it's even more special I feel like when you can make a friend who's not from the same planet as you, but somehow you like, still enjoy each other, you know? And he came, we mixed the album in LA at Sunset Sound. And he was in LA at that point, and I called him and asked him if he would want to come over and lay a few things down. And I had this idea for the melody at the end of “It Beats,” which I sing live, but I had him whistle it on the record.

“Gideon” 

And then he put strings on “It Beats for You” and “Gideon” and he did an amazing thing at the beginning of “Gideon” where he put strings on, but he was using his looper pedal and his octave pedal, and it just really took the song over the top and just made it so much more strange. And that was the beginning of our use of sampling sounds for live, which is, adds such a cool dimension to the live experience. Cause to this day, we still use that sample of him playing those strings at the top of “Gideon.” When we play, Bo triggers that sample from the record and then we play over it. And that, that was a really cool moment for Z cause a lot of that we were like, “Okay, now that we've done this, how are we gonna do it live?” And that was when I was first introduced to the idea of sampling all of these sounds. And it was hilarious cause for years Bo had this giant PC based crazy synth with a computer screen in it. It was called a Motion, no what was it called? I can't remember what it was called. I was gonna say Motion Sound, but that's not what it was called. But it was like, just like so cool cause we would like sample every key on the keyboard from the Juno so that we didn't have to drag a Juno around on the road cause it was gonna break or whatever. And so we had the “Wordless Chorus” sound and we sampled the strings from “Gideon” cause we knew we couldn't bring Andrew Bird on the road with us all the time. You know, just all these little things that were so cool.

That guitar, I kind of like fell into that, just trancing out on that riff at home. And you know, we just kind of were, were messing around with it. And it came into this thing that just kind of built and built and built. And that song was kind of me trying to deal with the horrors of the world in like in an abstract art way or something. Like I was trying to scream away the horrors of the world or something. Like, I remember like when we were recording it, I was like hoping that my yells could like end all hatred or whatever, you know? I was just like, I was so, I remember just being so upset with the state of the world. And that's a constant theme for me is like, how do I help the state of the world in a more abstract way? You know, cause a lot of times I suffer with, I'm not a political commentator and I feel like the last thing the world needs most of the time is one more talking head, you know, on their TV screen or their Instagram feed or whatever. So I'm always like, “How can I like, put good energy into the world or channel my rage or whatever, but also hopefully do it in a timeless way where I'm not like singing about that particular moment in time specifically.” Because I feel like a lot of that music doesn't stay on the test of time, you know, cause you don't really want to listen to some specific song about Watergate right now (laughs), or whatever, you know, but you may still feel a lot of the same emotion. So, yeah, I don't know, it's really like, again, like kinda like a visual, an abstract painting or something that you see where you're like, “Man, this artist is like clearly frustrated about the government or clearly frustrated about racism or whatever it is, but they're not directly saying it, but you're trying to figure it out.” And in that, I feel like there's healing, you know, there's healing there. And I've always loved that conceptually cause that's one of my favorite things to do on tour is to go to the art museums and I'm always going to the museums and trying to be healed by the visual arts. And that's something that really bleeds into what I'm trying to do.

We've all gotta master the art of agreeing to disagree in peace. You know, like I feel like, I love, I love that nobody knows about religion or death. You know, nobody knows. We can all guess, we can all hypothesize, we can have a lot of fun talking about it, but nobody gets to know. So that right there leads me to believe, “Yeah, believe whatever you want, you know, enjoy it, whatever you want, but leave other people alone” (laughs). Like, you know, “Let them believe what they wanna believe. And if you all believe the same thing, great. Get together and, and worship and have a good time or whatever, but let other people be, let them believe what they wanna believe.”  And that's when I start to get really frustrated when people are trying to force other people to bend to their beliefs. But I think that's the thing too that's so scary about it all is we forget that a lot of the major organized religions are big business. You know, that's all it is. It's just big business. They want your money, you know, and that's terrifying. And then once you start getting into that conversation, everybody wants to fight. And that's the other thing is like, I don't wanna fight anymore. I don't have any hate for anybody. I don't have any anger for anybody. I just have peace. But you also, at the same time, you can't condone things that you feel in your heart are wrong. You know, and there's a line in “Gideon” about that, you know, that like “Most of us don't vibe with this. Most of us believe this is wrong. You know, we don't want it this way, you know?” And it, when we play that song now, I feel that, you know, it's like, I feel that so strongly. I was like, “Man, have we not made any progress?”

You know, to sing that song now, 20 years later and feel a lot of the same things, but I'm trying to find a, yeah, I'm trying to find a new way to look at it. Because I want healing. I want peace. You know, I don't wanna go fight with somebody about their religious beliefs, and I believe there can be healing, and I believe there can be peace, but man, it's a puzzle.

“What a Wonderful Man” 

Well, that was written about my friend Tim (Cushing), who also committed suicide right before we made Z. And Tim was just such a powerful person and he just had a way of, really opening your mind to all of these incredible things. And that song was like, I don't know, I was just thinking about him and I was thinking about all the different music he turned me onto. And there was a really beautiful moment where he played me the song “Long Promised Road” by the Beach Boys. And I had never, I didn't know anything about wild seventies lost era Beach Boys, you know? And, and he's like, “Have you ever heard Surf’s Up? You know? I was like, “No. You know, I've heard ‘California Girls,’ I've heard, you know, a couple things.” But he played me “Long Promise Road” and I was like, “fuck man.” And it really like, it was just like one of those moments where you're like, “Oh yeah, there are no rules. You know, there are no rules in this thing and that's what makes it fun. You know, that's what makes those moments,” and that really lit me up for making Z cause I was like, “Yeah man, I want people to put on this record and be confused. Be like, did I get the wrong record? Did they put the wrong CD in my CD case?” You know, back then it was still CDs cause I love that feeling. When he played me that song, I was like, “This is the fucking Beach Boys?” You know, like, “there can be this thing called the Beach Boys, and within the Beach Boys there's a million different soundscapes.” And it's same with so many great artists that I feel like, that's like Bjork, you know, was one of the first people to do that for me too. Like Bjork, like just, “anything is possible. You know, any possible combination of sounds,” or Radiohead or, you know, just like those great bands that they show us there are no rules. And Tim was, one of those people that really, if he could have made it, I really feel like he had so much. And I think in some of the realm he is, and he has, and he always will be a major force of creativity and, but yeah, so that song was really about him. 

And a lot of people think it's  religious or about God or about Jesus, but it was just literally about him. And he had this beautiful line in his suicide note that said, “Love goes on.” And there was this way he put it, that none of us had heard before, that you really, spirit is forever and love is forever. And we get confused and we think this world, this physical world is forever, but the physical world is the transitory world, cause it all washes away. You know, everything around us, we know, we wash away, we know the body washes away, but also the rivers and the mountains wash away. You know, like the, where will our houses that we're in right now still be standing 200 years from now? You know, like everything will wash away and change at some point, but spirit is forever and sound and those things are forever and nobody knows where they go. And everybody likes to argue and fight about what happens after you die or whatever. But there's just this beautiful calm in Tim's suicide note where he was like the parent talking to us kids. And he was like, he's like, “Hey, y'all,  shit's just too hard for me down here. I'm gonna leave, but love goes on and, and don't worry about it. You know, we will meet again.” 

Well, that was Tim. Tim was playful and lighthearted. Tim was wildly punk rock and wildly like, just like, “fuck you,” in the most beautiful way. So that was the thing is like, I wanted Tim's song to be a wild celebration of him. Cause again, it's that “both and,” you know, and I think that's the thing too, when we look at suicide and, and we look at those things that are tough to look at, there's a “both and” there. Cause there's an incredible sadness that the person is gone or that the person was suffering enough to make that choice. But then there's also an incredible relief, you know, that the person is at peace and that a new door has been opened and a page has been turned. And so I wanted to make a celebration for Tim.

“Off the Record” 

I had like a, this kind of thing, this feeling when I was doing interviews for It Still Moves and everybody always wants to know what everything means. And I was like, I was trying to think of a way to say like, “You've just gotta do it for yourself and, and keep it off the record. And it doesn't matter if people don't understand what it means, you know, it doesn't matter.” I was trying to get into or explain the abstract art thing or whatever. Cause I'd gone to art school for a minute too, and I hated art school cause they always wanted to know what everything meant. And they always wanted an artist statement. And I'm like, “I don't know what it means. Like I just love spreading this blue paint over this orange paint and throwing sand all over it,” or whatever the fuck I was doing. You know, “I don't want to talk about what it means,” you know, it's like, so I was like trying to write a song about that.

I was just really, got into this funny little beat that was on that Walmart keyboard that I had. It had a few program beats in it, and I was playing along to one of those beats, and that's on the demo too for the the Deluxe Edition of Z or whatever. And yeah, it was just kind of another. trance out, experienced musically of trancing out in there. And then when Patrick and Tom and I got together to rehearse, Patrick had bought this new little drum machine, I forget the model number, but it was some kind of cool little Roland drum machine, a vintage drum machine from the seventies or whatever. And he brought that to practice and put it through an amp. And we were jamming to that. And the first time he had brought it was when we were working on “Off the Record.” So it was cool, we were like, that same rule applied where we're like, “Let's play through the song and then once we get to the end of the song, you know, anything goes, no rules.” So we were like, kind of jamming and then he turned on the little drum machine back there and we just started jamming to it. And the ending part was born.

And that's, man, I mean, I talk about all time favorite jams, the end of, “Can't You Hear Me Knocking.” I mean, that jam, just, you know, one of the finest moments in music history, I'm sure, subconsciously, cause the Stones, the Stones for me are like the soil or whatever, you know, they're part of like the, such a part of my foundation, the foundation of this band that I'm sure that's in there somewhere. You know, the Stones kind of creep in everywhere (laughs). And that was really cool reconstructing that in the studio with John Leckie and at Allaire they had a real Mellotron, which was really beautiful to use. I'd never encountered a real Mellotron before. And John had, you know, of course seen those over at Abbey Road. And a Mellotron for people who don't know is like a, one of the first synthesizers that uses actual tape loops inside. Every key has its own tape loop that was recorded in the key of that key or whatever. So you're literally playing old tape reels of old musicians playing all these sounds, and it's just a wonderful sound. So yeah, that was really, really cool how that one came together.

Yeah, maybe so. I don't even know if I wanted it to be restrained or not, but I was kind of tired of the guitar at that point. I remember feeling very fatigued by the guitar. Might've been because I was using too heavy of a gauge of strings. Cause for a long time before we could have a guitar, a tech, or any technicians on stage, I would always break strings because I was playing so hard. And if you break a string, and you only have a couple of guitars or whatever, that can be really problematic. Cause we're always like, we want to keep the show going and keep the momentum going. And if you're like, “Sorry everybody, I'm going to go change this string or whatever,” that sucks, you know? So I started using like these super heavy gauge strings so they would never break, but it was like just destroying my hands. It was so hard to play. But I didn't even put two and two together and after a while I was like, “Oh my God, I'm so fucking sick of playing the guitar.” And then only later did I realize, “Oh man, if I just like go down to a sensible level of strings,” and then I fell in love with the guitar again. But yeah, I think at that point I was like, and yeah, also cause It Still Moves had been so guitar heavy. Yeah I definitely wanted to create a ton of space and not have that be such a large part of this record.

“Into the Woods” 

“Into the Woods,” that was an interesting one cause I was trying to do something different. I was trying to almost make like a dark fairytale or something. I feel like there's, like, there's something about the darkness in fairytales, I think anybody who's investigated all of the fairytales that we all know, you know, all of them have been kind of cleaned up or whatever, and sanitized for in lots of ways, good ways, you know, so they don't scare little kids and stuff like that. But when you go find the original version of a lot of these tales like Hansel and Gretel or Goldilocks and the Three Bears or whatever, there's like a lot of darkness and kind of scariness behind it or whatever. And I was like trying to just figure that out. And I had some kind of like desire to create some kind of like, I want to say warning, but not a warning. Like I wanted to somehow give advice or like help somebody maybe get out of a funk by setting it in some kind of carnival-like fairytale atmosphere. You know what I mean? There's something that, kind of almost looking at it as a horror movie or something like, you know, like I was trying to like make something like The Shining or something like that in my own musical way. So I was trying to set like a mood and a theme and have it be kind of jarring and a little fucked up or whatever, you know, but hopefully leave somebody feeling hopeful like they could find a way out of the woods or something like that. 

I was singing about kind of my lack of love life, and there's a line in there about masturbation or whatever where I was so depressed and so lonely. And I was like, kind of joking that like, you know, “a good shower head and my right hand are the two best lovers that I've ever had.” And then I say like, “if you agree with what I just said, you better find a new lover and let 'em into your head.” You know, like, kind of like, like, “you gotta get out of that.” Cause I felt so trapped in depression and loneliness and so grateful for masturbation (laughs). But also just like, “Jesus, man, like you gotta find a way out of this somehow, you know, to let somebody into your life,” you know, to find love that was at the heart of it. Yeah that's a good example of how different songs change sometimes. Yeah there's some part of me, for a minute was wanting to make it a yeah more dancier or something. But then we kind of settled into the more creepy organ waltz or whatever that just, at least for me, set more of a scene of like, you know, kind of going into the woods and there's this carnival in the woods and you're kind of at this, to me, it kind of took me to a place more.

So we recorded the album up in the Catskills up at Allaire Studios, and we're kind of isolated on this mountaintop. And we were doing the choir and I just wanted like a choir, you know, like it didn't necessarily have to be a men's choir, but we kind of realized, we were like, we are the only ones here, so we have to be the choir. And M. Ward was there as well. He plays guitar on that song with us. And he played some beautiful acoustic guitar. So we roped him into the men's choir, you know, and then we were like, “Well, this is all we got, you know, so it's a men's choir.” Cause that was, we did Z all  to tape. And, you know, that was before Pro Tools or before it was so easy to kind of, you know, take the song somewhere else and have a choir sing on it, or you know, email it to somebody and have them add a choir to it somewhere or whatever. So we kind of just made do with what we had. And thus the men's choir was born.

“Anytime” 

I remember “Anytime,” I was feeling so frustrated with the world and with the political atmosphere at the time and stuff like that. And I just was trying to remind myself that like, “At any point you can change, you know, at any point you can move on, you know, and at any point there's a chance for you to make things better and to, yeah, just change your life or change the world for the better. Like, that opportunity exists for all of us, every second of every day. You know, right now, you know, you can change.” For me at least, music was the way that I could express myself in the way that I could try and help the world. Cause I always felt so helpless as a person in the world. I felt like I didn't fit into the world and I didn't understand the world, but I felt like through music, maybe I could help people, maybe I could reach people. There's that line in there about Madonna or whatever where I was kind of reference her song, “Express Yourself,” and, you know, just how good that, like a song like that makes me feel. I was kind of referencing that and I was kind of referencing also, there's an Eels song called “Climbing to the Moon,” from one of my favorite records called Electro-Shock Blues. That I was really into and I think is one of the greatest kind of concept or song cycle records of all time. And I really have a hard time, especially back then, I've gotten better about it, but just always comparing myself to others and feeling like, like I wasn't good enough, you know? And part of that was like asking myself like, “Is this song even anywhere near as good as the song ‘Climbing up to the Moon?’” But when I was thinking about it, I was like, “That's also a cool line, cause it feels like, you know, it kind of goes with the theme and like, are we climbing up, you know, is this climbing up to the moon? Like, or is this me trying to get higher and higher and reach this change and reach this, you know, positive change that I want to make?” So it kind of fit right in there. And also got to be like a, you know, little veiled reference to that, one of my favorite songs by Eels.

Oh God, yeah. I mean, I was trying to talk myself into living, you know, into just like going period. Yeah it's like the, you know, I'm so grateful when I look back that I had music to keep me going because, I think anybody who suffered from depression or any kind of mental illness so much of the time, there's no rationale behind it, you know, like you can't quantify it. Cause sometimes you look at somebody's life from the outside and maybe you see tragedy after tragedy, after tragedy or whatever, and you're like, “Geez, I can understand why they feel depressed,” but then they don't suffer from depression or somehow they maintain a bright outlook, you know, and you're like, “Jesus, how do they keep going?” You know, like they've had such a hard life. And mine was almost the exact opposite. Like, I had such wonderful friends and wonderful family, and like all of these, you know, I was in a rock and roll band that was actually succeeding. You know, like all these wonderful things were happening. But for whatever reason, the nature of my soul's battle as Jim, this time on Earth or whatever, you know, I mean, whatever you can look at it from so many ways, is it the bad chemicals that were flooding my mind? Is it, was it my karma? What was it that was, but it was just like eating me alive and I was being surrounded at the time by several of my friends taking their own lives and, and just this kind of thing of like, yeah I just feel like without music, I don't know if I would've had the guardrails to, to stay in this world, you know? So I feel like that's like, I do think that's an important thing for people who suffer from depression or mental illness or whatever, to try and seek out help for it, like professional help and not be afraid to talk about it and seek those things out. But also, like, I try to think about like just how healthy it is for somebody to find something that speaks to them, that can be the guardrails that might carry them through until they can recover, you know, whatever that is. Whether that's sports or music or, you know, whatever it is that may speak to you. I always hope that people can find that thing. Cause I'm so grateful that I was able to find that thing that carried me through.

Yeah Z, I called the album Z because I thought it would be the end. Cause I just didn't know if I could go on anymore. And I thought that would be a really good title for a last album by a band. You know, kind of says it all without saying anything. Because I don't like statements and I don't like, I really don't like explaining the work a lot, cause I, I mean, it's fun to talk about it in a way like this, but it's like, I like people to hear it and have their own opinions and have their own things formed. You know, it's like when you go to the art museum and look at an abstract painting or whatever, I like just having whatever pops up for me pop up. And then my friend that I'm there with something completely different has popped up for them that I would've never thought of, you know? And so, you know, I just felt like Z had a, obviously a finality to it or whatever. It's the end of the alphabet. And for a while there I thought, yeah, that the band would end or that my life would end or just felt like things were coming to a close. But I also didn't know that, you know, I just kind of was wondering that and luckily that wasn't the case, but at the time, I was feeling pretty dark. But there's also something whimsical about it. I like the simplicity of just one letter. There's just something, I don't know, something about it that felt so good to me about it. I know now I'm trying to stay in, I like Is because of the presence and the, it's like suggestive of just nowness, you know? It's a, it is happening, you know, and that is a funny way to look at it. Yeah back then I was like, “everything's fucked. This is probably the end of everything,” you know? And I'm so thankful that, I can see things differently now.

“Lay Low” 

“Lay Low” was a fun, that was one of my favorite 4-track moments. And I had this drum machine that was my cousin John's from out on the farm, where we used to have our studio and I used the drum machine on “Cobra,” on our Chocolate and Ice EP. And I used it a couple other places and it's this hilarious, like Yamaha drum machine from the 80s  or whatever that has, like little pads on it too that you can like, hit with drumsticks and stuff. And it's got some cool patterns in it and stuff. And I was just playing around with it one day on the 4-track and just kind of started writing that song or the riffs came out and I was like, and the main thing was that the guitar solo at the end kind of all came out and all the harmonies for that and all of the way that guitar solo kind of came out, that was the thing I was fascinated with. So I got really obsessed with that and had a lot of fun with that. Yeah, it was fun recreating the final recording of “Lay Low,” cause yeah, like I wanted it to stay pretty much like the demo, but it was really fun working with John Leckie and with all the guys to like open it up into the band but still create, when we got to the studio, we kind of realized that like, the drum machine I was using on the demo was fun, but it wasn't like huge enough. So we had a lot of fun creating a new loop of like, Patrick playing the pattern and blowing that up and like, you know, running that back through a tape machine and creating that loop that we would play to, off its own tape loop. Cause that's part of the cool thing of the song too, is like the, the loop is part of it, but then the real drums come in over the top of it and that kind of comes and goes. And we had a lot of fun with that. And then when Carl and I got into dividing up all of the guitar parts and all of that stuff and kind of like, yeah, getting into more of like the live fluid motions of what that was from the demo was really beautiful.

And the title of the song or the meaning of the song is just kind of about like, trying to find peace with somebody that you love by just staying home and laying low and making love and not always trying to be out in the world searching for something else. You know, not always having to be out, like trying to get higher or trying to get fucked up or trying to meet somebody else or you know, like chase something else. It was kind of like trying to be at peace with what you have and just kind of like enjoy that togetherness by being together at home and just enjoying that. And it's amazing what happens in the dreamscape of our, you know, mind's eye or whatever. Cause there's so many times as a kid, you know, and I think all of us who love music have had these fantasies when we're kids where I'm like, you know, jumping off the bed with a broom or whatever, pretending I'm playing guitar and I've got music cranking on the stereo or whatever, you know, and I'm kind of in this fantasy world. And that was the beauty of the 4-track, was I could kind of like create these fantasy worlds and kind of go, and the end of “Lay Low” was one of those times where I was just like, I wish there was some, you know, hidden camera of me, like dancing around my room, playing guitar, you know, like, just like imagining that I'm like playing with Thin Lizzy in front of tens of thousands of people.

Well, for the first, definitely for the first two records, and probably for It Still Moves too. We always thought that we would surely be fired, that we would surely be dropped off the label or whatever. So I always intentionally packed as much music as I could into a thing. And at the time we listened to CDs, so we always packed like 74 minutes of music onto every record. You know, and I would put like an instrumental in there or whatever, cause I was like, “Well better get it all out now, this is the last chance I'll ever have. You know, they're not, this is definitely gonna fail and this is definitely,” I think that was part of my depression kind of eating me alive. And I think for Z, we were like getting to make another record after being signed. And so I was like, you know, I mean it's not even like, It Still Moves was like some colossal success or anything, but I was like, “Well we're still going,” you know, I was like, “let's try a different thing now.” Because my, a lot of my favorite records of all time, they're only like 34 minutes long. You know, like if you look at like, Dark Side of the Moon or What's Going On, or Led Zeppelin IV or there's so many records, you know that back when vinyl was king, you had to keep it to a certain time limit cause you only had two sides or whatever. And so I was thinking about that a lot around Z, I was like, “Oh, let's try and make it shorter.” And it still was longer than that cause it couldn't fit on one vinyl. It still had to be a double vinyl. But I think I was into that at that point in time. I was like, “Oh yeah, let's, this doesn't have to be, let's just let this be what it is instead of forcing, you know, five more songs onto it cause I think that this is gonna be the last chance.”

“Knot Comes Loose” 

“Knot Comes Loose” is really nice because it was a happy moment for me. It was like a, I remember writing it when I was feeling happy and in love at the time and like trying to tell somebody that, like, “I'm changing, I'm happy. Like you're opening my heart, you know, you're untying this knot that's been tied up in my heart. And I used to feel like hiding and I used to feel like I couldn't live. And now I'm able to smile and be with you and be present with you in this love.” And I remember just feeling like, I was like, “Whoa, this is a great feeling to write a song when you're feeling happy.” You know, it's like, it's not always dealing with like this terrible crushing depression or whatever.

And when we went to Allair, we had these beautiful moments where Carl and Bo would play, “Knot Comes Loose,” kind of rehearsing it at the pedal stee guitar and the piano, and they would just sit there and play it, you know, for hours. And we would lay on the floor and just listen to them play it. And that was so beautiful. Cause that was kind of, you know, one of the first times I recognized like how great they were, you know, like just how great both of them were as musicians and also their souls, you know, just like the beauty of their souls, like coming through. And this happy song, you know, that still has this kind of like gentle melancholy to it or whatever that you might, but just listening to them, it was kind of, that was a beautiful moment when I was like, just so grateful that we had found Carl and Bo and that the band could keep going and they were such beautiful people and such amazing musicians. So that was a really beautiful time recording “Knot Comes Loose.” It's just a real warm, it's like we were all growing crops together. We were all, there's this really warm, organic feeling of like life coming up that was really, really special.

“Dondonte” 

Well, “Dondante” was about my friend Aaron (Todovich), who took his own life, and Aaron was my best friend when we were kids and kind of up through adolescence. And he had a lot of battles with depression and he was just an unbelievable musician and he was always, we are the same age, but I felt like he was always two steps ahead of me. And I learned so much from him. And he was an incredible guitar player, and so he could play the saxophone and he could get really, really, technically wild and all sorts of wild uses of effects. And he had this really violent way of playing the guitar that was really fascinating. And I had a dream after he passed away of him, and I was up in like a comic book heaven, you know, like it was pearly gates and clouds and all this stuff. And he was an angel and he was signing people in, checking people into heaven or whatever. And he walked up to me and he was like, you know, just kinda like, “I'm fine now, you know, like, don't worry about me. You know, like, it's okay. I know it's sad that I'm gone, but you know, I'm somewhere else. I'm doing fine. You know, like it was a good call for me to get outta there, you know, the human thing just wasn't working for me.” And there was this beautiful thing of like, this sense of like, yeah, just this beautiful sense of forgiveness. Like he forgave me and I forgave him and we had this beautiful reconciliation and I kind of woke up from that dream and had the sense of this song. And again, there was like a drum pattern from this like Walmart keyboard that I had that had some drum patterns on it. And I just kind of meditated to that thing for a long time. And all the lyrics kind of just spilled out, you know, just thinking about him and thinking about how beautiful he was and wishing he could have seen that, but kind of knowing ultimately that everything passes and something's passed before you're ready for them to. But that doesn't mean that it's not what the universe wanted. And there's just this sense that he had gone on to a better place and I was trying to celebrate him and mourn him at the same time. 

Yeah at first I wanted the song just to be a quiet thing, but then everything exploded in the end of the song became so violent, you know? And that that was something that when Aaron would play guitar, I mean, he would beat the guitar senselessly, you know, like just like, and there was this thing about it that was so beautiful because I knew through this, Aaron was releasing a lot of his demons and a lot of his anger, you know, and then he could seem more balanced after the show or whatever. And so when that energy came in, I don't know if even violence is the right word, cause violence to me often is negative, you know? But there, there was some kind of positive thing about letting your anger out in this healthy way, right? It's like, because I think that's something we all need to get better at too, is like allowing ourselves to be angry and upset and find a creative outlet for it. Find a good outlet. You know, like find a good punching bag or a guitar or whatever, you know, a safe place that you can get fucking pissed and let out all of your anger, without hurting anybody, you know, without being mean to another human or to another creature, or whatever. There's all these safe ways for us to let out our anger and our aggression. And for me, that was really a moment when I realized that too, because I kind of understood that through music and through Nirvana and through so many, you know, people who were masters of letting out their anger into their music. But the way that Aaron taught me and the way that he came into the room with us and elevated that song from being kind of an all quiet meditation.  Cause yeah, you can kind of see on the demo how I originally had kind of envisioned it, how it would be like, there might be a jam at the end or whatever, but it was still pretty mellow. And there's still, you know, even the “you had me worried” part and that stuff, I feel like that was still gonna be there, but it was kind of gonna be mellow or whatever. But then once the eruption happened, then I was kind of like, “Oh man, this part too, let's make this part erupt. You know, kind of like Aaron would've done it.”

Then when we were rehearsing it, Patrick and Tom and I had an old house down in old Louisville that we were rehearsing in, and we were playing the song and we always, a lot of times at the end of a song leave room for improv and you know, we're like, instead of just ending, just keep playing and see what happens. And I had already set up like kind of the, some of the chords or whatever on the demo that I had kind of jammed with myself or whatever. But we all started jamming and I felt like Aaron kind of took over my body or whatever and entered my body and was playing guitar through me. And I was like, just having like this fit of like, just really like thrashing the guitar and like really like, and we were all like, entered this vortex and Patrick really knew Aaron as well. We had all known each other since fourth grade and in school and after it was all over, Patrick and I kind of like, we kind of freaked out looking at each other and he was like, “Did you feel him? Like, did you feel him here? You know, like, did you feel him?” So we had this really powerful moment of feeling like he came in and played with us and we, whenever we play that song now, I always feel him when we get to the end of the song and I try to leave room for him to come in and like be a part of it. And I wanted to give a tribute to him on the saxophone, cause he always played saxophone so beautifully. And that was another magical thing about Carl coming into the band, is that Carl could play saxophone. And so Carl laid down the beautiful saxophone at the end of the song. And that was another beautiful kind of just universal magic that came in. Like, you know, what are the odds that this new guitar player we found also plays saxophone, you know, just like Aaron did. And it was just a really magical thing. So it felt like Aaron visited us with the saxophone too, you know, and that, so that's a really, powerful thing whenever we play the song too, and Carl brings out the sax and we go down that avenue. It's just such a beautiful way to celebrate him and remember him. And even now, every time we fucking play that song, it's like all of the anger that I have and all of the frustration that I have. It like goes into the atmosphere or whatever. Cause I, it like takes all of my anger and frustration to even be able to sing that hard at that part or whatever. Because that's a hard part about being a touring musician. A lot of the times, if you're fucking exhausted or you're tired, or you're like burn tout and you've gotta go play this huge show or whatever, it's tough to find the energy sometimes. But then moments like that, you realize that it's such a healthy vehicle to like get out all of your anger and frustration, you know? And then that's where it goes, you know, and it like goes off into the earth and into the atmosphere and where it can be recycled into new energy and hopefully help heal people and help other people let their anger out too, or whatever. Yeah so that was a really beautiful part of that song.

It was really exciting mixing the album with John Leckie. We mixed it out in LA at Sunset Sound and that was really exciting because Studio One, I mean so many things have been done at Sunset Sound, you know, like I stood where Mick and Keith sang the vocals for Exile on Main Street and I stood where Prince did Purple Rain and you know, all these legendary things that they've done there. It was so cool to go in there with John and John was such a, his ears are just so amazing. And he was such a good support about keeping it all on tape. And we had two 24-track tape machines synced up with this sync thing that like, keeps them in line and we mixed to tape. And John was just like so amazing about doing all of that with me and you know, letting me be a process of the, cause I had never let another person quite to that extent. Well no that's not true, cause we, Danny Kadar and I mixed, It Still Moves. But yeah, it was just so fascinating being there with John and like knowing all the stuff he had done and knowing all the things that had been done there in Sunset Sound. It was just such an exciting moment and it was such a, it felt so beautiful and so powerful. You know, it was one of those moments where I was like just kind of a pinch yourself moment, you know, where I was like, “Am I really, is this really happening? You know, is this, I'm in LA, you know, at this place mixing this record, this music. It's like, is this actually really happening?” But then it's like also wrestling with my depression and like wrestling with it all and be like, “Well, this is cool, but it's not as good as Nirvana. You know, it's not as good as Jimi Hendrix, you know?” There's always that part of me that's just like, you know, flogging myself senselessly, you know, even though I'm having these beautiful triumphant moments. And I feel so grateful that I finally, in the last five years or so, have been able to climb out of that and kind of just enjoy things and stop comparing things and just, you know, just let things be what they are. You know, that's part of Is too, is just like, “just let a thing be what it is. It just is. We made it, we worked hard on it, it's wonderful, it is what it is. Some people are gonna like it. Some people aren't gonna like it.” You know, that's the thing that it's so important for us all to remember that there's no better or worse, it just all is, you know, there's just so much stuff. But God, back then I was just trapped, crushed to death in the bear trap of comparison and depression. But it was also very beautiful and really, really thrilling. It was so funny to think of back then too, because back then 2005, the internet still wasn't really a huge thing. And I remember like, people would tell me, “Oh my God, did you see the review and Rolling Stone or here or there?” And I would literally like, have to drive to Walgreens or whatever and find a Rolling Stone and open it and like, look at it, you know? I was like, I couldn't believe that all of these things were happening. But it wasn't like now where like everything just instantly pops up on Instagram or on the internet or whatever, you know, and you just, and I think Z was a big learning lesson. Cause after that I really tried my best not to look at things. And then it became harder not to look at things because people just like send you links or email and you're like hovering above the link and you're like, “I know I shouldn't click this link,” cause it's all a mind trap. Cause if somebody says it's great, then you're like, “shit, maybe I really am great.” And if somebody says it sucks, then you're like, “shit, maybe I really do suck.” And this all, you know, it's such a mind fuck. But yeah, it's hard not to do that. It's hard not to peak. But it is so funny to think of that time, like if something was in a British magazine or something, like Mojo. There's one amazing bookstore we have called Carmichael's that's like our great local bookstore. And I would like drive over there and like, you know, covertly, see if I could find a copy of the Mojo or whatever that had a review. You know, it's just so funny to think about the, not that the internet didn't exist then, but it really was still kind of like a pre-internet age where everything was always constantly on the internet. And there was also some weird that happened, stupid thing that happened with this record where they tried to put copyright protection software onto the discs. This was at the time when you would buy a CD and you still had CD players, but lots of people would put the CD into their computer and rip it to MP3s or whatever to put on to their computer or whatever. And they put this fucking like software that was giving people all kinds of viruses on their computer and stuff. And that they made us put like an FBI warning on the album artwork and stuff like warning this, “if you try and duplicate this, you know, you could face penalties and all this stuff.” So I feel like that really hurt the record. And I got pericarditis and pneumonia after the US portion of the tour cause I was drinking myself to death and partying too much. And I had to go into the hospital and recover and we had to cancel a whole entire huge European leg of the tour, which I felt like really hurt the band as well. And now I look back on it and whatever, it's all, everything happens for a reason. But it was, at that time, I was like devastated cause I felt like, “Oh man, maybe this is our big chance 'cause people seem to like it,” And you know, but then all of this stuff happened and still it's like I was still just flogging myself to death, you know? I'm like, “It's not as good as, you know, Nevermind, it's not as good as Blood on the Tracks. You know, all these albums that I held up as my favorite albums, I could never be happy about it. You know, nothing was ever good enough, you know, and that's like, what a terrible place to live your life. But I didn't know how to get out, you know? That's the beast of depression is trying to find a way out of it. It's like walking through, I put a song on the new record about it, “Squid Ink” or whatever. You know, it's like you're walking through the squid ink and your whole life is covered in this ink and all these wonderful things are happening, you know, all these beautiful dreams are coming true and stuff. And yeah, and there were moments where I enjoyed it, it's not like I was always laying around crying or whatever, but it's like in the back of my mind, it's like nothing was ever good enough, even though things, so many beautiful things were happening.

We've been doing 20th anniversary shows where we play Z from front to back, you know, and it's such a beautiful experience. Cause we've realized, we've talked about it a lot. We still play these songs all the time. We just feel so grateful that they're still alive in the world. You know, that people still wanna listen to them and that they still have a life, and that we even can put out a 20th anniversary expanded edition with, you know, bonus tracks and demos and all this stuff. There's this huge sense of gratitude. Now we all have, myself mainly, have just such a healthier perspective, you know? And the guys and I are in such a beautiful place, and Z was the first record with Carl and Bo, and we've been together now as a band for 20 years, you know, and, and that's like, that's insane. So there's this beautiful sense of gratitude and amazement, you know, when we play Z from front to back and we all kind of look at it and we're just so grateful for it. And we remastered the album with Emily Lazar, who's one of the all time great mastering engineers and I was never fully happy with the original mastering because I still didn't quite fully understand mastering at the time. And I had a very difficult time and I'm still, I think the album sounds fine or whatever, the original album. But getting to remaster it with Emily was unbelievable cause we sent her all the original 2-track master tapes and she worked her magic and I feel like she like lifted a sheet of glass off of the recording. And I had this beautiful day in Milwaukee when I got the master back from her and I was walking through the art museum in Milwaukee listening to it. And I felt like I was hearing it for the first time in this new way with her remaster of it. And I just felt like, I felt so proud of old Jim for making the record, you know, and I kinda had this beautiful moment with my old self where I gave him a hug and I was like, “Man, I know how depressed you were, but you did it, you know, and you did a great job and, and you carried us through and you didn't end your life and you didn't end the band. And somehow things kept going.” And there's this beautiful healing that happened there in Milwaukee with me at the art museum, with my old self. And I felt so proud of it. And it sounded so great, and I was just so grateful that I could hear it in this new way. And that it's hopefully still useful to people. Like people still want to listen to it, and hopefully they always will. And that we still wanna play it, you know, 20 years later we still wanna play it. And we play it all the time. You know, all these songs we play all the time, you know, they're part of our thing. And that's a good feeling too, when you don't feel like it's some nostalgia trip. You know what I mean? Because like, nostalgia trips are fun for us all. Yeah but it's like, it's such a great feeling when you're playing the music and you're like, “fuck, man. I mean, I think this music still feels great. I don't think this is just a nostalgia trip.” You know? It's so fun and we play these songs all the time and it's like, it's just a such a beautiful full circle moment that I just really could not have asked for better way to feel 20 years after making Z.

Outro: 

Dan Nordheim: Visit lifeoftherecord.com for more information about My Morning Jacket. You’ll also find a full transcript of this episode and a link to purchase Z, including the 20th anniversary deluxe edition. Instrumental music by Love Axe. Thanks for listening. 

Credits:

"Wordless Chorus"

"It Beats for You"

"Gideon"

"What a Wonderful Man"

"Off the Record" (Jim James, Tom Blankenship, Patrick Hallahan)

"Into the Woods"

"Anytime"

"Lay Low"

"Knot Comes Loose"

"Dondante"

All songs written by Jim James, except instrumental end of “Off the Record” by James/Two Tone/Hallahan.

Removadar Songs, BMI

© & ℗ 2005, ATO Records, Inc.

Produced and mixed by John Leckie and Jim James

Original album mastered by Stephen Marcussen

20th anniversary deluxe edition mastered by Emily Lazar

Personnel:

Andrew Bird: strings and whistles on “Gideon,” “Into the Woods” and “It Beats for You”

M. Ward: acoustic guitar and part of the men’s choir on “Into the Woods”

Tom Blankenship – bass guitar

Carl Broemel – guitar, saxophone on "Dondante"

Patrick Hallahan – drums

Jim James – vocals, lead and rhythm guitars, and production

Bo Koster – keyboards

Episode Credits: 

Intro/Outro Music:

“Optimism Paranoia Desperation Abolition” by Love Axe

Episode produced, edited and mixed by Dan Nordheim

Additional mixing and mastering by Jeremy Whitwam