July 31, 2025 • 12 mins
Jim James, frontman of of My Morning Jacket is one profound Dude! He checked in with Bret to talk about the band's latest album and the menace of improperly utilized social media.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
I'm Brett and I'm delighted you're here. Let's check in
with Jim James, the front man for My Morning Jacket.
They're from how do you pronounce it? Louisville, Kentucky? Did
I get it right? They'll be at Red Rock's August
fifteenth and sixteenth. They have a new album titled is
Jim James from My Morning Jacket on the Brett Sonders Podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Thanks so much. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
What is the significance behind the word is Jim?
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Well, you know, it's funny. It's trying to name a
record is such an interesting process, and every time we
make a record, I kind of keep a log of
different ideas and different thoughts and stuff. And for this record,
just that word kept coming back at me. It was
just like this. I love when you look at a
(00:47):
word long enough, it kind of disappears and becomes almost
a symbol or something, you know, if you say it enough.
And we obviously we use that word many many times
every day, but you never really see it on its own.
And I liked the idea of presence that came with it,
in kind of nowness you know it is happening, you
(01:09):
know it is, and I feel like that's one of
my favorite things about music, is like music never dies,
you know, Music's always here. That's this presence, the force.
So I was just trying to find a way to
represent that a little bit.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
I think that you did well. I have to tell you,
this is my wife's favorite album right now. It's on
at the house all the time, and that's like the
highest recommendation you can get.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Yeah, you're going to be at Red Rocks August fifteenth
and sixteenth, Jim and I understand on night one, you're
going to play another album with an interesting title that's
Z from what has been twenty years since.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
That was released, right, Yeah, this is the twentieth anniversary, so.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
You're going to be playing the album and it entirety
on the first night.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Yeah, we wanted to do It's crazy. Now this is
the fourth album that's hitting its twenty year mark, and
we've found with the other albums as they've hit their
twenty year marks, it's just cool to go back and
play the whole thing start to finish and kind of
explore that and see what that feels like for us
in the audience. So it's been a really beautiful experience
(02:21):
in the past, and I'm sure it will again with
this record, because it's kind of like a time machine,
you know. It's like you because we don't often play
a record start to finish with the we still play
a lot of those songs all the time, So it's
not like it's not like we don't play a lot
of those songs all the time. But it's really interesting
to play them in that format because we really love
the album format and we really still think in the
(02:44):
album format. So when we get a chance to do
that and explore that, it really is I mean, just
such a time machine. But I feel like it's kind
of a cool thing because it's not like it's not
totally a nostalgia trip because for us, it's like those
songs are still so active, you know. And that's what
I love that word is again, because like the songs
(03:07):
are you know, it's like they're living. But it's cool
when you put them in that format again. I think
it gives the audience and us it does kind of
take you back to like, oh my god, you know,
what was I doing twenty years ago? What was I
feeling when this record came out? And how are things better,
Have things change? How are things different? You know, there's
so much of that comes up that I think is
really fascinating.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Every My Morning Jacket album is a thumbs up, right.
I mean, you guys have not released a dud. You
can't say that about everybody, but you can say that
about your band. Now. When you go back and you
play the songs from an album from twenty years ago,
do you find yourself revisiting who you were twenty years ago?
And is there anything that makes you flinch or grimace?
Speaker 2 (03:50):
You know what? It's so interesting Historically, over different periods
of time, it's been really tough at times for me
to go back and inhabit, yeah, those younger versions of
myself or whatever. But I feel like there's this beautiful
thing that's happened. Like the more work I've tried to
do on myself and the more peaceful I've tried to
(04:10):
be in trying to love myself and just be more
present with myself who I am now, I feel like
it's more easy and a more beautiful experience for me
to go visit those old selves with this kind of compassion.
You know. It's like I can kind of see what
(04:32):
that version of Jim was feeling twenty years ago. And
because I'm not carrying so much pain in my heart
right now, it makes it easier for me to revisit
that without falling into the deep hull of even you know,
of depression or whatever whatever I may have been experiencing.
If the song is particularly difficult to sing or emotional
(04:54):
or whatever, I can kind of almost like hold that
old Jim in a way way where I'm almost like
his parent or something, you know, like his guardian. Sure,
and I can visit that world with him in a
really beautiful way and we can kind of share it together.
And Yeah, it's been a it's been a really cool experience.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
It sounds like you're a pretty evolved person that you
can go back and do that, because not everybody can.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Well, I think it's a process, you know. I think
evolution is a lifelong journey. You know that that we're
all on we're all on different quests here, you know,
and what we're supposed to do here in our time
on Earth. And you know, I feel like it's just
I'm trying to I have not been a peaceful person
(05:43):
most of my life. I've really struggled with depression and
just struggled with being here, and I've really tried to
kind of wake up to just trying to be more
present and trying to get deeper into therapy and deeper
into different healing modalities and just just trying to, yeah,
just find more peace with myself because it's a you know, well,
(06:04):
we could work NonStop around the clock and still find
more things to change and more ways to evolve and stuff.
But I think it's just kind of being on the
path that I think is important for us all to
find our own version of the path and what does
that look like and how does that feel? And yeah,
I think but everybody's got their own their own special
(06:27):
journey to run.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
The new album Again is the first time I heard
Time Waited, which was the first single from the album.
I noticed the beginning of the song was kind of scratchy,
and I did my research and realize that you unearthed
and old Buddy Emmon's sample. He was a guy he
played the steel guitar, right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Pedal steel. A lot of people consider him one of
the greatest pedal steel players. Yeah and yeah, well a
friend of mine sent me this YouTube link to he
put out some demonstration records back in the day just
to kind of because he also had a pedal steel
guitar shops, so he would put out these demonstration records
(07:10):
and just to you know, show people what the pedal
steel sounded like. And and I heard this song Blue Jade,
and just the uh the piano intro just knocked my
socks off, and I got really obsessed with it. And
this guy Bill Purcell, who was a Nashville session player,
(07:30):
and then there's an upright bass back in there too.
I'm blanking on the upright bass player's name. Uh, but yeah,
so I just got obsessed with that and started walking
to it. And uh, I love sampling, and I love
sampling culture and sampling, you know, creating samples because we
(07:50):
do a lot of sampling in our own sounds. Like
if we find a particular sound we've created in the studio,
will we'll sample that so we can use it live
or you know. I think the thing people know most
sampling is in hip hop culture, and so there's a
lot of best samples and the ways that people use music,
(08:12):
existing music or beats to generate new ideas. And I've
always just been so into that. So yeah, I got
kind of obsessed with the sample and the song was born.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Listening to that, Well, it's a magnificent song. It takes
you instantly to a tranquility that I like a lot.
There's another song that we're playing now on KBCO, which
is Everyday Magic. I recently undearthed one of our past
interviews between the two of us, and you talked about
magic and everyday life, and I loved how you know,
this was probably the better part of a decade ago
(08:45):
you made these statements to me. What was your inspiration
here in twenty twenty five behind that song?
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Well, it was really cool. I have a friend and
she's really just such a wizard at embracing the every day,
you know, embracing all the things that are miraculous about
this world. And I feel like I've really in the
last five years or so, as I've been on my
(09:14):
own west to be more peaceful and be more healing,
you know, in the chaos of the world. I've always
just never really understood so much of what is happening
here and why people behave the way they do, and
why people are so hateful, hateful and angry and things
are so chaotic. But this friend of mine She's kind
(09:37):
of slowly helped me realize, like the things that we
can control and the things that we can enjoy that
no one can take away from us, you know, the
everyday miracles of you know, just the sun shining and
the air you're able to breathe, the air, and the plants,
you know, an entire world of the plant kingdom, you know,
(09:58):
all around us every day is just such a miracle,
you know. And just all these things that we take
for granted. Being able to talk, you know, the fact
that you and I can talk via the miracle of telephone,
minds and Internet, and there's just endless miracles around us
every day. But I feel like so many of us
get lost in the pain body, you know, and we
(10:18):
get lost in what's what hurts. But and that's valid,
you know, because things hurt and they kind of take
center stage in your mind. But I've just been trying
to catch myself more and more and say, okay, what
is right about today? You know, what what is okay
about today? There's a beautiful bird outside my window. There's
(10:38):
a beautiful tree, you know, in the park. There's just
these things that are easy to overlook if we're if
we're focused in the the painful places, and I feel
like part of that too, is just trying to embrace
the natural world more and get off our phones more,
because I feel like our phones are destroying us, you know,
and the whole tidal way of information that we absorb
(11:01):
on social media and all this stuff. It's like, I think,
it's almost like I think that there's valuable tools, you know,
I almost think of social media and the Internet, I
wish we could use it more like we would use
a hammer in a toolbox, you know, like take it out,
hammer a nail on the wall, hang your picture, and
then put it away. You know, it's like because it
(11:21):
is such a great tool, but instead we just keep
hammering the wall over and over and over again, and
pretty soon our entire house is going to be destroyed
because we won't stop hammering the wall with this hammer.
So yeah, that was just part of every day in
magic is trying to be like, okay, there's so much,
so many miracles around us everywhere, you know, in the
natural world. I mean, you know, just trying to get
(11:42):
more in touch with that.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Well. I like listening to you talk, Jim James. In fact,
I'm glad that you use your charismatic powers for good.
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Oh well, thanks, I'm trying.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
You're succeeding my morning jacket. The album is is. You'll
be at Red Rocks August fifteenth and sixteenth. Nice to
talk with you again. I hope we see you backstage
at Red Rocks one of those nights.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Yeah. Absolutely, always great to chat. I can't wait to
be at Red Rocks again.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
That Jim James is one profound dude. I'm Brett Sanders.
I'll see you next time on The Brett Sanders Podcast
I'm Brett and I'm delighted you're here. Let's check in
with Jim James, the front man for My Morning Jacket.
They're from how do you pronounce it? Louisville, Kentucky? Did
I get it right? They'll be at Red Rock's August
fifteenth and sixteenth. They have a new album titled is
Jim James from My Morning Jacket on the Brett Sonders Podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Thanks so much. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
What is the significance behind the word is Jim?
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Well, you know, it's funny. It's trying to name a
record is such an interesting process, and every time we
make a record, I kind of keep a log of
different ideas and different thoughts and stuff. And for this record,
just that word kept coming back at me. It was
just like this. I love when you look at a
(00:47):
word long enough, it kind of disappears and becomes almost
a symbol or something, you know, if you say it enough.
And we obviously we use that word many many times
every day, but you never really see it on its own.
And I liked the idea of presence that came with it,
in kind of nowness you know it is happening, you
(01:09):
know it is, and I feel like that's one of
my favorite things about music, is like music never dies,
you know, Music's always here. That's this presence, the force.
So I was just trying to find a way to
represent that a little bit.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
I think that you did well. I have to tell you,
this is my wife's favorite album right now. It's on
at the house all the time, and that's like the
highest recommendation you can get.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Yeah, you're going to be at Red Rocks August fifteenth
and sixteenth, Jim and I understand on night one, you're
going to play another album with an interesting title that's
Z from what has been twenty years since.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
That was released, right, Yeah, this is the twentieth anniversary, so.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
You're going to be playing the album and it entirety
on the first night.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Yeah, we wanted to do It's crazy. Now this is
the fourth album that's hitting its twenty year mark, and
we've found with the other albums as they've hit their
twenty year marks, it's just cool to go back and
play the whole thing start to finish and kind of
explore that and see what that feels like for us
in the audience. So it's been a really beautiful experience
(02:21):
in the past, and I'm sure it will again with
this record, because it's kind of like a time machine,
you know. It's like you because we don't often play
a record start to finish with the we still play
a lot of those songs all the time, So it's
not like it's not like we don't play a lot
of those songs all the time. But it's really interesting
to play them in that format because we really love
the album format and we really still think in the
(02:44):
album format. So when we get a chance to do
that and explore that, it really is I mean, just
such a time machine. But I feel like it's kind
of a cool thing because it's not like it's not
totally a nostalgia trip because for us, it's like those
songs are still so active, you know. And that's what
I love that word is again, because like the songs
(03:07):
are you know, it's like they're living. But it's cool
when you put them in that format again. I think
it gives the audience and us it does kind of
take you back to like, oh my god, you know,
what was I doing twenty years ago? What was I
feeling when this record came out? And how are things better,
Have things change? How are things different? You know, there's
so much of that comes up that I think is
really fascinating.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Every My Morning Jacket album is a thumbs up, right.
I mean, you guys have not released a dud. You
can't say that about everybody, but you can say that
about your band. Now. When you go back and you
play the songs from an album from twenty years ago,
do you find yourself revisiting who you were twenty years ago?
And is there anything that makes you flinch or grimace?
Speaker 2 (03:50):
You know what? It's so interesting Historically, over different periods
of time, it's been really tough at times for me
to go back and inhabit, yeah, those younger versions of
myself or whatever. But I feel like there's this beautiful
thing that's happened. Like the more work I've tried to
do on myself and the more peaceful I've tried to
(04:10):
be in trying to love myself and just be more
present with myself who I am now, I feel like
it's more easy and a more beautiful experience for me
to go visit those old selves with this kind of compassion.
You know. It's like I can kind of see what
(04:32):
that version of Jim was feeling twenty years ago. And
because I'm not carrying so much pain in my heart
right now, it makes it easier for me to revisit
that without falling into the deep hull of even you know,
of depression or whatever whatever I may have been experiencing.
If the song is particularly difficult to sing or emotional
(04:54):
or whatever, I can kind of almost like hold that
old Jim in a way way where I'm almost like
his parent or something, you know, like his guardian. Sure,
and I can visit that world with him in a
really beautiful way and we can kind of share it together.
And Yeah, it's been a it's been a really cool experience.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
It sounds like you're a pretty evolved person that you
can go back and do that, because not everybody can.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Well, I think it's a process, you know. I think
evolution is a lifelong journey. You know that that we're
all on we're all on different quests here, you know,
and what we're supposed to do here in our time
on Earth. And you know, I feel like it's just
I'm trying to I have not been a peaceful person
(05:43):
most of my life. I've really struggled with depression and
just struggled with being here, and I've really tried to
kind of wake up to just trying to be more
present and trying to get deeper into therapy and deeper
into different healing modalities and just just trying to, yeah,
just find more peace with myself because it's a you know, well,
(06:04):
we could work NonStop around the clock and still find
more things to change and more ways to evolve and stuff.
But I think it's just kind of being on the
path that I think is important for us all to
find our own version of the path and what does
that look like and how does that feel? And yeah,
I think but everybody's got their own their own special
(06:27):
journey to run.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
The new album Again is the first time I heard
Time Waited, which was the first single from the album.
I noticed the beginning of the song was kind of scratchy,
and I did my research and realize that you unearthed
and old Buddy Emmon's sample. He was a guy he
played the steel guitar, right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Pedal steel. A lot of people consider him one of
the greatest pedal steel players. Yeah and yeah, well a
friend of mine sent me this YouTube link to he
put out some demonstration records back in the day just
to kind of because he also had a pedal steel
guitar shops, so he would put out these demonstration records
(07:10):
and just to you know, show people what the pedal
steel sounded like. And and I heard this song Blue Jade,
and just the uh the piano intro just knocked my
socks off, and I got really obsessed with it. And
this guy Bill Purcell, who was a Nashville session player,
(07:30):
and then there's an upright bass back in there too.
I'm blanking on the upright bass player's name. Uh, but yeah,
so I just got obsessed with that and started walking
to it. And uh, I love sampling, and I love
sampling culture and sampling, you know, creating samples because we
(07:50):
do a lot of sampling in our own sounds. Like
if we find a particular sound we've created in the studio,
will we'll sample that so we can use it live
or you know. I think the thing people know most
sampling is in hip hop culture, and so there's a
lot of best samples and the ways that people use music,
(08:12):
existing music or beats to generate new ideas. And I've
always just been so into that. So yeah, I got
kind of obsessed with the sample and the song was born.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Listening to that, Well, it's a magnificent song. It takes
you instantly to a tranquility that I like a lot.
There's another song that we're playing now on KBCO, which
is Everyday Magic. I recently undearthed one of our past
interviews between the two of us, and you talked about
magic and everyday life, and I loved how you know,
this was probably the better part of a decade ago
(08:45):
you made these statements to me. What was your inspiration
here in twenty twenty five behind that song?
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Well, it was really cool. I have a friend and
she's really just such a wizard at embracing the every day,
you know, embracing all the things that are miraculous about
this world. And I feel like I've really in the
last five years or so, as I've been on my
(09:14):
own west to be more peaceful and be more healing,
you know, in the chaos of the world. I've always
just never really understood so much of what is happening
here and why people behave the way they do, and
why people are so hateful, hateful and angry and things
are so chaotic. But this friend of mine She's kind
(09:37):
of slowly helped me realize, like the things that we
can control and the things that we can enjoy that
no one can take away from us, you know, the
everyday miracles of you know, just the sun shining and
the air you're able to breathe, the air, and the plants,
you know, an entire world of the plant kingdom, you know,
(09:58):
all around us every day is just such a miracle,
you know. And just all these things that we take
for granted. Being able to talk, you know, the fact
that you and I can talk via the miracle of telephone,
minds and Internet, and there's just endless miracles around us
every day. But I feel like so many of us
get lost in the pain body, you know, and we
(10:18):
get lost in what's what hurts. But and that's valid,
you know, because things hurt and they kind of take
center stage in your mind. But I've just been trying
to catch myself more and more and say, okay, what
is right about today? You know, what what is okay
about today? There's a beautiful bird outside my window. There's
(10:38):
a beautiful tree, you know, in the park. There's just
these things that are easy to overlook if we're if
we're focused in the the painful places, and I feel
like part of that too, is just trying to embrace
the natural world more and get off our phones more,
because I feel like our phones are destroying us, you know,
and the whole tidal way of information that we absorb
(11:01):
on social media and all this stuff. It's like, I think,
it's almost like I think that there's valuable tools, you know,
I almost think of social media and the Internet, I
wish we could use it more like we would use
a hammer in a toolbox, you know, like take it out,
hammer a nail on the wall, hang your picture, and
then put it away. You know, it's like because it
(11:21):
is such a great tool, but instead we just keep
hammering the wall over and over and over again, and
pretty soon our entire house is going to be destroyed
because we won't stop hammering the wall with this hammer.
So yeah, that was just part of every day in
magic is trying to be like, okay, there's so much,
so many miracles around us everywhere, you know, in the
natural world. I mean, you know, just trying to get
(11:42):
more in touch with that.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Well. I like listening to you talk, Jim James. In fact,
I'm glad that you use your charismatic powers for good.
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Oh well, thanks, I'm trying.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
You're succeeding my morning jacket. The album is is. You'll
be at Red Rocks August fifteenth and sixteenth. Nice to
talk with you again. I hope we see you backstage
at Red Rocks one of those nights.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Yeah. Absolutely, always great to chat. I can't wait to
be at Red Rocks again.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
That Jim James is one profound dude. I'm Brett Sanders.
I'll see you next time on The Brett Sanders Podcast
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