Interviewer:Patrick, I have a question about the band’s name. I want to know… do you any of you actually have a morning jacket?
Patrick Hallahan:(Laughs) None of us have morning jackets per se… Oh, you know what? We all had morning jackets at one point! They were cheesy... but we don’t have them now.
Interviewer:What did they look like?
Patrick Hallahan:They were like red velvet smoking jackets. Like something that Hugh Hefner would wear.
Interviewer:I think you should definitely bring them back.
Patrick Hallahan:If you buy them, we’ll put them on.
Interviewer:Now when it comes to the show you’re doing at the moment, you’ve got such an extensive back catalogue of songs to choose from. How do you put a setlist together every night?
Patrick Hallahan:This next set of shows, we don’t have any parameters so to speak. I am feeling a cross section of everything. To have that many to choose from, we get into some disputes from time to time.
Interviewer:The new song "Outta My System" has a Ramones vibe: They told me not to smoke drugs, but I wouldn't listen / Never thought I'd get caught and wind up in prison. What's the story?
Jim James:Disney asked us to write new music for the Muppet movie. It was one of the first sketches I cooked up. If it ended up being for the Electric Mayhem band, I would've taken out the drug references.
Interviewer:Do you have a lot of creative input on the songs arrangements?
Tom Blankenship:Yeah, I think most of the time they stay pretty close structure-wise to what they were on the demo and sometimes they’re radically different. Especially on It Still Moves, that whole middle part on Run Thru with the weird distorted synth and the drum and bass thing was kind of a happy accident that happened while we were rehearsing. And that stuff still happens.
Jim James:It was out at our old studio, which was on my cousin’s grandparents’ farm, in Shelbyville, Kentucky. We rented this big taxidermic grizzly bear, and it’s so funny when I think back on it, because you could just, like, Photoshop that kind of shit in. But we didn’t.
Sam Erickson:If we had tried to do it digitally, it just wouldn’t have been as cool.
Jim James:Yeah, I agree. I’m so glad we didn’t. But it’s hilarious to look back, in retrospect, and think about seven grown men hefting a stuffed grizzly bear up through this hole in the side of a barn.
Patrick Hallahan:I would personally tell my 1998 self not to take no for an answer and to... not care about what other people think I guess. I would definitely try to instill some more confidence in that head of his.
Jim James:In 1998 I was really worried about the Y2K distaster
Patrick Hallahan:[laughs]
Jim James:So I would really look back and tell myself that Y2K is, just don't worry about it. Y'know, it's going to be okay, even...
Carl Broemel:The Mayan Calendar
Jim James:Yeah it's more about 2012
Patrick Hallahan:You brought up the Mayan Calendar now [laughs]
Jim James:Don't worry about 2000, worry about 2012 [more laughs] Because that's... Yup, you got plenty of time.
Bo Koster:Yeah, we have bears. We have always had animals and shit like that since the beginning of time. There is a bear on the cover of It Still Moves. There is a song called “The Bear.” It’s been part of the band for a long time. It’s our spirit animal. It’s our totem. Have you seen those animal totem books? I have a couple of those at home. That’s kind of a thing. It’s fun. (...) We have the owl, too. I forgot how the owl got in there. But it’s been part of album artwork. We had this really cool white owl that we put on the top of the recording desk when we recorded Z, I believe. Ever since then, it has been our mascot as well.
Name something every man should have in his closet.
A skeleton
What song would we be surprised to find on your iPod?
“Shake You Down (Extended 12 in Remix)” by Gregory Abbot
What’s your favorite venue that you’ve performed at?
The Palace Theater in Louisville, KY
Finish the sentence: The thing I love the most about My Morning Jacket’s fans is…
…their patience
Tune in Tuesday, May 31 at 9:00PM ET / 6:00PM PT for My Morning Jacket’s “Unstaged” live-stream concert at www.youtube.com/mymorningjacketVEVO, presented by American Express in partnership with VEVO and YouTube.
