Jim James

By: Interview by Elizabeth Marcellino | Photos by Autumn DeWilde, Illustration by Derek Albeck | December 16, 2009 | Music

My Morning Jacket’s Jim James just finished touring with Monsters of Folk — an ambitious, ironically named collaboration of James, Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst and Mike Mogis, and singer/songwriter M. Ward. Malibu Magazine caught up with James just as the tour started and received some input from the other MOF artists as well.

MOF released its eponymous album in late September. In October, the band played the Greek Theatre for a relatively small, but seemingly rapturous crowd, with Will Johnson joining them on drums.

The effort is just the latest in what seems to be an energetic series of musical matchups. James, credited as Yim Yames, has recorded a benefit album with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band in New Orleans. He’s also produced an album with musicians from his native Kentucky. And James says he’s working on new demos with My Morning Jacket.

The MOF project has been an experimental journey of sorts. The four musicians first toured together in 2004 before separate efforts in other bands — Bright Eyes’  I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning and Cassadaga; My Morning Jacket’s Z and Evil Urges; and M. Ward’s Post War and Hold Time — some of which were quite stunning, and garnered critical and commercial acclaim.

They promised one another to eventually record together, but it took years before the sessions, ultimately held in studios in Omaha, Neb., and Malibu, came together.

“It was never a question of where or how; it was just when,” Ward says. “We knew we wanted to record an album after seeing that we had good chemistry on tour. I think we were all curious about what we could do if we went into the studio and recorded original songs.”

They came back together at a studio Mogis and Oberst built a couple of years ago in Omaha and then headed to California about three months later “at a studio called Shangri-La, which is kind of old-school — The Band, Neil Young, all kinds of people recorded there,” says Oberst.

On the album and on stage, each of the four band members plays multiple instruments, and James, Oberst and Ward take the lead on vocals in turn and also in tandem. The songs were also written — and credited — as a team effort.

The lack of a clear lead might seem like a recipe for fractious infighting and bruised egos, but James paints the sessions as an idyll.

“It was and still is a fresh and new feeling, like starting your first band in high school — lots of adventure, fun and laughs,” he says.

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