Jim James

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

However much success or fun the group has, MOF seems unlikely to be the last new group that James’ joins. He clearly enjoys working in multiple collaborations simultaneously.

“It inspires and expands the mind … carves new brain lines,” he says.

He’s either easy to work with or just too talented for anyone to turn him down — or maybe both — based on the number of other projects he’s taken on. In addition to MOF, the jazz album and MMJ, he’s producing an album with singers/songwriters Ben Sollee and Daniel Martin Moore, also from James’ home state of Kentucky. Another benefit effort, the album is geared toward raising money to help stop mountaintop mining for coal, a process that typically flattens summits into mesas. It is scheduled for release in February.

The MOF tour is benefit-driven as well — a theme that seems to hold true for many of James’ undertakings. One dollar from every ticket sold at the group’s October show at the Greek Theatre raised funds for School on Wheels, a nonprofit that tutors homeless children in Southern California.

And now James has a label of his own, Removador Records. Why take on a label?

“I just want to help put good music into the world and turn people on to new sounds,” James says.

He hopes that Removador — which looks like it will offer Web-based distribution — becomes “a gateway of fun, new music for people to blast into their ear holes.”

And for those My Morning Jacket fans that wish James would stop his other creative pursuits and get back to the band, James says they are working on new songs.

When MMJ didn’t show at Bonnaroo this year, and their drummer, Patrick Hallahan, was quoted as saying the group had “just taken a big hiatus,” it made some fans nervous. But James offers reassurances.

“We are all out having fun and working on other music, and all that fun and new learning gets put back into what we do as a band,” James says.

But given the reach of his musical interests, it’s impossible to guess just what else James (or Yames) will do next. And maybe it’s best not to box him in. We’re bound to enjoy the surprise.

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