My Morning Jacket: Southern Ghost Voices

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It seemed like you were playing down here every three weeks for a few years. And then…

JJ: We’re trying to be more strategic and smarter with our tours. I feel like we’ve been touring a lot, but it’s been more concentrated blasts.

CB: We didn’t do a whole lot of touring last year, but we did some. We did the July sessions and then did a little tour. We played Preservation Hall, and then the Terminal 5 shows. Basically we went to Terminal 5, took a week off and went straight back to the studio. It’s been a lot of unique perspectives to have – it’s nice to record, totally step away from it for two weeks and then listen to it and go, “We like this, we like that.” It takes time to really listen objectively to what you’re doing, because you are so focused on that part, that one thing that’s glaring at you, which most of the time ends up not being that important. And we also had to play every song off of every record at the Terminal 5 shows in five nights. So we played every song that the band has ever put on an album and went back to the studio. And that was another perspective we had – wow, we just played everything, now we’re doing something new.

That’s quite an undertaking – playing your entire catalog in the course of a week. How were the rehearsals leading up to it? Back in the saddle again or was it like ‘Oh, shit’?

JJ: Some of it came back pretty easily – we did covers from each era, B-sides, EP things and stuff like that. It was a lot of memorization, like cramming for a huge test.

CB: Like finals, like we were cramming, but it was really fun. Because when there’s that much material, you can’t practice that much. There’s just not enough time to really iron it out, so there’s room for “hope this works.” And if it does it’s awesome.

JJ: Each night had a different vibe.

PH: Every album has a different vibe. It’s neat to play some of those things – we were playing a lot of songs we don’t normally play, or haven’t ever played before – especially since I’ve been in the band. I’m sure you all have played ‘em live when the albums came out. It was cool to smell the smells and taste the tastes when the memories started coming back. We would start a song and I wasn’t in that space any longer – I was back rehearsing years before looking at horses feeding on hay.

Like the muscle memory comes back to you? Synesthesia comes on?

PH: Yeah. The olfactory sense is the strongest memory inducer. I always start smelling smells again. I can smell the farm, the upstairs apartment at the farm where we used to practice when we were doing the It Still Moves stuff. I can smell that old ballroom that we were doing the Z stuff in, that we were recording in. I wasn’t expecting to have so many memories flash back.

JJ: Yeah, it was a really psychedelic trip down memory lane. A lot of things came up that you don’t really ever plan on coming up again. In most ways I feel like it’s – for everybody – it’s kind of unhealthy to relive their past. [Laughter.]

PH: Or to dwell on it, at least…

JJ: You hear about people going through phases, of reliving their past, or certain eras of their past or whatever. But in this sense it was kind of like a strange review, reliving the past in good ways and bad. If you’re trying to live by the rules you made for yourself ten years ago, ‘cause you’re you now… and you have to do something you thought was good ten years ago… some of it you think is good and holds up, and some of it is like, “How the f**k did I do that?” It’s a stranger to you.

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