THE BIG INTERVIEW JIM JAMES

THE BIG INTERVIEW JIM JAMES

The universe speaks and Jim James listens

Jaan Uhelszki

Deeply philosophical, humble, adept, and creatively nimble, Jim James is equal parts mystic and mad scientist. As close as we can get to a psychedelic prophet these days, he’s like an artist from a bygone era, in his wide-brimmed hats and sharply tailored dark preacher’s coats, dressed like someone just as ready to play a festival as to lead a séance. Looking at the cover of My Morning Jacket’s 10th album, is, I’d say the latter. With a cosmic sensibility plumbed from the ’60s, he’s a bit like Donovan during his “happiness runs in a circular motion” phase and looks unnervingly like the late Garth Hudson around the time Dylan got his hands on the Hawks and turned them into the Band. But there’s a gentleness, a stillness, in the music he crafts both in his solo work and in My Morning Jacket—although, according to the musician, it’s something that has eluded him personally.

Haunted by ghosts and the specters of a childhood spent being bullied, he suffered with crippling depression as a result, suspecting that some of the taunts that were hurled at him as a child might be true. Over the years, he hasn’t tried to outrun those demons so much as tire them out, becoming something of a workaholic, accomplished and facile, working harder and doing more than anyone else, bordering on being a control freak when it came to songwriting or when let loose in a studio: He produced all of My Morning Jacket’s previous nine albums.

Pre-pandemic, he toured and was constantly working, his phone next to his pillow so he could capture a fragment of a song from a dream (yes, he does dream his songs—for instance, “In Color” from 202l’s self-titled album and “Time Waited” on is), never stopping save his 90-minute walks through Louisville. But even then he was writing songs and recording them into voice memos as he wandered down the leafy green streets of his hometown. Nor, seemingly, did he ever say no to a musician pal who wanted him to show up for some project. Over the years, he’s either produced, appeared with, or collaborated with the likes of Tom Morello, Pearl Jam, the Decemberists, Dean Wareham, Andrew Bird, Gov’t Mule, the Flaming Lips, Dawes, Bright Eyes, M. Ward (along with their joint Monsters of Folk album and tour), the Roots, David Lynch, Brandi Carlile, John Fogerty, Ray Lamontagne, and Moby, to name just a few.

Although James was succeeding in the external world—My Morning Jacket have been nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album three times, for Evil Urges (in 2009), Circuital (in 2012), and The Waterfall (in 2016); his five solo albums (Regions of Light and Sound of God, Eternally Even, Uniform Distortion, Uniform Clarity, and The Order of Nature) and four EPs were all critically acclaimed— that didn’t translate to a sense of well-being, or even self-acceptance. He admits he was alcoholic, at times suicidal, teetering on the edge of burnout and constantly thinking about giving it all up, believing that each of the band’s albums would be the group’s last. In 2019, he told Songwriters on Process: “I think I’ve been sadder more of my life than I’ve been happy.... Sadness has always been a part of my music, but part of me wants to move to another plane of existence because I’m tired of feeling that way.”

But no longer. A therapist he found during the dark days of the pandemic helped him turn himself around with a combination of EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy), where past traumatic events are treated by moving your eyes a specific way while you process the memories; ketamine therapy; parts work, where you envision different versions of yourself—in this case, “Old Jim” and “New Jim”; and family constellation work, all of which set him on a path to recovery, self-love, AND hiring a producer for the first time in the band’s history, tapping Grammy-winning legend Brendan O'Brien to do the driving while the universe did the rest, according to James. CREEM caught up with the musician, who discussed falling under the spell of Louisville ghosts, gender reveals, and how the universe is always right.

You talk about the importance of self-love, but I have noticed that some of the best artists have this element of self-loathing, this need to prove themselves, to be better so the world can appreciate them. Sometimes the best artists just try harder. People who have impostor syndrome actually test higher, and the people who have this self-love are satisfied easily and are not more accomplished.

When I grew up, all of my heroes were complete self-leathers: Kurt Cobain, Neil Young, Brian Wilson, you name it, Marvin Gaye. Like all of this darkness and sadness and depression. Nina Simone with all the anger. Yes, they made some of the greatest art ever made. Then I started tuning in to Curtis Mayfield and would tune in to Stevie Wonder and gospel music or joyous music and feel this sense that maybe the tortured-artist myth was not completely true. I’ll never forget opening Curtis Mayfield’s first solo record, and on the gatefold there’s a picture of him with his daughter sitting on his shoulders, and I thought, “Whoa, okay, it is possible to be a happy, functional person with love and joy in their life and make deeply, profoundly moving music.” That really hit me and has always been a goal of mine, but I’ve always been really just too depressed to get there. I haven’t gotten there [yet]. I’m still a single person; it’s not like I’ve solved all of my problems and I’m just sitting on a cloud of bliss. But I do feel more and more peaceful. I feel more and more in tune with the universe. I think the universe is what we all need to be tuning in to more than just our ego, and so I feel like on this record, for example, I flowed more with the universe than I ever have before.

“I THINK THERE ARE CERTAIN PLACES IN THE PHYSICAL WORLD THAT ARE MORE GATEWAYS FOR OTHER DIMENSIONS.”

Do you have anything ritualistic to get yourself into that place where you’re open to what you call the universe speaking?

You can’t, because you can’t force it and you can’t force it to get there. But I do think that we can make the conditions more and more and more right for the universe to speak. You can’t ever predict it or when it’s going to happen. You get a little glimpse of it, at least for me, when I meditate or when I play music or when I make love. I feel like there are these states that we get into where we forget the human component and we’re God again.

Do you feel like most musicians think this way? That there’s some spiritual component to making music or receiving music?

I don’t know, honestly. I mean, a lot of people do. I think there are words like “holy” and “spiritual’’ that get taken out of context; even “God” gets taken out of context because “God” is too small a word. All of these words that we try to use are too small or they’re triggering for people. I think there are all these people in different times and places that have tried to tell us all about this great force, this great oneness, this great connection. But humans always make the mistake of putting all the emphasis on that person; that person is this holy person. When in fact the person is just trying to say, “Everybody, look at this, we’re all one, everything is one.” I think that music is part of that; a part of that force and a reminder of what life is. Or not even life but that our true soul is music.

On earlier albums you’ve talked about finding love. Are you still seeking love? And by that I mean searching for little-L love, not big-L universal love.

Yes. But here’s the big difference. That’s a great way to ask it. I said before that my life was defined by absence and lack. My life was defined by what was not there, and I was so trapped in not being even remotely aware of what a gift it is to even be alive because I was trapped in this woe-is-me circle: “All my other friends have families and kids and I’m so lonely and I can’t figure anything out.” Now, it’d be great to find a partner and have love and maybe have a kid or two, but I’m defined by what I have now. I have a wonderful, beautiful life, and I was actually reflecting on this. We just did our One Big Holiday festival [My Morning Jacket’s annual three-night “music vacation” named after their 2004 song], and so much of the time in the past when [we played it], I was by myself in my hotel room and all the other guys have their families down and their kids and stuff. I would be riding the woe-is-me, self-pity train the whole time with “I’m so lonely.” But this time I was like, “Oh my God, I’m healthy, I’m fine. I have a good book to read. There’s air-conditioning. There’s the ocean. There’s all these wonderful things right around me.” I felt so peaceful and so content, and I felt so grateful that I’m in a rock ’n’ roll band. Like, just these things that I’m grateful for. That’s different.

You talk about your hometown of Louisville and how it’s a mysterious place. What do you mean by that? Haunted, or something else? What’s a characteristic that defines Louisvillians? And do you possess that too?

I think Louisville is a very undefined place, and I like to think that I’m not defined. Or easy to define. People are always trying to call it what it’s not. Southerners think it’s the North, Northerners think it’s the South. People think it’s this or that and it’s really not anything. It doesn’t subscribe to any labels and nothing sticks to it. I feel the same way [about myself] because I really don’t feel like I apply any labels to myself and I feel like I’m really in touch with my feminine side and really in touch with my masculine side; I feel really just kind of like gender-neutral, and I feel like I float in this kinda nameless place, kind of like Louisville does.

I’ve been very impacted by ghosts and depression my entire life, and Louisville has a lot of ghosts. But I think they’re well-intentioned ghosts, and I think they bring precious gifts. But I think if you’re struggling it can be very difficult to interact with them because you get caught up in all of the darkness. And I’ve known a lot of friends who have gotten swallowed up.

Tell me more about the ghosts.

I feel like the ghosts are everywhere and are all part of the city; they’re in the steam, they’re in the humidity. I just always think it’s so cute how humans think they’re so important. I think there are certain places in the physical world that are more gateways for other dimensions. New Orleans is one; Houston, Texas, is one. I think there are worlds overlaid upon worlds upon worlds upon worlds that we can’t grasp. I think in some places maybe those worlds cross closer, and I think maybe Louisville is a train station or some kind of a byway for spirits to pass through.

Is there a particular ghost that haunts you?

For me, the most personal ghost that I’ve had is my great-grandfather. He committed suicide long before I was born, and I heard of him as a kid. He was some kind of failed musician, and he was never talked about because my family’s Catholic and they believe that suicide is a sin. But I felt his presence, and I always felt like he was with me and trying to guide me and help me not make the same mistakes that he made. For a long time I felt his presence, and I drew this stick angel on my forearm that I got tattooed that indicated his presence to me. He really led me down this lifelong path and guided me into music.

I had this really wild experience where I found his death certificate and I found out where he died and how he died. I went to that spot in Missouri near St. Louis where half of my family came from. Doing EMDR, I did this really beautiful work with him in realizing that he had killed himself while my grandmother was pregnant with my mother. So a lot of that sadness went right into the production of my mother and was baked into us. I had this beautiful experience with him while I was doing the EMDR where he was showing me that the reason he had been trying to be with me so much was that he thought that I could break the generational trauma. Ancestral healing and ancestral trauma are so real that he did it, he reached through me. And I feel like I have done the work to break that.

You’ve talked about how songs come to you in your dreams.

God, it is so amazing. I just feel so grateful. It’s just so weird, I’ll have a dream and in the dream a song appears on the radio, or somebody in the dream is singing it, and then for whatever reason I’ll wake up but I’m still hearing the song. I start singing it to myself and then I’m like, “Oh fuck, I gotta roll over and get my voice memo and sing it into the voice memo because if I don’t, it’s gone.” If I fall back asleep, it’s gone forever. Sometimes I succeed and sometimes I fail if I don’t make it over to the phone and I fall back asleep. It’s one of those things that I'll never understand. And that’s a good example of the 50/50, right? Because if the universe sends me a song in a dream, if I don’t roll over and grab the phone, it’s gone, so that’s only 50 percent. But then the other half of my 50 percent is I can voice-memo it, but then if I don’t take time to sit down with a guitar and listen to the voice memo and start figuring it out, then it also doesn’t exist in the human realm. That part is so interesting, and that’s where our supreme form of consciousness is trying to give us these hints, and those are ways that they come through.

I think there’s one on is, right?

Yeah, “Time Waited” was one that I dreamed [on this album], I had a really great dream, but I dreamed it in a completely different form, a completely different song. It was called “Time Waited,” and it had the melody and some of the lyrics, but it had a definitive structure. We did [the dream version on] Instagram; if you go back, like, a month or two ago you can hear a bit of it.

Is this song about finding love? Or finding something else?

Yeah, in a way it is, but I felt it was a lot about the band. I think time really waited for the band. There were so many years that I resented being in the band; I didn’t enjoy being on tour, I hated it. I really fought it, struggled with it for so long. But then I feel like once I got more into this flow, I realized that, like, Jesus Christ, the time, it bent and warped. Here we are 27 years later and it’s never been better. We’ve never played better; we’ve never been better friends. We’ve never loved each other more. There’s this profound outpouring from all five of us of this love and this incredible gratitude.

I think there’s just something to be said about living your purpose and listening to your heart. I think as a musician, some of my most inspiring moments in the last two years have been seeing people like Joni Mitchell or the Rolling Stones or Bob Dylan really showing the world that age is completely a myth; that age doesn’t ruin your art or you get lame once you get old. It’s like these people are transcending age, making some of the greatest art they’ve ever made. It’s really, really inspiring, and I feel like the more we listen to our true voice, our true soul’s voice, we can warp time and shape time and step through [it in] different ways.

“I JUST LIKE TO THINK OF DEATH AS A GOOD FRIEND.”

I’d like to go back to something. You talk about listening to your heart, yet you didn’t think that Brendan O’Brien was the right guy at first. You met with him a year before you decided to work with him. In his book Blink, Malcolm Gladwell says you can make a significant judgment about someone in five seconds, and it’ll be surprisingly accurate—more accurate than if you took your time. But you took a whole year. What’s up with that?

Yeah, but it’s interesting because I wasn’t in the flow. I was looking for something in this kinda outdated way that “Old Jim” used to think about things, and I hadn’t caught up with what I really needed. We’ve worked with so many wonderful people, but I have this quality that I realize has been both my power and my detriment: Most of the people that we worked with are equals or contemporaries, and I have this way of telling people energetically that I don’t want their opinion. “Here’s my vision, here’s what we’re doing. Yes, I need your help to help me record this or operate the machine here, but I don’t want your opinion.” I think I give off that energy so strongly that most people just back off. They’re glad to help and they do a great job capturing the sound or whatever it is that they’re doing, but I think only now have I been able to open up and realize I don’t know everything and I could benefit from somebody’s help.

Did you scare people? Was “Old Jim” an emotional bully?

I don’t think I try to bully people, because I was bullied. That’s for other people to say. But I would hope not, because I don’t think I'm a mean person or anything. But I just put out this vibe that [I didn’t need help], even when the band began. In my first band, Month of Sundays, I struggled a lot with my friend who also wanted to write songs. We had this big power struggle and he eventually killed himself. I think I have this big scar where I was like...I told all the guys in the band [in the beginning], “Listen, y’all, if you want to make your own music, please do so. Please make solo records and play in other bands, but My Morning Jacket, it’s going to be my songs and you have to understand that. That has to be okay with you because this thing’s gotta live or die by my hand.” I’ve also loved producing and engineering and I really love gear and sound effects. When I was a younger person and we would go to the studio, all the people in the studios would just try to ruin our sound. So I really took this extremist approach of doing everything. I was so lucky to work with people who respected that.

Have you ever had trouble writing? Either “Old Jim” or “New Jim.”

Oh yeah, I’ve had trouble. That’s the other thing, too; there were times when I would look at the studio door or look at a guitar and be like, “Am I ever going to write again? Am I done? Is this it?” I’ve realized now, again it’s like that was my ego talking, that was Jim’s insecurity talking, that was Jim’s self-worth: “God, if I don’t ever make another song nobody’s going to love me. I’m not going to love myself.” And now I’ve seen there’s more of a flow to it, and now I understand when I'm not playing a lot of guitar or going in the studio a lot, that’s okay. My body’s resting, or my spirit’s resting. Because I know there'll be a month when I don’t leave the studio and it takes everything I have just to walk away from the fucking recording to even go to bed. So I try to just listen to that stuff, too, and really let myself not feel guilty about not being productive, because I know it’ll come.

“I HOPE WE GET TO ROCK TILL WE’RE 120.”

What do you think of when you can’t sleep?

I like to imagine the scenario where aliens come down and they stop everything. They’re like, “All right, everybody. Everything’s stopped. Everything’s freezing. We’ve assigned each of you a great therapist that was custom-made just for you and you have to sit here and figure out your shit so life can resume. Everybody has to. Doesn’t matter who you are, every single being has to sit there and get real with themselves: What are you hiding, what are you running from, what are your traumas that you haven’t gotten past, what are you doing?” I really think if people did that, we could have heaven on earth. We could have peace. The ultimate peace, where there’s room for everybody and we could get past all these illusions of our differences. Things like skin color and religious differences that people get so lost in.

What about your band? Did you want the other four to go through therapy? Also, so many bands have had group therapists, but you guys didn’t...

No. We’ve all been lucky over the last five or six years, everybody’s been coming to their own peace on their own paths. It feels like the universe stepping in and everybody’s flowing with it, everybody has gotten more and more peaceful and more and more alcohol-sober. We were talking about it the other night, [drummer] Patrick [Hallahan] and I, after we played our last One Big Holiday show this year. We were sitting, reflecting on everything and thinking how profoundly grateful we are for everything and the health of the band. Because if you have one person that is not in alignment, that could throw the whole thing off. We were saying how grateful we are that there’s not one of us that’s still dealing with some terrible drug addiction or some terrible thing that could wreck everything. That kind of stuff is so difficult, and somehow the universe has brought us all to this moment where we’re all in this really beautiful alignment. I think you really have to enjoy something like this while you have it because all of this will end. I hope we get to play in peace till we’re fucking 129 or whatever, but you never know when it’s all going to end. That brings me comfort, because the one guarantee that all of us have is that it’s all going to end. The more that we can make peace with that and make that our friend, welcome death at the dinner table...

Wait, what’s death at the dinner table?

Well, I just like to think of death as a good friend. Death is somebody that I’m not going to turn my back to. I’m going to welcome my death into my life because it’s something that is guaranteed. And the more that I try to run from it or pretend like it’s not going to happen, I think a lot of the things people get caught up with—clinging to religions or clinging to New Age bullshit thinking—it’s all just this avoidance of death.

Having said that about welcoming death, on the cover of the album, are you guys having a séance? Inviting spirits in?

Nothing is happening. That’s why I love the cover so much.

Is that the Louisville thing again? Never let them know where you’re at?

Yeah. Sylvia Gray, who took the photo, her art is just tremendous. We were trying all these different things. We had a bunch of ideas of photoshopping this or doing this or that or doing all these different things, and we were going to do this whole thing with the table and with us and just different poses. But one of the first things she sent me was this picture of us just sitting at the table. And all of us were just like, “Holy shit, that’s it.” Anything could happen, but nothing is happening. Because, like the album title, is just is. Some people think it feels like a séance, but we were just sitting there being.

One thing I’ve noticed about your fans is that they are always afraid that each album that My Morning Jacket release could be the last one. And you have done little to alleviate their fears. Has that all changed now since you’re in this better place?

Yeah, it has. There were many times I thought it could be over, because I was a very depressed person. I was a very bad alcoholic. I was really just wanting my life to be over a lot in the past. I feel so much better about it all now, but you don’t ever know what tomorrow holds, and I feel like you really have to just hold on to today. Like I said earlier, in some beautiful vision I hope we get to rock till we’re 120. But I also recognize that no one knows what the universe has in store, and it’s just my job to try and learn to flow more and more, more and more and more with the universe because I also don’t want to push this thing any longer than it’s supposed to go. That’s another part of it. But for now, it really feels great.

What’s been a silent witness to your life? Like maybe an object you’ve had since you were a child...

Wow, that’s a great question. I don’t really think of them as lucky charms, but I’ve got this stuffed Pac-Man toy that I had when I was a kid and a stuffed little chicken. They’re both pretty small—they’re the size of a softball—and they’re best friends. I got them when I was 2 or 3, and I still have them on my bedside table next to my bed. Yeah. Packy and Chicky are their names.

The song “I Can Feel Your Love,” is that your George Harrison song? First thought, best thought: Who was your favorite Beatle?

Well, for the longest time when I was a younger, angry person it was John. And then as I tried to understand spirituality and get into that stuff it was George. And then when I played a benefit concert at Radio City Music Hall and I walked into an empty Radio City Music Hall and heard Paul McCartney singing “Let It Be” by himself in the empty hall at sound check it was Paul. And then when I watched the Peter Jackson Get Back documentary it was Ringo. I realized Ringo is the Christ figure of the Beatles. Ringo is the Buddha holding it all together. Ringo blew my mind more than any of them in the Peter Jackson film. I feel like there was some greater magic behind the Beatles. They truly are prophets. For that much talent, I mean, just like all so good-looking, all so talented, all so...it’s just such divine magic.

Oh, best trick for hair. How do you handle curly hair in Louisville?

You just gotta go with it. It just accentuates it and it just puffs it up.

That’s the difference between you and me: I’m fighting reality and you’re going with it.

No, I’m flowing with the universe.