Jim James and his jam mates from My Morning Jacket are blowing out twenty candles this year. Before he sinks his teeth into their birthday cake, the bearded singer is coming to Brussels to present his solo work.
Jim James: "It seems that there's a blanket of distortion over everything nowadays."
Jim James chooses clarity: 'My head is about to explode'
Jim James has not performed in Brussels since 2003, when he came to the Ancienne Belgique with My Morning Jacket. In 2008, James and the band were supposed to come to the Cirque Royal, but a few weeks before the show, he fell off the stage in Iowa and the rest of the tour had to be cancelled.
“It was horrible, but like many things that lots of people have to go through that are very hard, it helped me see things in a new light,” James told us four years later, when he channelled that whole period into the cosmic stardust-sprinkled solo debut Regions of Light and Sound of God.
That album, which James described as “the sound of the future past”, was the beginning of a fruitful solo career in which the singer from Kentucky turned away from the echoing, grain silo-engrossed Americana of his band My Morning Jacket. Instead he explored his love of the soul of Marvin Gaye, reinterpreted songs by Brian Wilson and George Harrison, and dallied with electronica and synths.
Simplicity is key
But last year, James returned to his roots on Uniform Distortion, a grimy piece of classic rock that sounded as though it had been recorded on cassette in a teenager’s bedroom.
“The whole point of Uniform Distortion was simplicity,” he explains over the telephone from LA. “Super simple, without overthinking it, very rock ‘n’ roll, dirty and rough. Nowadays a lot of records sound clean and polished. I love stuff that is gnarly and really fucked up. But I also wanted every sound to be distorted and blown-up because that is how I feel about society today: it seems that there’s a blanket of distortion over everything.”
The idea of its naked twin brother, the folky Uniform Clarity that James recorded later on in the same year, only came later. “That is the power of the song,” he says. “You can play one song in a million different ways.”
One of the catalysts in the run-up to your album Uniform Distortion was finding the Whole Earth Catalog at a flea market. Between 1968 and 1972, that magazine aimed to be a guide to the counter culture, with essays, articles, tips, and references aimed at self-sufficiency and a sustainable planet. Did you know Steve Jobs called it “Google in paperback”?
JIM JAMES: Oh, that’s awesome. But it’s true, it was basically the internet before the internet. In the form of a magazine, in which you could find out about anything you were curious about. If you were interested in building your own house, organic farming, learning how to play guitar, building synths, or whatever, the Whole Earth Catalog provided handy tips. It is really fascinating and still useful today.
That is also where you found the photo for your album cover. A picture by Duane Michals entitled The Illuminated Man. Whose head is behind that flash of light?
JAMES: I don’t know. I just wanted to use that photo because it captured a feeling that I have had for a long time: my head is about to explode. We are blinded with information and news. And we don’t know what is true and what isn’t. That’s what I really mean with everything being distorted. I wanted to figure out how we can cut through that distortion and get back to the truth.
You wrote Michals a letter to ask whether you could use his image. You said that you “have been feeling increasingly overwhelmed by the speed of technology and its place in our lives.” Is it true that, in the run-up to the album, you went off the grid for a while?
JAMES: Yes. Computers are an amazing tool, and I will certainly not deny the usefulness of social media. But it is a love-hate relationship. I struggle with the impact of new technologies on our lives, and I am convinced that we do not yet understand the full extent of the ways in which the internet is changing us.
In the song “Throwback”, you talk about being young and about “all the potential in the world”. Is that pure nostalgia or is there something more?
JAMES: I wrote that song while staring at Instagram. I was struck by how weird it is when you scroll down in someone’s account and you see that person becoming younger and younger. But in reality, you’re wasting your life away while the clock just keeps ticking.We are of course obsessed with nostalgia. And we think that the past was better. But “all the potential” refers to today. We have to try to live in the now and to appreciate the now.
"It seems that there's a blanket of distortion over everything nowadays"
About the now, in “Over and Over” you say that we constantly make the same mistakes.
JAMES: Yeah, when will that ever stop? When are we going to stop killing one another? When are we going to stop thinking that building a wall is a good idea?
Will that wall be the millstone around Trump’s neck
JAMES: I’m shocked that our president’s not in jail yet. Everybody is waiting for even dirtier shit to come out. Do we need that? Trump should be relieved of his office as soon as possible. Thanks to the Midterms we finally have a bit more leverage.
In the run-up to those Midterms, you organized the Future Is Voting tour. Are you happy about the results?
JAMES: I think we were all kind of halfway happy. They were extremely important elections, and it was good to remind people that voting is essential. We wanted especially to convince young people to vote, but that is very difficult. In the race to 2020 we have to do even better. But now we have to exhale for a moment because the Midterms were very intense.
Just before Christmas you recorded a new version of Burt Bacharach’s “What the World Needs Now Is Love” with the Resistance Revival Chorus. Why that song?
JAMES: It’s a wonderful song. It was a hit for Jackie DeShannon in 1966, and she’s from Kentucky. (Laughs) I think we all realize that we live in a violent world. Every little bit of extra love can do wonders – I’m really sick of anger right now. Bacharach’s song is almost like a prayer or a mantra. I wanted it to get into everybody’s head again. As an artist, that is my small contribution to building a better world.
> Jim James
27/1, 19.30, Botanique
Read more about: Brussel , Muziek , My Morning Jacket , AB , Jim James
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