My Morning Jacket has spent nearly three decades making some of American rock’s most searching, reverb-drenched music, and almost every chapter of that story runs back through Louisville, Kentucky. Frontman Jim James formed the band there in 1998, the group recorded some of its most important albums in and around the city, and two of its five current members still call it home.
Known for four-hour marathon sets, echo-soaked vocals, and an ever-shifting sound that runs from psychedelic country to falsetto R&B, My Morning Jacket built its reputation on the road and in the studio — but the songs themselves, by James’ own account, often started on long walks through his hometown.
Critics have struggled for years to pin the band to a single genre, and that restlessness is part of the appeal: My Morning Jacket has been described as indie rock, art rock, psychedelic rock, alternative country, Southern rock, and jam-band Americana, sometimes within the same album.
Formed in a Louisville Bedroom
James Edward Olliges Jr., who performs as Jim James, grew up in Hikes Point, a Louisville suburb. He got his own guitar in seventh grade and was instantly hooked. “I was completely captivated by it,” he later said, “like it could take me to another dimension.” He spent his teenage afternoons jamming on heavy metal and grunge at a drummer friend’s house.
James started My Morning Jacket in 1998 as an outlet for quieter, acoustic songs his heavier band, Month of Sundays, had no use for. The first lineup included his cousin Johnny Quaid on guitar, Tom Blankenship on bass, and J. Glenn on drums — all formerly of the Shelbyville, Kentucky, emo-punk band Winter Death Club. The band’s name came from a coat James found discarded, with the initials “MMJ” stitched onto it — a small, almost accidental origin for a band that would go on to headline festivals across the world.
Vocals in a Grain Silo
The band’s 1999 debut, “The Tennessee Fire,” became a surprise hit in the Netherlands and Belgium even as it drew a small but devoted following at home. For it, James recorded many of his vocals inside an empty grain silo, running cable out to the structure to capture its natural echo — a sound that became the band’s early signature.
It was a really, really beautiful farm way out in the middle of nowhere, and we had a studio in this little apartment above the garage.
— Jim James, on recording “At Dawn”
The band’s second album, “At Dawn” (2001), was recorded at the Shelbyville-area farm belonging to guitarist Johnny Quaid’s grandparents, just outside Louisville. “We were just so green and just such infants, we didn’t really know anything about professional recording,” James said, “but we recorded it all ourselves and recorded it all to tape and just had a really amazing time out there.”
The band’s fortunes shifted with 2003’s “It Still Moves,” its major-label debut for ATO Records, and 2005’s “Z,” a critical breakthrough that traded the early reverb-heavy sound for dub and reggae textures. That lineup change was significant: keyboardist Danny Cash and guitarist Johnny Quaid, James’s cousin and an original member, both departed in early 2004, replaced by keyboardist Bo Koster and guitarist Carl Broemel, who remain in the band today alongside James, Blankenship, and Hallahan.
The Bonnaroo Set
By 2008, with major-label backing and a growing national following, the band released “Evil Urges,” its most polarizing record yet, and followed it with a legendary appearance at that summer’s Bonnaroo Music Festival. Starting at midnight in a torrential downpour, the band played for four hours and thirty-five songs, including a guest turn from Metallica’s Kirk Hammett.
Rolling Stone called the show “career-defining.” “It was a loving affair,” James said afterward, “and a magical night.” The band went on to perform “Evil Urges” material on Saturday Night Live and sold out New York’s Madison Square Garden that same era.
Ninety-Minute Walks Through Louisville
When the blood starts pumping, shit comes out. Rhythms come, lines come, melodies come. A lot of the songs on Evil Urges came from those walks.
— Jim James
Much of “Evil Urges” itself had been written on foot. Before moving from Louisville to New York, James took a 90-minute walk through the city almost every day while writing the record. “It’s very meditative,” he said of the ritual, crediting it directly with shaping the songs that became the album.
Back Home to Record
The band returned home again to make its sixth album. In 2010, James and producer Tucker Martine set up in an old church in Louisville to record what became “Circuital,” released in 2011. “We’re trying to do everything but the strings live,” James told Rolling Stone at the time. “There’s something old and dirty-sounding about it.”
The sessions doubled as a homecoming: bassist Tom Blankenship and drummer Patrick Hallahan, James’s childhood best friend, still lived in Louisville even as James himself had relocated to New York and, later, other members scattered to Nashville and Los Angeles.
The Bonnaroo performance became something of a cultural touchstone in its own right: an “American Dad!” episode, “My Morning Straitjacket,” was later built around a fictionalized version of the show, inspired by a producer’s own life-changing experience watching the band that rainy night in Tennessee.
After 2011’s “Circuital,” the band took an extended break, during which James toured behind his solo album “Regions of Light and Sound of God” and collaborated with Elvis Costello and Marcus Mumford on “The New Basement Tapes” project. Rather than pulling the band apart, those side projects reportedly sharpened each member’s skills and left them with a renewed appreciation for playing together. The band regrouped for 2015’s “The Waterfall,” recorded at a mountaintop house above Stinson Beach, California, and its 2020 companion album, “The Waterfall II.”
A Band That Keeps Coming Home
My Morning Jacket has released ten studio albums since 1999, including “Z” (2005), which Rolling Stone critic David Fricke credited with bringing America “a lot closer to getting its own Radiohead.” The band has been nominated for multiple Grammy Awards without a win, and its live shows remain its calling card.
More recently, the band released a self-titled ninth album in 2021, followed two years later by its first holiday record, “Happy Holiday!” In 2024, My Morning Jacket toured the East Coast alongside Nathaniel Rateliff, debuting the new single “Aren’t We One?” along the way as work continued on another album.
Blankenship and Hallahan still live in Louisville today. In a 2024 interview, Hallahan discussed the band’s newest music and even floated the idea of a future My Morning Jacket music festival in the city where it all started — a fitting idea for a band that, whatever coast its members scatter to, has never really stopped writing about home.