Bo Interview

[MusiKel Mama]

http://whopperjaw.net/my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall/
Here's an interview with everyone's favorite ivory tickler

[johnnYYac]

and another...

It's a homecoming gig for My Morning Jacket's Bo Koster of Lakewood

http://www.cleveland.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2015/05/its_a_homecoming_gig_for_my_mo.html

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Homecomings usually happen during football season, and if the schedule makers do it right, it normally means a guaranteed win for "the good guys.''

For one member of My Morning Jacket, who are at Playhouse Square's State Theatre on Wednesday, June 3, you can probably count on a homecoming victory.

Bo Koster, a Lakewood High and Cleveland Institute of Music alum, is coming back to town in triumph. Family and friends are "coming out of the woodwork,'' he said, laughing, in a call from California late last month.

Koster, a classically trained keyboardist who also attended Berklee College of Music, left for California 15 years ago. He met his bandmates – founder and lead singer Jim James, drummer Patrick Hallahan, guitarist and pedal steel player Carl Broemel and bassist Tom Blankenship – in Louisville, Kentucky. That's the hometown of James and his childhood friend, Hallahan.

"Louisville's an interesting place,'' Koster said. "It's kind of the juxtaposition of that place between Northern culture and Southern culture.

Juxtaposition is a good way to describe the art-rock band whose latest album, "The Waterfall,'' has undertones of Pink Floyd and the Beatles' "White Album,'' mixed with a bit of soul and country influences . . . and is none of those.

"I would just say rock 'n' roll,'' said Koster, asked to categorize the sound of the album. "It's hard to describe in a lot of ways.

"I think that's a good thing,'' Koster said. "We've developed our own original voice, and in art it's important to sound like yourself and do the things that are unique to you.''

It's been an evolutionary process for the band that began in Louisville in 1998 and went through some lineup changes. Koster became part of the group in 2003.

"One of the main lessons I learned early on was that Carl and I were both 'schooled' musicians,'' he said. "We both studied classical music.

"Jim was on the other side – not trained, and neither is Patrick, so the main lesson I learned was you could make great music just knowing a couple of chords,'' he said.

"It was often about the feeling and the originality and the intention of it – that whole left-brain, right-brain thing,'' Koster said.

"For me, I've grown in that way, just in the creative sense in the way that Jim makes music,'' he said. "He puts it together in a very unique way, and he's not stuck in a system of learning that Carl and I grew up in. He's much more creating his own path and his own technique as he goes along.''

That shows in the band's newest release, "The Waterfall,'' an artful collection that features James' plaintive, soaring voice over harmonies from Koster. The album title is part of a lyric in the song "In Its Infancy,'' a cut Koster said is among those that show where band is in its development. The others: "Spring (Among the Living)," "In Its Infancy'' and "Compound Fracture.''

"Those are the songs that feel the most NOW,'' he said. They carry vestiges of what the band has done before, "but it seems like they're a pretty healthy step forward.''

The band's sound – complex, yet clean – will be well served by the acoustics at the State Theatre, although doing the show at such venue isn't really intentional.

"I do think we tend to translate better on a bigger stage, where we can get the full production of the show, with the lights and the ability to move around,'' he said.

Part of the credit goes to the band's longtime sound boss.

"Our front-of-house guy, Ryan Pickett,'' has been with the band longer than I have,'' Koster noted. "He's like a member of the band at this point. . . . It's definitely a team.''

And Wednesday is Homecoming.

PREVIEW
My Morning Jacket
When: 8 p.m. Wednesday, June 3.
Where: Playhouse Square's State Theatre.
Opener: Floating Action.
Tickets: $35 to $45, at the box office, online at playhousesquare.org and livenation.com and by phone at 216-241-6000.