Lexington Herald - Carl

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http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/entertainment/music/13198549.htm

Posted on Sun, Nov. 20, 2005
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M O R E   N E W S   F R O M   topix.net
 • My Morning Jacket
 • Pop/Rock
 • Bare Jr.

IF YOU GO

a new morning

Louisville band is reinvented with a very lucky guitarist

By Walter Tunis

CONTRIBUTING MUSIC WRITER

Carl Broemel was having a bad day.

Fed up with a career path that had left the classically trained, Indiana-bred guitarist creatively stranded in California, he heard on the radio a tune called I Will Sing You Songs -- an aural equivalent of a slow afternoon rain shower -- by Louisville's My Morning Jacket.

"I specifically remember hearing that song and thinking, 'Why can't I be doing something like that?'" Broemel said. "That was the kind of music I wanted to be playing."

Well, what a coincidence. It just so happened that as 2003 drew to a close, MMJ guitarist Johnny Quaid and keyboardist Danny Cash decided they'd had enough of the band's savage touring schedule. Given national buzz the band stirred after the release of its major-label debut record It Still Moves, the grind was only going to increase, so Quaid and Cash quit.

So when word was out that the remaining Jacketeers were auditioning new members, Broemel contacted a longtime pal, Americana rocker Bobby Bare Jr. As luck would have it, Bare was also a friend of MMJ singer and principal songwriter Jim James.

"I called Bobby and he was like, 'Man, you would be perfect for My Morning Jacket. I'll call Jim and put in a good word for you.' And he did."

And by January 2004, Broemel and new keyboardist Bo Koster were in the band. Good thing, too. Work was set to start on a new album with British producer John Leckie, whose three-decade client list runs from Be Bop Deluxe to Radiohead. With Leckie at the helm, MMJ began to dismantle (or at least poke a few holes through) the wall of reverb that had surrounded MMJ's music since its early indie recordings.

So the band was not only at a point where it was replacing a sizable chunk of its lineup. It was also hoping to broaden its often-unclassifiable mix of psychedelia, Southern surrealism and occasional doses of pop and guitar boogie.

Oh, yes. Because national (and in several cases, international) attention was already focused on the Louisville band, you could bet more than a few music industry eyes and ears were also on MMJ.

"While everybody was really encouraging to me when I joined, I don't think anybody really knew what was going to happen," Broemel said. "But what I found out right away was rehearsing with My Morning Jacket is about 1,000 times different from playing a show with My Morning Jacket. We rehearse and we plan out some things, but I think the band feeds a lot off the audience. We like the things we can't control."

The Leckie-produced album Z lets loose Broemel's guitar textures and technique on the more straightforward pop groove of Off the Record as well as on the more atmospheric (and, yes, reverb-savvy) Gideon.

"It's like having a little playground when you record with these guys," he said.

Despite his nearly two-year tenure with MMJ, Broemel has not moved to Louisville -- at least, not yet. But he has bolted from the West Coast to a new home in Nashville. "This way I don't have to go to the airport every time we need to rehearse. Besides, my folks still live in Indianapolis. So I was really ready to get out of California."

Although he remains a Hoosier at heart, Broemel will undoubtedly be doing some big-time bonding with Derby City this week, when MMJ concludes its current tour with a Thanksgiving Eve homecoming performance at the Louisville Palace. And don't be a bit surprised if I Will Sing You Songs, the very tune that brought him back east, winds up in the set list.

"When I joined, I spent a week or two listening to their records over and over again," the guitarist said. "As that song came up, I thought, 'How did this happen. How did I get so lucky to actually get what I wished for?'"
My Morning Jacket

When: 8:30 p.m. Wed.

Where: Louisville Palace, 625 Fourth Ave.

Tickets: $27. Through TicketMaster, (859) 281-6644 or www.ticketmaster.com.

[EC]

'How did this happen. How did I get so lucky to actually get what I wished for?'

I love that.  That's really nice.  :)

[Dee.]

Yes it is.  Go, Carl.