by Gavin Heaney
The reverb soaked vocals that flow out of Jim James resound like a waterfall, emitting a cool and cleansing mist. This is the wellspring of My Morning Jacket’s sacred sound, which is like a rushing cascade of restorative water thundering through a rocky canyon hollow, echoing eternity. Inspiration for his songs circles in its current.
“I’m not the kind of songwriter who can sit down and deliberately make something happen or change. It has to be nurtured and then it will flow. I try not to question it. I have to spend time with it, then bring it into the real world and let it flow some more,” James told Joshua Miller in an interview with Grammy.com.
There is a deeper under tow to this band and James along with bassist Tom Blankenship, drummer Patrick Hallahan, guitarist Carl Broemel, and keyboardist Bo Koster penetrate its depths. The band’s at its best when they go with its flow, according to James. “When it’s just the five of us together, it enables us to focus on our friendship and the energy between us in this really special way that removes all the pressure. We just let things fly and I think that results in a lot of moments that are really beautiful and spontaneous,” he said.
One of those moment will be on the closing day, Sunday May 3, of the 2026 BeachLife Music Festival in Redondo Beach at Seaside Lagoon.
My Morning Jacket is the call of the wild. They answer all the pain and confusion of this world with one gigantic collective howl of unbreakable spirit and sound that is determined not to let humanity wither in our modern world. “I just feel like we’ve all gotten swept away in this tidal wave of technology and that we’re all drowning,“ said James. “Drowning in social media, in streaming content and all this stuff that’s supposed to make our lives better. I feel like social media is tearing us apart and people forget their own dreams because they wash it all away each night, bingeing and streaming. I write from being washed away myself. I found this moment where I saw how washed away I was getting.”
Jim James looks like a crazed castaway at times when performing on stage. At Coachella 2006, the sound and the vision of this wild man seemed impossibly at odds. James sprouted long hair in every direction, covering his face completely with greasy old growth, looking more like the frontman of a death metal band. Then that mythical voice rose out, sang the words to “Golden” and the watchers were spell bound by some deep old forest magic, something immortality pure.
You’ll be right here forever
We’ll go thru this thing together
And on heaven’s golden shore we’ll lay our heads
The human spirit that My Morning Jacket evokes still moves and they won’t be satisfied until they get it all out of their system, until that high lonesome cry echoing through the misty mountains is answered by a thrilling electrified landslide tumbling down into the sea at this years BeachLife Festival.
My Morning Jacket helps close the festival, along with Sheryl Crow and James Taylor, on Sunday, May 3. For more details visit BeachLifeFestival.com. ER
