The up and coming group My Morning Jacket (aka MMJ) closed out their fall tour with their annual performance in their hometown of Louisville, Kentucky on this past Thanksgiving eve. This year’s sold-out concert was held at the magnificent Louisville Palace on November 23rd 2005. The Palace is a renovated theatre from the late 1920’s with lots of ornate decorations in the Spanish Baroque motif and excellent acoustics.
MMJ consists of singer-guitarist and songwriter Jim James, bassist Two-Tone Tommy, drummer Patrick Hallahan, keyboardist Bo Koster, and guitarist Carl Broemel. Koster and Broemel are recent additions to MMJ replacing founding members Johnny Quaid and Danny Cash.
The band opened the two hour, 20 song set with three back-to-back songs from their newest album Z: "Wordless," "It Beats," and "Gideon." The band’s sound was tight and focused from the get go as they tore into "One Big" from 2003’s It Still Moves. Based on the large amount of sing-along voices coming from the crowd this was one of MMJ fan’s favorites. The guitar breaks featured Carl and Jim performing dueling leads with excellent backing from the rest of the band.
"Wonderful," from Z was next followed by "Lowdown" and "I Will Sing" from At Dawn
and It Still Moves respectively. "I Will Sing" featured more of Jim James’s excellent electric guitar work. It seemed like each time he picked up his Flying V guitar the band’s sound would just explode and rock really hard. The acoustic number "Golden" followed with its haunting steel guitar riffing expertly layered under Jim’s vocals. The quirky "Sooner" from the Darla Records compilation CD.
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