My Morning Jacket, Balthvs

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Danny Clinch

The five members of My Morning Jacket.

My Morning Jacket

media release: My Morning Jacket is continuing to celebrate the impending arrival of their eagerly awaited new album, is, by unveiling a new slate of US headline dates. The second leg of MY MORNING JACKET “is” ON TOUR begins August 5 at Bend, OR’s Hayden Homes Amphitheater and then continues through an August 22 show at Berkeley, CA’s famed Greek Theatre. The tour will resume October 8 at Washington, DC’s The Anthem and then travel through a two-night stand at Atlanta, GA’s historic Fox Theatre on October 31 and November 1. Highlights of the newly announced dates include a two-night return to Morrison, CO’s world renowned Red Rocks Amphitheatre (August 15-16), a two-night stand at Philadelphia, PA’s The Met (October 10-11), and three-night runs at Brooklyn, NY’s Brooklyn Paramount (October 16-18) and Chicago, IL’s The Salt Shed (October 24-26). Special guests will be announced soon. For complete details, please see www.mymorningjacket.com/tour.

My Morning Jacket is excited to continue its long-time partnership with environmental nonprofit REVERB on MY MORNING JACKET “is” ON TOUR to build upon previous successes and expand the tour sustainability program, engage fans in the Action Village at each show, and support REVERB’s Music Decarbonization Project to accelerate climate solutions within the music industry.

My Morning Jacket’s 10th studio album and first full-length new collection in more than three years, is arrives via ATO Records on Friday, March 21. Pre-orders – including limited edition vinyl, CD, and digital download – are available now. Produced by 3x GRAMMY® Award-winner Brendan O’Brien (Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam), the album includes the ravishing lead single, “Time Waited,” which has quickly ascended to the top 10 on Billboard’s Adult Alternative Airplay chart while earning the chart’s “Gains In Weekly Performance” award. An official music video, directed by famed photographer/filmmaker Danny Clinch and featuring new performance footage interspersed with archival photos from throughout the band’s history, is streaming now on YouTube. is was further heralded earlier this month by the psychedelically propulsive second single, “Squid Ink,” accompanied by a visually arresting official music video once again directed by Clinch. In addition, My Morning Jacket recently lit up ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! with spectacular performances of “Time Waited” and “Squid Ink.”

For more than 25 years, My Morning Jacket have achieved an incredibly rare feat in the world of rock ‘n’ roll – upholding a long-established cultural legacy while sustaining all the curiosity and creative hunger of their very earliest days. In a monumental step for the Louisville, KY-bred five-piece – vocalist/guitarist Jim James, bassist Tom Blankenship, guitarist Carl Broemel, drummer Patrick Hallahan, keyboardist Bo Koster – is once again expands the limits of their sound and elevates their artistry to unprecedented heights. The result is perhaps the most masterfully realized work yet from a band fully committed to their belief in music as a conduit for revelation of all kinds.

Largely recorded at Henson Recording Studios in Los Angeles, is finds My Morning Jacket deviating from their typically self-produced approach by teaming up with multiple GRAMMY® Award-winner Brendan O’Brien, one of the most esteemed producers in rock music, known for his extensive work with Bruce Springsteen and Pearl Jam. For James – who has produced or co-produced all of the band’s studio albums since their 1999 debut The Tennessee Fire – the decision to work with O’Brien stemmed from a newfound willingness to open up their process and involve an outside creative force in shaping My Morning Jacket’s restlessly inventive yet nuanced form of psych-rock.

“Up until now I’ve never been able to let go and allow someone else to steer the ship,” James says. “It almost felt like an out-of-body experience to step back and give control over to someone who’s far more accomplished and made so many more records than us, but in the end, I was able to enjoy the process maybe more than I ever have before.”

Prior to joining O’Brien in the studio, My Morning Jacket got together for two highly exploratory writing and recording sessions, amassing over a hundred demos before settling upon the 10 eclectic tracks that eventually comprise the finished album. New songs such as the sprawling, album-opening epic, “Out In The Open” and the delightfully warped “Squid Ink” reveal a band whose voracious creative appetite is wholly matched by a deft command of their visionary musicality. When it came time to name the collection, My Morning Jacket chose a title that speaks to the infinitely unpredictable nature of music-making.

“I like how the word “is” indicates a sense of presence in the now – there’s no logic or rationale behind this record; it just is,” says James. “All these songs came into existence out of an attempt to connect with something beyond the human experiment, which for me is the whole purpose of music – that connection with something larger than us, yet something we are all equally a part of.”

is – which arrives as My Morning Jacket celebrates the 20th anniversary of their 2005 landmark Z, a lavishly acclaimed collection named by Rolling Stone among “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time” – represents another milestone in the band’s ever-evolving body of work, as well as an opportunity to breathe new energy into their historically stunning and hard-driving live performances. James points to the “undeniable force of loving” as the most essential factor in the band’s longevity and unending enchantment with the process of musical creation.

“One of the cool things about being around this long is that we’re not afraid to scrap something if we don’t absolutely love it,” he says. “It feels really great to have a collection of songs we all love this much, and to know that we worked as hard as we possibly could on them. Hopefully, those songs will be helpful to people and give them some kind of peace as they try to deal with the insanity of the world – because that’s what music does for me, and doing the same for others is always my greatest dream come true.”