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From The Tennessee Fire To Evil Urges: A Look Ahead (and Back) with My Morning Jacket

The Tennessee Fire

Last month, My Morning Jacket announced they would be playing five full-length shows at New York City’s Terminal 5 this fall, performing one of their full-length albums in its entirety each night. Kicking off on Monday, October 18, the band will begin the run with their 1999 debut record The Tennessee Fire and conclude with 2008’s Evil Urges on Saturday. Each night will incorporate hits from outside the records as well as rarities and covers throughout the time of the albums inception. Relix caught up with co-founder and bassist Tom “Two-Tone Tommy” Blankenship to discuss this historic five night stretch in New York City, the reason behind the event, an upcoming record and more.

The last time My Morning Jacket played New York city was after the release of 2008’s LP Evil Urges where the band headline Madison Square Garden on New Year’s Eve. This fall, the band is doing five shows in six nights at New York City’s Terminal 5. What is it about New York City that prompted the group to schedule a five show Fall stretch there? And why, out of the many city venues, Terminal 5?

That’s a good question [laughs]. It’s funny; the entire band was sort of opposed to doing a multiple night event. We’ve definitely done them before, but we’ve never done more than two or three nights in a row, I don’t think. So when the promoter originally brought the idea to us saying that we can pretty much block out this entire week and have five days, we were kind of like, “Eh, we don’t know” [laughs]. But it was sort of a mixed bag because it really would be great to be in New York for that long and play in a venue we haven’t been in before. And then, when it was suggested that we do one album for each night, it became interesting because that was something we had never really done before. When a My Morning Jacket record would come out in the past, we would maybe play it front to back a couple times at most. But a lot of the material has never been done start to finish in that way, especially The Tennessee Fire and At Dawn tracks. So we became excited and agreed to these shows and, of course, the Bowery is involved and we have such a long, good relationship with them. That was pretty much how it all came together. They had the idea along with our management as well, and then brought these ideas to us and we flushed it out from there.

It’s definitely going to be a monster production. Are you planning on going through the albums’ tracks successively or possibly rearranging the record and peppering in other tracks here and there to change it up?

We’ll definitely go through each album in its entirety. I’m pretty sure we’re going to do it start to finish in the exact order as it’s played on the record. I think it’d be cool because—at least for us—the way we think about albums is that we like to create a sort of journey through our music. We’re on that journey together as a band; organizing it and sequencing everything just right. We just hope that the listener will sit down at least once and go through that whole journey with us before they start picking their favorite tracks. I think it’s going to be fun to go through the records front to back and actually experience that journey live with the audience.

What additional songs will be included throughout the sets other than the ones featured on each record?

We’re hoping to do a lot of material from around the era of each particular album. Some random covers that we’ve done over the years,—which there have been tons of— EPs and B sides that we can throw in the mix. There might be some new songs in there as well. We’ll also probably play some crowd favorites during the encore every night.

Since only Jim James and you have been a part of the group since the band’s 1998 inception, what was the process like revisiting the group’s earlier material with the current lineup?

We haven’t really started full band rehearsals for that stuff yet so I’m not exactly sure how some of the older songs will develop, everyone’s just been working off on their own. A lot of The Tennessee Fire stuff we’ve done before live with the current lineup. It should definitely be interesting to see how everything comes full circle. They’re songs like “Honest Man,” “Just Because I Do,” and “Butch Cassidy” that we haven’t done in years. I don’t even think we’ve ever done those live.

And regarding guests, do you have any plans to invite any former members of the band back for these shows?

It may be tough to have any former members play with us during this stretch. I know that Danny Cash is trying to make his way to New York for at least one of those first two shows, so hopefully we can get him out for one night. But I think John [Quaid] is moving closer to the west coast, so he’ll be unable to make it out.