My Morning Jacket

(Pictured above [L-R]: My Morning Jacket's Bo Koster, Patrick Hallahan, Jim James, Two-Tone Tommy and Carl Broemel)

In the midst of a fitful sleep somewhere between Buffalo and Cleveland on Interstate 90, I wake to the sound of wine and liquor bottles crashing. In the wee hours of the morning, the driver of My Morning Jacket’s tour bus has made a sharp turn, and the contents of a slippery counter in the vehicle’s forward lounge have smashed to the floor.

I groan, but avoid rolling over (only one position—the back—works for sleeping on a moving bus.) And I decide not to get up to survey the damage; I’m on the uppermost bunk and in my groggy state will surely step on someone if I climb down.

Unless you count a pre-show screening of Badder Santa, this is about as decadent as it gets touring with rock ’n’ rollers My Morning Jacket. Earlier in the evening, I was ushered to my bunk and handed a blanket and pillow—not by the band’s road manager—but by Jim James himself, the band’s leader and sole songwriter. And the next day, at a homecoming show in Louisville, Ky., band members’ parents, siblings and old friends (including the members of another noteworthy Louisville band, VHS or Beta) would mob the backstage area.

I may be on the road with one of director Cameron Crowe’s favorite bands, but this certainly isn’t Almost Famous (though I keep expecting to see Russell Hammond and Jeff Bebe standing alongside the road, hoping to thumb a ride after they’d kissed and made up at a Jacket concert).

To quote Penny Lane, “it’s all happening” for My Morning Jacket, but it’s happening musically. Despite their growing reputation as a phenomenal live band, and a series of recordings worshipped by an expanding cult, My Morning Jacket is about the rock ’n’ roll—hold the casual sex, drugs, trashed hotel rooms and, if possible, photo shoots and interviews. “I think the only time we actually act like rock stars is onstage,” observes keyboardist Bo Koster.

The band’s discomfort with anything not directly related to the music rears its head when photos by veteran rock photographer Danny Clinch arrive, prior to a gig supporting Wilco in Buffalo.

“This is the one to use for the tribute to me after I die,” deadpans James, holding up a beatific solo shot.

“Jim, some of those frontal shots of you, you look like you’re from Abu Dhabi or something,” says drummer Patrick Hallahan, eyeing James in an olive head wrapping.

“That’s my goal,” James responds. “I want to look Abu Dhalicious.”

But James isn’t joking as he turns toward me: “I wish we could do this thing without pictures. Like, run a story of us with a picture of a beach ball.”

James and Hallahan then start plotting ways to avoid future photo shoots. “We should have brought in some graying stuff to do some pics for years down the road,” Hallahan suggests.

“Hey, that’s a good idea,” James says. It’s obviously no accident their latest album includes a song called “Off The Record.” They may avoid rock’s clichéd excesses, but in a sense, My Morning Jacket is Stillwater, the fictional band from Almost Famous, and their story may well be “a think piece about a mid-level band struggling with their own limitations in the harsh face of stardom.” I tell the band this and we all laugh, but I’m only half kidding.

Consider that October will bring not just the release of My Morning Jacket’s second major-label album, Z, but will also see the Jacket’s silver-screen debut, playing another fictional band, Ruckus, in Crowe’s Elizabethtown, with representation on the soundtrack as well. All this comes on the heels of another performance at the Bonnaroo fest in Tennessee that’s the talk of everyone who was there.

This band of introverts (save the garrulous Hallahan) isn’t interested in discussing world domination, however. “We made the record we wanted to make, and we had this opportunity to work with one of our favorite directors of all time,” James says. “We’ve just gone the fun route. I don’t know if that is going to be the coolest thing. I don’t know if that is going to be the most critically lauded thing. Or if the public is going to like it. I don’t know.”

“Harsh face of stardom” or not, My Morning Jacket stands at something of a crossroads. Since It Still Moves, the band’s successful 2003 ATO Records debut (and third full-length), the band has lost founding guitarist Johnny Quaid and keyboardist Danny Cash (replaced, respectively, by Carl Broemel and Bo Koster). Co-produced by John Leckie (Radiohead, New Order, XTC), Z is both the first album James hasn’t solely produced, and the first recorded away from “the farm,” the band’s longtime homebase near Louisville, Ky. While no one connected to the band shows any signs of feeling the pressure, it still feels like a moment of opportunity.