Jim James

“I went to college for, like, a year and a half with the intention of doing some kind of art therapy or some kind of teaching of art, because I feel like art is a more free area in school than music is. I feel like music is too mathematic for me. Music school's so hard. It's math.”

“'What's Going On' is one of the greatest albums ever made. I definitely wasn't aiming to make my 'What's Going On,' you know what I mean? That album is definitely deep in my DNA. I've probably listened to that more than maybe any other album ever in my entire life.”

“I heard the Abbey Lincoln song 'The World is Falling Down,' and it just resonated with me so deeply.”

“I'd write songs like 'One Big Holiday,' and we'd play it and say, 'It's too heavy for 'At Dawn.' Let's save it for the next one.' We had more time for that, but when you mix a song, the general rule of thumb for us is a song a day or usually a day and a half.”

“For me, 'Evil Urges' was like a video game. If you play 'Super Mario Brothers,' there's a level where it's like a snowscape, and then there's a level where it's a desert and a level that's like a jungle.”

“I think reading is one of the greatest forms of magic available to us on the planet. Reading is so important.”

“When people are recording, and they're like, 'I want to get the drum sound of the Beatles,' I hate that.”

“I feel like the world gets so consumed and gobbled up by action, and the pace of life is so frantic, and people feel like, in order to move somebody, you have to do something shocking or violent or something insane and fast.”

“The songs always tell you something, but always for different reasons.”

“'Circuital' was just so much about us as a band. We captured every song live, including the main vocal. That is probably my favorite My Morning Jacket record because it's really the essence of us being us. The solo record is just a completely different essence of just me trying to figure out stuff.”

“One thing I've learned is that the best thing a producer can do is help you be you.”

“For me, it's more powerful to hear people sing about God than love in most circumstances because I've been hearing people sing about love for most of my life.”

“It's hard to say what an album is about - because each one is usually about a lot of things to me, but then I hope it also can mean a lot of different things to someone else. That's the beautiful thing about music.”

“I was talking to my publisher, Jamie Ceretta, who's one of my closest confidants and allies when I'm working on new music. I feel like I can always count on his judgement because he'll tell me if he doesn't like something. It's sometimes hard to get people to tell you if they don't like something.”

“I really believe in not compromising your art. I feel like I've never compromised my art.”

“When I was maybe three years old, I was obsessed with this song 'Leader of the Band' by Dan Fogelberg. My mom took me to the mall and bought me a 45 of it. We would listen to that song all the time.”

“I've just had this idea pop in my head of trying to learn a new song every da, and try and play it that night. That's been fun for me because it's a little bit of a scary adventure, playing a song for the first time in front of people and letting it just be what it is.”

“When I make a record with My Morning Jacket, I love what those guys do, so I don't have a need to play bass or drums or anything, because we're doing that as a unit.”

“I feel like modern country is deliberately dumbing down the human race. They're deliberately making people take glory in being uneducated and racist, and it's just sad. I think it's absolute mind control.”

“Pilates is amazing. It makes you conscious of how you have been doing something incorrectly for so long, even something as simple as just standing there.”