It's a quiet day for My Morning Jacket drummer Patrick Hallahan. The Kentucky native is lounging at his Louisville, Ky., home with his wife, soaking up his last few days of normal life.
In the coming week, Hallahan and his bandmates will embark on yet another national tour. The second of this year. But this time, the group has chosen to kick off its tour in Charleston.
"Well, we heard you guys have good shrimp and grits," Hallahan says with a laugh when asked why the band chose Charleston for its starting point.
"And it's a place we've never played but have heard a lot about. So, we just thought it would be a nice place to start things off.
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In the next couple of days, singer/guitarist/songwriter Jim James; bassist "Two-Tone" Tommy; guitarist/pedal steel guitarist/saxophonist/vocalist Carl Broemel; keyboardist Bo Koster; and Hallahan will meet in Nashville to rehearse for three days before hitting the road.
It's a routine the guys have grown accustomed to. After all, it was the group's incessant touring that built My Morning Jacket's grass-roots fan base into one of the largest and most diverse in the country.
"It's scarily easy how we can just jump back into it so quickly and things not even change," says Hallahan of touring.
Change is something Hallahan may not be used to, having lived nearly his whole life in Louisville. In fact, he and James were childhood friends after meeting in the fourth grade.
In junior high, the two started their first band before deciding that being in a band together might be too stressful to their friendship.
James started My Morning Jacket after dropping out of college to pursue music.
Originally, MMJ - the name comes from a jacket James found in the wreckage of his favorite bar - was to be a solo act for James, but the young singer's haunting voice brought musicians banging on his door.
After releasing two indie albums, 1999's "The Tennessee Fire" and 2001's "At Dawn," and the subsequent loss of two drummers, James finally asked his old pal Hallahan to join the band in 2002.
"I was a friend and a fan before I was a member," recalls Hallahan. "So, I kind of watched My Morning Jacket start from its fledgling state.
I was just so proud of them because I knew that they were really making amazing things happen; and for doing the world a favor by putting out good art. Then one day (James) called me and asked me to be a part of it. So, I sort of jumped on the train.
Two weeks later, we were out touring and we haven't stopped since."
Hallahan isn't kidding. Over the past four years, MMJ has performed nearly every day with a few months of breaks and/or recording time sprinkled in throughout each year.
The touring has led to some memorable experiences.
At 2004's Bonnaroo, the giant annual multiday concert held on a farm in Manchester, Tenn., the group's performance is now simply known as "Return to Thunderdome.
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The band performed outdoors before a sea of fans as a mammoth thunderstorm rolled across the Tennessee countryside. A sight and experience that Hallahan remembers as "one of the most religious experiences of my life."
Then, there was the 3 1/2-hour set the band performed to close out Bonnaroo this year and the cameo appearance in Cameron Crowe's 2005 film "Elizabethtown," a film in which MMJ played a cover band performing a note-for-note rendition of "Free Bird.
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Not to mention the band's opening slot with Pearl Jam earlier this year.
The touring hasn't interfered with MMJ's ability to create and record its popular blend of country and spaced-out rock, though.
Following the group's two indie releases and 2003's major label debut, "It Still Moves," in a friend's barn, MMJ decided to record its 2005 release, "Z," in the renowned Allaire Studios.
The group also chose to work with a producer for the first time, and joined forces with John Leckie (Radiohead).
Tucked away in New York's Catskill Mountains, Allaire Studios has been used by such artists as David Bowie, Tim McGraw and even Staind.
The studio's 45-foot ceilings offer booming echoes and a fullness to recordings that few others can match.
My Morning Jacket chose the studio for its isolation and inspirational atmosphere. What the group didn't plan on, however, were the terrible blizzards that rolled through the mountains that year.
"It was great because it was like a musical retreat," says Hallahan.
"We were snowed in for the most part so we slept at the studio, we ate at the studio and we played at the studio. So, it was kind of like a study in the songs that we had written, because we never left them. Being secluded on a mountain in the winter is both enlightening and maddening.
But it does make you focus solely on the project at hand."
Whether it be the Catskills, Leckie, the addition of members Broemel and Koster, or just maturation, there is a definite change in MMJ's sound between the albums "It Still Moves" and "Z."
James reveals a more distinct version of his voice by filtering out some of the reverb.
The band also experimented with a more upbeat, rhythmic feel on may of the album's tracks. There is a vast amount of acreage on the album, with multiple effects and a tasteful layering of instrumentation that gives "Z" a fullness unlike any of MMJ's previous recordings. MMJ released its critically acclaimed, double-live album "Okonokos" in October.
As for MMJ's future, Hallahan and company have the next few months of their lives already planned. They will play a host of headlining shows until January, before taking time off to write a new album.
"That's the beautiful thing about writing music with these guys," says Hallahan.
"We have ideas of where we want it all to go, but if it goes another way and it sounds like its supposed to sound, then we made it.
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