My Morning Jacket to play Forest Hills July 15

Grace McQuade

American rock band My Morning Jacket arrived at Northern California’s Stinson Beach in late 2013 thinking only about making an album.

The band was not prepared to be seduced.

But within a couple of days, vocalist and guitarist Jim James, bassist Tom Blankenship, drummer Patrick Hallahan, guitarist Carl Broemel and keyboardist Bo Koster were in love with Panoramic House, a studio perched on a hillside overlooking the ocean.

The natural beauty of the surrounding landscape and almost mystical serenity flooded them with a charged sense of possibilities.

“For me, every record has the spirit of where we made it,” said James. “Stinson Beach was so psychedelic and focused. It was almost like we lived on our own little moon out there. It feels like you’re up in the sky.”

“The story of the record really starts there,” said Blankenship, a founding member of the Louisville-based band.

Throughout its 16 years, My Morning Jacket has always had a healthy respect for living in the moment and the inherent mysteries of creativity.

Formed in 1998, the group amassed a following in the 2000s in part due to their live performances with a sound rooted in rock and country, yet often experimental and surreal.

The group first found success in Europe after the release of their debut album, The Tennessee Fire (1999).

Their next release, At Dawn (2001), led to a large stateside following and preceded several lineup changes.

After signing to major label, ATO Records, the group released two albums, It Still Moves (2003) and Z (2005), with the latter representing a critical breakthrough.

Their next release, Evil Urges (2008), was more polarizing for fans and critics, while Circuital (2011), their sixth album, saw a more measured response.

After many years of side projects and touring, the band’s seventh album, The Waterfall, was released in 2015.

They gladly took the inspiration that Stinson Beach was offering when crafting The Waterfall, touching on aspects of their celebrated past while pushing forward with a giddy assurance.

There are moments that reach back to early albums, such as “At Dawn” and “It Still Moves,” the record that gave the band a much broader audience.

But the experimentation that marked Z, Evil Urges and James’ 2013 solo album, Regions of Light and Sound of God, is clearly in effect.

The Waterfall sounds like history and decades colliding — like a record made by fervent music fans in search of that tingle up the spine.

Inveterate music geeks will hear echoes of vintage rock and pop as My Morning Jacket continues to honor its influences without aping any of them.

The Waterfall sounds like nothing else, but is also warmly familiar.

Notions of change crop up throughout the album, as does James’ longstanding exploration of spirituality, but there’s a crucial difference.

On The Waterfall, there are fewer questions and more action.

Spirituality has become grounded and made real.

“I feel like I still don’t know how to explain anything,” James said, “but I feel like I’ve accepted that and I’m just trying to live.”

James began the sessions with nearly 30 songs and kept writing.

The elevating “Believe (Nobody Knows)” opens the album with a blast of faith and acceptance, but was the last song written.

“We did a ton of songs, so at the beginning there was no intention or focus,” James added. “It was like, let’s just go play these songs and figure out which ones fit. Once we did ‘Believe,’ that kind of tied the record together. What fused this record is, I feel like it’s a weird turning point for the universe. I feel like so many people I know are getting divorced or having kids. There’s so much change going on and I feel like, for me, that one chapter has ended. And if you’re looking at a book, there’s a hand flipping the page up and it’s in between the chapter you just finished and the one that’s getting ready to start. That’s kind of the sound of this record, and my life, the sound of the page turning and not being sure what’s coming next.”

My Morning Jacket arrived in California after an unusually long time apart.

Following a lengthy tour behind the album Circuital, band members scattered.

James recorded and toured behind his solo album, while Hallahan recorded “Sound of Nowhere” with Spanish Gold.

Blankenship got married and moved to Nashville, and there were dozens of other projects, recording sessions, and marathon record nights in the wilds of Louisville, where James and Hallahan still live.

Always a group of friends first, the reunion at Stinson Beach was the ideal combination of intense work and potent fun.

“It’s sort of the perfect situation for us to go to an isolated place, with some limitations and not many distractions,” Broemel said. “That’s how we work best. We kind of get on the same wavelength of happiness.”

“The freedom we went into this record with took a lot of the pressure off, as far as what to do and how to do it,” Hallahan added. “The mantra was anything goes, no stone unturned, it’ll be done when it’s done. And it’s not easy to pull that off with other people’s schedules. I mean, poor Tucker.”

That would be Tucker Martine, the Portland-based producer and engineer who also worked with My Morning Jacket on Circuital.

The band has never used the same producer twice since its first two self-produced albums, but Martine and assistant engineer Kevin Ratterman have become integral parts of the team.

Martine oversaw two sessions in California, one at his own Flora Studio and another at Ratterman’s La La Land studio in Louisville.

But in the end, it all circled back to Stinson Beach

“Out of all the places we’ve recorded, I think that place might have informed the record on a spiritual level more than any other,” Koster said. “If you listen to ‘Like A River,’ it just sounds like Stinson Beach.”

My Morning Jacket will bring this California feeling to New York, with a concert at Forest Hills Stadium on Saturday, July 15 at 6 p.m.

They will be joined by singer and guitarist Gary Clark, Jr., known for his fusion of blues, rock and soul music with elements of hip hop.

Dubbed “The Chosen One,” Clark’s musical trademarks are his distorted guitar sound, heavy use of improvisation and his silky smooth vocal style.

He has shared the stage with many rock and roll legends, including Eric Clapton, B. B. King and the Rolling Stones.

Forest Hills Stadium is located at 1 Tennis Place in Forest Hills.

To get tickets and for more information about the concert, go to foresthillsstadium.com.

To learn more about the band, visit www.mymorningjacket.com.

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