Days Of Independence: Carl Broemel Talks Solo LP, My Morning Jacket At Lockn’ & More
By Ryan Dembinsky Sep 13, 2016 • 11:33 am PDT
Words by: Ryan Dembinsky
When you think of great bands in rock history, naturally they all have a great frontman but more often than not there is a great understated wingman that provides the glue and quietly adds so much of the character to the overall sound. Think of bands like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones or Led Zeppelin with guys like George Harrison, Keith Richards or John Paul Jones. These musicians don’t necessarily aim to steal the show every night, but their instrumental prowess is critical to everything loved about those bands. They are the role players in the group and often a huge reason why great bands can make almost any song a lasting standout.
That’s how Carl Broemel tends to fit into My Morning Jacket. He’s the understated guitar player and ultimate team player. He doesn’t seek to stand out, contribute a lot of material, or chase fame in any way, but the more astute Jacket fans know he has become an integral part of the band with his electric and pedal steel guitar contributions. Broemel has also been touring with most of the members of MMJ supporting singer-songwriter Ray LaMontagne. [Ed. Note: A “not life-threatening health situation,” recently forced Bromel to take a break from the tour].
Most recently, Carl shed his wingman role and released his third solo LP, 4th Of July, following the absolutely gorgeous 2010 record All Birds Say. Listening to Broemel’s solo work is powerfully relaxing. It’s the kind of music that takes life’s heavy burdens and lays them down for a short while. It’s legitimately healing music for this frenzied information age of overstimulation, where you can be reminded by music to just breathe for a second. While 4th Of July looks to keep pushing his music into new directions, you ultimately come away with the feeling that Carl Broemel is a laidback guy you can trust, based on his music alone. I had the chance to catch up with Carl just shortly after MMJ’s already famous Lockn’ Festival headlining set a couple weeks ago.
JamBase: We can certainly get into the new album in more detail momentarily, but to start off I was hoping to first get your thoughts on the Lockn’ My Morning Jacket set. So many people who were down there have been raving about how well it went, and I was pretty surprised how many people seem to have been less familiar with the band. What were some of the highlights from your vantage point?
Carl Broemel: Well, one of the coolest things about doing that was that we hadn’t really seen each other lately, at least not all of us. Last time we played together was at Red Rocks, which was months and months ago. Plus, I knew we were playing last and headlining that night, but until we stepped out on stage, I had absolutely no idea there was going to be that many people there [laughs].
So we had this mindset coming in of being like, “Hey it’s so good to see you guys, so what are going to play anyway?” We were just kind of energized by seeing each other and what a big surprise it was to see the crowd. We also hadn’t played music with Jim in a while and that was nice. We were having a really good time and we were hoping we were playing for some new people and it sounds like we might have been.
JamBase: Sounds like you guys debuted a few new covers and played some other fun stuff.
CB: Yeah, we rehearsed the day before and worked up a couple new things that we hadn’t tried yet. In hindsight it ended up feeling like a late night Bonnaroo set where we could play some covers and have a good time with it. It sounds like that was probably a good idea [laughs].
JamBase: I can’t believe it has already been six years since you put out All Birds Say. I’m guessing this new album 4th Of July was created in a similar fashion in terms of piecing together bits of free time in your otherwise busy schedule and gradually chipping away on?
CB: Yeah pretty much, I did two or three tracking sessions that were spread out over a few years. I would book some time where I would have maybe one song, but then I would feel like “Oh man, I guess I better finish another song or two to make the most of this session.” I worked with my friend Teddy Morgan who did the last record at the same studio, but I feel like the record is a little different. We tried to expand on the instrumentation a little bit and experiment in the studio with more improvisational things. I had Bo [Koster] play on everything and Tom [Blankenship] played on half the record. I was just trying to expand upon it a little bit and bring in some new people and see what other types of songs I could create.
The whole idea of me doing this was birthed long before I was ever in the band. I was always writing songs and doing solo projects. I was making demos in my apartment in Los Angeles and giving them to people. So I’m continuing to do that. It’s an enlightening experience in a lot of ways regardless of what the end product ends up being; the idea of attempting to do it on my own and having more perspective on what Jim goes through or what Ray [LaMontagne] goes through. Steering the ship all by yourself gives you an interesting perspective on everything else that we do.
I’ve said it before, but when I go on tour by myself being in a dressing room all by yourself is really weird. It’s much better to be with your pals. I really enjoy it though. I feel like I’m getting better at singing and putting on a show. The coolest thing is I just did these shows in Nashville and Louisville and I put together a band and they did such a great job that it was a really fun weekend of playing music. For me, I’ve already gotten what I wanted out of it from that, so now I just get to explore it some more.
JamBase: You raised an interesting point. What bands have you been in before Jacket and did you serve this sort of frontman or primary songwriter role?
CB: My main band back in ancient history was called Old Pike, which was basically all my buddies from college. We’d write songs together then, but it kind of turned out I was writing less and less as time went on. I don’t think I was really asserting myself. After that, the stuff I was doing was more hired gun type of thing. So after Old Pike, I took my songwriting in-house. It’s never been something I’d say I do a ton of but I’m doing it more and more. For example, after I put this record out I started thinking, well if I’m a singer-songwriter, I should really be thinking about writing some new songs starting right now.
JamBase: One thing every notices pretty immediately is your music is so mellow. In a sense this one is a bit less mellow than All Birds Say, but I know from my own perspective, it’s really valuable to find full albums that are really relaxing to put on to unwind, or put your kids to bed, or just hang out. This is probably a weird question, but would you say that is a reflection of having a lot of frenetic thoughts in your brain and a hectic life where you use this to calm yourself down or is it more just a reflection of your personality being so chilled-out in general?
CB: [laughs] I think it might be all of that combined. Some of my favorite records are super mellow, like I love Big Star’s Third record, and I love JJ Cale’s first album, and I love all of Ron Sexsmith’s albums. Probably half of Yo La Tengo’s songs are so mellow and half of Tom Waits are so incredibly mellow. I tend to listen to that stuff when I put music on. I’m more of a Sunday morning DJ than a Saturday night DJ [laughs]. I think I end up emulating those groups a little bit in the studio.
When you start recording and you turn the mics up and everybody starts to play really quietly, especially in the studio that can feel like a really magical thing. It’s almost like you’re all swimming underwater where every little detail can come through. Instead of bashing it on a loud rock song, I enjoy entering that underwater zone where you’re wearing headphones and you look over at the drummer and he’s just barely hitting his drums. I tend to write music for that space.
It’s not a reaction to my band, because I do love that too, but Jacket records some mellow music too where we enter that area. I don’t think it’s really that far off in some respects. One of my goals for later though is to maybe push it, push up the BPMs a big. [laughs] But you can’t fight it and sometimes you just have to say this is who I am.
JamBase: What were some of the ways the initial sparks for these songs came about, maybe with a couple of examples?
CB: The song “Sleepy Lagoon” comes from a big band instrumental tune in the 1940s. I love the ‘40s channel on Sirius and a bunch of bands did this song; like Glen Miller was the most famous, but I just really loved the title. So I made a note of the title. Also, one of my favorite bands from college was Guided By Voices, and I think or it’s always been my guess that Robert Pollard probably has a list of song titles before he writes the songs. So I thought that would be an interesting way to do it to have a title first. Like, “If I was going to write a song, it would be cool to have a song called ‘Sleepy Lagoon,’” so why not actually write a song called “Sleepy Lagoon?” That is how that one came about. Then I had some melodies that I sang into my phone late at night one night with one line that said “Hello moon” in a note taking app in my iPhone.
The song “Rockingchair Dancer” I wrote when I was playing some chords for my son in his crib when he was taking a nap. I was standing in the midst of this little human being thinking about how different your childhood is from your adulthood and your adolescence. I was thinking about all the eras you go through in life and how sometimes those eras sync up with your romantic vision and sometimes they don’t. Once you become at peace with that it is a really nice feeling to see it for what it is.
The song “4th Of July,” that is the song I felt like I really challenged myself to do something different from the other record. I had just written the musical bits and then I brought in Bo, Tom and Richard [Medek] and I didn’t have the lyrics written or even the song form finished, but we just recorded for two or three hours and improvised and I would give some cues like do Section B louder or Section C softer. Maybe I would do a take where I do a pass on acoustic guitar. We ended up with about 13 takes of us going through general form and letting Bo improvise in the middle. Then I just pieced it together like a collage and grabbed all the pieces and stitched them together. Then I kind of wrote the song to the music in terms of the lyrics. I have a tendency to over prepare or want to over arrange things or not allow people to naturally bring what they bring by writing a part out for somebody too quickly. Those guys bring a lot if you give them a little general direction, they can come up with something right in the moment. So I was a bit proud of myself for going against my tendencies there and not worrying so much that the clock is ticking. We just went and played for a couple hours and I think it worked.
JamBase: In terms of piecing things together and the mixing, it sounds like you were pretty involved in that?
CB: Yeah, Teddy and I mixed the whole record and edited it together. I did most of the edits for that song, but we did almost of the record together. Then I had the good fortune of working with Bill Reynolds of Band of Horses. He also has a studio in Nashville and I got him and his partner Jason to remix all of the record too and we ended up using half of their mixes and half of our mixes. That was another cool thing to just hand it off to someone else, because mixing can be painful when you start to get insecure about it, especially when it’s just a small detail that will bug you. If you can manage to hand it off to someone else and they do a good job, it’s just a revelation. You’ll be like, “Wow, they beat us on that song” [laughs]. They mixed “4th Of July,” “Sleepy Lagoon” and “Landing Gear.” They mixed really most of the louder bits on the album.
JamBase: In the solo live shows, I noticed you do a lot of looping. Do you factor that in when writing the songs to try to include fewer changes or have chord progressions last longer or anything like that?
CB: I’m still developing the technique, but yeah there are some fun covers I do where the chord progressions don’t change too much throughout the song or some of mine that work that way. Otherwise, I typically just make a beat on the guitar and then bring in and out changes on the guitar or the loop pedals. I don’t necessarily write material simpler for the sake of looping though. There are a couple songs on the record that are really hard to do solo, but most of them I have come up with cool arrangements with just me, but “Landing Gear” I haven’t been able to figure out how to do by myself.
JamBase: Do you have any new covers for this round of solo shows?
CB: Yeah, I’ve been doing “Once In A Lifetime,” the Talking Heads song. They didn’t make a loop, but that song basically is a loop. That one is a lot of fun. I’ve also been doing “Walk On The Wild Side” and I’ve been working up a Radiohead song, but it’s not ready yet. I just heard a Wilco song that I got thinking; I bet I can do that one with looping. I definitely want to do some different ones. I don’t want to play the same music every night. That starts to drive me insane.
JamBase: I liked your “Lollipop” arrangement last time around.
CB: “Lollipop” is fun. I’ve been trying to find some more silly but fun ones like that one which everyone knows. I love the era of that song. Think about getting in your pickup truck and that song is on the radio. That and “Sleepwalk” by Santo & Johnny. That’s my romantic vision.
[Ed. Note – We fixed the original artist for “Sleepwalk” as mentioned by Carl]JamBase: So, I thought I read that with Jacket you had another album almost finished. Is that accurate?
CB: Um, no. [laughs] There are actually some songs left from when we finished The Waterfall that we really love, so it looked like we could put out another record sooner than later – much sooner than we would have ever turned one around in the past. Ultimately, we decided though that we should go back into the studio and experiment and see what else could come up with. There are some really great songs already though and some have even been used in various places, like we put out “Magic Bullet” on our own and the song “The First Time” I believe is being used on the new Cameron Crowe show [Roadies]. I think that is common knowledge.
I was telling somebody else the other day that I’m glad I’m not a politician. It’s a process. You think you’re going to do one thing, but we reserve the right to change our minds and do whatever we want. I feel a bit bad for people who were excited for the next record sooner, but know that we’re here in this moment where we want to go record and see what we can do in that moment. Some of those other songs will hopefully see the light of day though.
JamBase: One last question I was curious about. I was wondering how in your musical evolution how you ended up learning pedal steel. I’ve heard that is a notoriously confusing instrument. How long did it take to get to the point where you felt pretty good at it?
CB: I love playing pedal steel. That came about because Jim and John had bought an old Sho-Bud student pedal steel that was in the band equipment locker and nobody had ever learned it. Jim was like, “Hey man, you want to check this thing out?” So I set up the pedal steel in my apartment in L.A. and quickly realized that I needed some instruction.
I found a great instructor named John McLon. The thing about the pedal steel is it’s like how do I put this thing together and what shoes am I supposed to wear? [laughs] It’s like coming into a recording studio and the first thing you see is the huge mixing board. You’re like, what does all of that do? I took a few lessons and he really helped me get started and made sure I was playing in tune. You can adjust so many things. Then I finally bought a road worthy guitar and have been practicing here and there ever since.
Being in Nashville it’s insane. The pedal steel community here is bonkers. All the legends live here. It’s a bit intimidating. One time I did a recording session and Al Perkins who played with The Burrito Brothers and Gram Parsons and everybody was there that morning. They were like now Carl is going to play, Al is on a break. I was like “Oh fuck, I’m screwed.”
I’ve learned how to do some things, but there is so much to learn in the traditional sense. I’ve managed to learn how to integrate it into the band though and I really enjoy it. It’s so different from the guitar in that it makes you think about music so much different. You can also evolve it in so many ways beyond the traditional ways, so I’m doing my little part of that.
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