On October 12, 2010 My Morning Jacket delivered a nine-song set for the Live On Letterman webcast series. The concert was filmed on the set of The Late Show With David Letterman from the storied Ed Sullivan Theater in New York City.
My Morning Jacket’s Live On Letterman appearance came at a particularly heady time for the band. In 2008, MMJ released their landmark album, Evil Urges, which garnered them critical acclaim and a Grammy nomination. The success of Evil Urges left critics and fans alike clamoring for more and just a month ahead of the Live On Letterman play, MMJ frontman Jim James announced that the band was working on a new album that would be out the following spring, which would end up being 2011’s Circuital.
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However, My Morning Jacket — James, drummer Patrick Hallahan, bassist Tom Blankenship, guitarist Carl Broemel and keyboardist Bo Koster — kept the new material close to the vest and instead delivered a set containing some of the band’s most well-known songs from their previous three records, 2008’s Evil Urges, 2005’s Z and 2003’s It Still Moves, widely considered three of MMJ’s finest LP’s. The Live On Letterman set may have also served as an intimate warmup for the band’s upcoming 5-night residency at NYC’s Terminal 5 where they would perform one of their albums each night. JamBase takes a look at the Live On Letterman performance for this edition of Sunday Cinema In honor of MMJ’s recent U.S. Tour 2021 announcement.
Wordless Chorus
MMJ would kick things off with “Wordless Chorus.” A fitting opener as it also opens up the band’s landmark 2005 album, Z. For Letterman, James embraced the frontman role and donned a cape.
“I’m Amazed” would count as the first of four tracks from Evil Urges. The song was released as a single in 2008 and is one of the best most recognizable and successful songs. Jim James would play an electric guitar for the Letterman performance.
The band continued with It Still Moves material in “Golden.” James shouldered an acoustic guitar and joked before the number that they had to move David Letterman’s desk “out of the way.”
MMJ then returned to Evil Urges with “Touch Me I’m Going to Scream Pt. 1.” James slung his cape back on and went sans guitar to sing the song alongside Broemel.
The shimmering “Touch Me I’m Going to Scream Pt. 2, completed the “Scream” saga and showed a bit of the band’s experimental side. James tapped on a synthesizer before picking up his guitar on the final Evil Urges track of the evening.
My Morning Jacket closed out the set with “One Big Holiday.” The tune tells the story of the band being discovered and is one of their signature songs as well as the name of a 2011 documentary and the band’s destination event in Mexico.
