With Lexington’s Railbird, My Morning Jacket comes back to where it began to start over
You don’t rock on as a recording and touring juggernaut for two decades and not hit some sort of crossroads.
For Louisville drummer Patrick Hallahan, the fire in the engine room that is My Morning Jacket, that point arrived around five years ago. Weary of the rock ‘n’ roll grind, and, to an extent, each other, the band members took a break. That’s the happy ending part that, thankfully, wasn’t an ending. As the band repaired itself, a new album was made, a pandemic was unleashed and, for Hallahan, an opportunity arose that took him to the kitchen after being taken off the road.
“I guess the hiatus was the result of a band being together almost 20 years,” said Hallahan, who will perform with the rest of My Morning Jacket as the Saturday headliner of this weekend’s Railbird festival. “There are peaks and valleys in every relationship. My valley probably hit around 2016. I was just having a tough time but stuck with it. Then in 2018, I think, Jim (James, MMJ frontman, vocalist and songwriter) just decided he had hit his valley and said we needed to take a break. Maybe forever.
“We all had to work through some stuff and be real honest with each other. Those situations can go one of two ways. In our case, the talks turned into more love. We played through a few more shows and just realized how lucky we are to have each other and how much we love doing this. It’s just been this gradual footing back into being a band and really taking stock in what we have, appreciating each other for who we are and the collective chemistry and energy that happens when we’re all in the same space together.”
Having completed the new album in Los Angeles in March 2020, MMJ returned home to fully reignite as a touring unit. Then COVID-19 hit, giving the band’s planned hiatus an unplanned extension. The record, titled simply “My Morning Jacket,” is now due out for release on Oct. 22. That which means James, Hallahan and the rest of the band (guitarist Carl Broemel, bassist Tom Blankenship and keyboardist Bo Koster) have had to sit on their completed project without sharing it for over a year.
“Oh, man, that has been terrible,” Hallahan said with a laugh. “Terrible. I mean it. When you do all this soul searching and all the hard conversations, being upset and making up… everything you have to do to pull out of a tough part of your relationship, it’s rough. It’s like a polyamorous marriage counseling session. You put it in all that work and you get those shows under your belt and you go, ‘This feels so good. I can’t wait to move forward.’ Then you’re cut off, right as the plane is taking off the runway. It was very frustrating.”
Faced with an aborted 2020 touring season, Hallahan was left with an obvious dilemma: what to do. Triggered by the popularity of online streaming performances many artists turned to during the early stages of the pandemic, he received an offer with some meat to it - specifically some Roasted Spatchcocked Chicken. Mushroom Risotto and Reverse Sear Ribeye. Those were three of the dishes the drummer prepared as he turned his pandemic inactivity into an online cooking show.
“I have had a parallel path of food and music my whole life. Music took the spotlight, but I’ve always had an equal passion for food and hospitality. I just like bringing people together. That’s basically what it boils down to. That’s what I was put on this earth to do.
“While we were locked down, there were all of these streaming performance-based subscription things that you could do where people could watch a concert by their favorite artist playing in their living room. I got approached about doing something with drums, but I was like, ‘Nobody wants to watch to me play drums for 90 minutes for three sessions.’ So we went looking for another option. They said, ‘We know you love to cook. Why don’t you give a cooking show a shot?’ I always wanted to have my own cooking show because it looked like so much fun, so I put together a little three-part series.”
With considerable restaurant experience behind him (he was formerly co-owner of Louisville’s popular Butchertown Grocery), “In the Kitchen with Patrick Hallahan” hit cyberspace for three streaming episodes last winter.
“It was a lot of fun and a lot of work - a huge learning curve, and I’m looking to do more. We’re actually in the discussion phase right now about what to do next. So, yeah, it was just another creative outlet. I needed to do something. All this energy doesn’t go anywhere when you lock it down. You’ve got to do something with it.”
With the pandemic somewhat at bay (at least, for now), Hallahan is back on the road for his first extended tour with My Morning Jacket in five years. Railbird will serve the second stop. The band hasn’t played in Lexington since a concert at the University of Kentucky’s Memorial Coliseum a full decade ago.
“Lexington is kind of where it all started for the band,” Hallahan said. “Jim was at UK when he started writing his first demos. So technically, we’re a Lexington band, as well.
“We were all friends from grade school on. Jim was living there in a house on Marquis and Euclid. I didn’t live there, but I was sure out there a bunch. Several of us had this practice spot out in Jessamine County, out Nicholasville Road. I would go to school at U of L, finish working at a restaurant at 10 p.m. and then drive all the way to Jessamine County. I’d play until 3 a.m., get a couple of hours sleep and then drive back to make my morning classes at U of L. There’s a lot of Lexington-area synergy within our band. It will be nice to be back there.”
Railbird 2021 will be held Aug 28-29 at Keeneland. The entire event is sold out. For information on COVID-19 related admission guidelines, and parking and shuttle services, go to railbirdfest.com.