Hello, My Name Is Carl
Q&A with My Morning Jacket’s Carl Broemel
IE: A lot of people might see your gentle solo album as an extreme reaction to My Morning Jacket’s classic rock gusto. Is it?
Carl Broemel: I definitely don’t think of it that way. There are lots of things about MMJ that embrace the quiet and gentle, so I see it as more complementary than reactionary. I’m just a pretty mellow guy most of the time, and that’s where these songs came from.
IE: Were you able to spend as much time on it as you’d have liked?
CB: Yeah, and I think it came together as it was meant to. It took a long span of years [five], but only about 40 days of actual work to make.
IE: How old are some of the songs? Why are they not My Morning Jacket tunes?
CB: Some of the songs are over six-years old. When I joined MMJ, the band dynamic was already kind of established. Jim [James] writes the songs, then we all help him get them to speak properly. I think that is a system that really works well.
IE: Will there be time for a solo tour? Will you get lonely?
CB: Ha ha, yes I think I will be lonely. I actually had a moment of panic recently while waiting backstage: “What the hell am I doing?!” It is a lot more frightening to do a solo show in front of 20 people, than a band show in front of thousands.
IE: Jim released an EP as Yim Yames. Couldn’t you have come up with something to top that?
CB: There is no way to top that! Just so you know, I was actually born with the name Snowy Bramble, but changed it to Carl Broemel for my solo project, which is by far the easiest moniker to spell and pronounce I could think of.
My Morning Jacket play Charter One Pavilion on August 17th. ATO Records releases Carl Broemel’s All Birds Say on the 31st. Q&A by Steve Forstneger.
