Opening for the Rural Alberta Advantage last weekend, James Vincent McMorrow took some time to sit down with me in the midst of an empty 7th Street Entry and discuss his recently released, beautiful album, Early in the Morning, what makes a record worthwhile, and Roald Dahl.
Michelle: I’ve had a chance to listen to the album several times and I love it.
James: Thank you.
Michelle: It’s really beautiful and not what I was expecting, but exactly right for this time of year.
James: What were you expecting?
Michelle: I don’t know – I was told “folk” and I thought – well, right now, when I hear “folk” and this is only because of the past year or so in music, but I expect Mumford and Sons or Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. Not bad music at all, but that’s not Early in the Morning. Where did the album name come from?
James: The album name came because every song on the record was finished really early in the morning. I tried to keep everything related to the record – the inside cover, everything – on how the record was made. The recording process was get up at 11 or 12 and work all the way through. And I didn’t finish the songs until quite late in the process, so nothing was really finished until about four months in. By that stage, the morning was coming earlier and earlier and so every song, the sun was up by the time I was finished. So it just made sense to call it that. I actually had another name in mind for my first record.
Michelle: May I ask what it was?
James: The opening line of a song on the record called “Down the Burning Ropes” is “When the hills let go.” I was thinking of calling it that.
Michelle: That would have been good too.
James: But it just made sense to tie it all in and keep it focused on the record.
Michelle: I read that you played instruments before you wrote songs and that surprised me, because your lyrics are so thoughtful. I thought for sure that you were a poet who learned how to play music.
James: Gosh no.
Michelle: What are your sources of inspiration when you write that music, both musical and non-musical?
James: Anywhere I can find it, really. Lyric-writing for me is a real abstract thing. I was never a “sit down with a notepad and write lyrics” kind of person. It always comes really late in the process. Until the song is locked in – because I consider myself to be two separate things, a musician and a songwriter – I write all the music parts and get that out of my head and then I’ll focus on the lyrics. So it tends to come really abstract, so just wherever I can pull it from. I do read a lot. It’s the same for every musician – we all read a lot, we watch a lot of news, we listen to a lot of music. It’s just triggers, really, isn’t it? You’re just looking for something to spark. And then being where I was for the album really aided the process.
Michelle: Can you describe the house for me? I know it was on the sea, but was it a little one-bedroom shambling house on a cliff? Because that’s kind of what I have in my head.
James: Yeah, again, that’s kind of – I did this documentary back in Ireland and they were really angling to come and see this place and I was very much like, “You can’t see it.” It’s better for people to – it was just a really simple house, it was just a nice cottage by the sea in Ireland, in a very Irish sense. It was warm; it wasn’t freezing cold. Actually, it was pretty cold – there were a few rooms and it wasn’t very well-insulated, but during the summer it was fantastic, because it was right by the beach. You can’t see the beach from it because there are dunes, but you can hear it. It was just a beautiful place.
You know, had someone offered me an eight bedroom mansion, I would have taken it. For me, the location was much more important than the actual physical house. It was just a nice, simple house that someone offered me and I had no money, so there was no grand, “If I put myself in a log cabin, I will make a record.” It wasn’t that. I needed somewhere to record and this was just the place that presented itself.
Michelle: When you were writing these songs – and I know you said they came together piece by piece, you didn’t come with a full set of lyrics or a full sheet of music – did you ever surprise yourself? Where you’d start a song and by the time it was done, you thought, “That’s not where I thought that was going to go.”
James: Yeah – probably most time a song with how it ends up or I’ll have an idea – I usually have a fairly decent picture in my head of how a song is going to go, but then sometimes in your mind things make perfect sense but then you try to put them on paper and it doesn’t work at all, because that’s just the nature of life. More often than not, changes had to be made in order for a song to make sense and by the end of it; it would just be something different. Lyrically, I am usually fairly confused until something is finished and then it makes perfect sense to me.
Michelle: You said once – I’m going to quote you to you – “It was only when I finished that I looked back and saw the words for what they were and realized what they meant.” That took my breath away – there’s so many times when I’m writing and I don’t know where I’m going until I get there. I thought that was really beautiful.
So, Early in the Morning was release in Europe last year, but we’re just getting it now – has that been kind of weird for you, to run into audiences who are just discovering the album when you’ve been doing the circuit for quite some time?
James: It’s not so bad. Had I put it out in Ireland and there had been this big fanfare initially and then starting from what would be considered square one again would have been weird, but it’s all happened on the same level. In Ireland, when it came out, I hadn’t really played that much – none of the songs had been played live, so I very much started from day one and played to 20 people and then 40 people the next day and keep going. By the time I signed with Vagrant over here and we were talking about putting the record out, things were on a fairly comparable level in Ireland – people were just really starting to get the record and it was starting to move towards Christmas. So it actually kind of worked quite nicely. There was no “I’m playing 1,000-seater venues in Ireland and now I’m…”
Michelle: You’re playing to a coffee shop with three people.
James: Exactly. I didn’t play a 1,000-seater venue in Ireland until October of last year, so by that stage, obviously I wasn’t playing 1,000-seater venues here, but people were starting to pick it up here and radio stations like The Current and Radio Milwaukee were playing it really early on, which made us all feel pretty good about how it was going. That feeds into your excitement, so there’s no sense of, “Oh man, do I have to sing these songs again?” Every day is new. In Milwaukee, at the venue, everyone was singing along to most of the songs and we were just kind of looking at each other, really confused – genuinely confused, because I’m so far from home and the record has only been out here for a month and a week. It’s compelling. It makes you want to work harder and try harder.
Michelle: It is a record that you can listen to over and over. Over the past month, it’s been one of two records that I’ve listened to 2 – 3 times a week. Sometimes you listen to a record and you love it, but you won’t revisit again until a week later, or even a month later. But yours is one that lends itself to frequent playing.
James: That was the goal. My favorite records are not easy – they’re not records that reveal everything to you the first time out. The goal when making the record was to try and make something that I would listen to, that I would be proud of. I think that’s why people make what they make. Once it’s done and once you’re finished with it, it’s for everybody else, but while you’re making it, it’s for you. So that was the goal – to try and make something that I would sit down and listen to. On a particular day you might want to listen to three tracks or four tracks, on another day you might listen to all of it. Those are the kind of records that I love and that was what I was going for. Some people are like, “Oh, I loved your record!” and I’ll see the same person three months later and their enthusiasm has grown exponentially, which is a good sign for me.
Michelle: Are you working on new material right now? I know that you’re really busy with touring.
James: There are three or four songs that are in the mix, live. I’m just trying them out – it’s something that is completely new for me, being able to test out songs live. That’s a really good thing. It would be nice to have a little bit more time. I had some time last year before everything started to get a little bit too hectic. It’s very hard to get home and sit down and write, especially the way I write. I’m very much a recorder as I write; I don’t sit down with a guitar, so it’s not easy for me. I don’t see that there’s any particular rush. My goal is to by the end of the year have a certain amount of ideas and then over Christmas I’ll really try to map it out. I don’t really like the idea of resting on your laurels or a three-year album cycle. Well, I appreciate that because I’m kind of in that – the album has been out in Ireland for a year and now it’s out here. It’s starting to do quite well in a lot of different countries, so it’s going to take a lot of time to get to all those countries and give it the time and energy that it deserves.
Michelle: It’s nice though, when an album has time to grow like that.
James: Yeah, for me personally, it’s great. As a live performer, especially, it’s really helped me to grow into that. It was the one thing I always felt I was lacking – the ability to connect a song live. I never was the front man in any bands I played in when I was in college and I always learned music by myself at home. I think before the album came out, I’d maybe played 15, 20 shows. It took awhile for it to click, but then when it did click, it really clicked. I absolutely love it now and it’s where I feel most comfortable. But it wasn’t always that way – it was a learning thing, building it, again, from the ground up.
Michelle: You mentioned Roald Dahl as a source of inspiration. Have you read his adult works?
James: I’ve read some. I tend to stick to the books that I read as a child. But I have pretty much covered the length and breadth of his career.
Michelle: I got really excited when I saw that, because I loved Roald Dahl as a little girl, I think most children do. But then someone gave me a collection of his adult stories – he’s a wicked, wicked man.
James: Oh yeah, but that’s what I love about the childhood stuff. I read them now and you kind of go, “Wow, I can’t believe someone got away with this.”
Michelle: I don’t know why James and the Giant Peach didn’t give me nightmares – it’s quite frightening.
James: Yeah, it absolutely is. I think that’s the genius of the man, that the books were knowing winks to grown people and you can get them on both levels, but as a child you don’t.
Michelle: I think he gives children more credit, because as adults we look at that and say, “Oh, you can’t tell that to children, that would be frightening.” But he’s like, “No, kids are fine. They’re only scared of what you tell them to be scared of.”
James: It’s true – especially nowadays. It was good to have that – I liked growing up with that sort of stuff. Again, it’s giving kids credit for being able to figure things out on their own.
Michelle: I know you’re not in Minnesota for very long – a handful of hours, right?
James: Yeah.
Michelle: But did you know that F. Scott Fitzgerald [someone Mr. McMorrow has cited as an inspiration] is from here?
James: I did know that. And there’s an F. Scott Fitzgerald theater somewhere here?
Michelle: Yes, the Fitzgerald Theater – it’s in Saint Paul. And you are on the same label with The Hold Steady.
James: Yes.
Michelle: Have you met them?
James: I have not.
Michelle: They’re awesome. Definitely hometown guys here – Craig Finn and another member of the band are from here. A lot of their songs are all about the Twin Cities. It’s always fun – they live in Brooklyn now, but when they come home, it’s a great show.
James: Somehow everybody ends up in Brooklyn.
Michelle: Don’t they always?
James: It’s like a migration of musicians towards Brooklyn. It’s the Holy Land.
Michelle: Maybe that’s where you need to write your next record.
James: Yeah, I’m going to have to set up shop in Brooklyn, in a basement somewhere.
Michelle: And my last question – what’s the best live show that you’ve seen?
James: In recent memory, the National in Ireland.
Michelle: I heard phenomenal things about that tour.
James: We saw a particularly good one. Ireland, just in December, got really bad snow. Obviously, you’re well-versed in snow in these parts, but we’re not equipped for it at all in Ireland – the whole country comes to a stop. They were playing three nights in a row and it was the night before I was supposed to do this insane run of seven shows in seven days in seven different countries – it was the last night before we went and I have the same agent as them in the UK and Ireland, so we angled and got really good tickets. The snow came down – two feet in an hour – and they got stuck in London. They sat on the tarmac in Heathrow for three and a half hours and then flew to Limerick, which is about 250 miles from Dublin, got in a van, drove halfway, another van picked them up and drove them up to Dublin. They arrived on stage about an hour late – all their gear was luckily already there – they came, set up, and played. It was amazing. I’ve seen them before, but the energy of the day went into it – just “Let’s get here, let’s get here, let’s get here.” It turned itself into the most incredible concert. Everyone in the room was very reverential – it was like church. All my favorite gigs have been in the same venue, really. This place called the Olympia Theater in Dublin.
Michelle: I’ve heard of it.
James: I’m actually playing there in October, which is pretty mad. It’s a special place for me and the tickets went on sale today – it’s a huge thing for me.
Michelle: Congratulations – that’s really exciting.
James: Yeah, I get really giddy when I think about it.
Michelle: First Ave is that place for the Twin Cities. When local artists get to play their first First Ave show, it’s always a big deal. I’ve interviewed a couple of local artists and they always say that the first show here is really impressive. Hopefully the energy will hold up for you tonight. This is a special location. It is a bit of a concrete box – it used to be a bus depot.
James: Oh really? Has it been a music venue for awhile?
Michelle: Oh yeah – Purple Rain?
James: Of course, of course.
Michelle: It’s been a music venue for 40 years now.
And with that, we wrapped it up. James Vincent McMorrow - and his crew - have to be some of the most genuine and nicest people I have met in the industry. And the show was fabulous (stay tuned for a review) and, as I mentioned, I cannot rave about Early in the Morning enough. Without a doubt, it will be one of my favorite albums this year.
And, to listen to the interview (complete with an Irish accent (Mr. McMorrow's, not mine)), stay tuned for this week's episode of MinnesoTunes.
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