My Morning Jacket's Jim James Opens Up To Zane Lowe

03-19-2025

My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James sits down with Apple Music's Zane Lowe ahead of the release of the band's highly-anticipated 10th studio album, is. Throughout the interview, James talks about letting go of control and working with GRAMMY award-winning producer Brendan O'Brien as well as his experience with therapy.

The Zane Lowe Show/DKC sent over the following excepts (stram of full intervies is below too). Jim James talks with Apple Music about his experience with enhanced therapy.

Zane Lowe: I'm interested in the idea of an enhanced therapy. I do therapy and I love therapy and I love searching for some... I love having enough, a safe place to be curious about my own ways of thinking and processing thing. What was ketamine therapy like?

Jim James: Oh my God. Well, yeah, I do EMDR therapy and parts work and I met a therapist in the pandemic that just has been... I've been searching for him my whole life, and so I do regular therapy and I've tried all sorts of therapy. Ketamine therapy to me is... it's one of the most profound experiences I've ever had because it reminded me... Well, it like put me back up in the wall of God. Like it put me back up in the ocean of consciousness where I feel like we're all connected in this ocean of consciousness and we're each a little wave, but we're all part of the ocean and-

Zane Lowe: We're all energy field, right? We're all in the energy field.

Jim James: Yeah, and you return to that energy field in a way that you get a little glimpse of, at least for me, when I mediate or when I play music or when I make love. I feel like there are these states that we get into where we forget the human component and we're God again, and I feel like the ketamine experience, at least for me, rocket blasts you up into that wall of God where all of this is forgotten, like any sense of Jim or any sense of this world or anything, it's all gone. There's this presence, this consciousness where like I was conscious, but it wasn't Jim. It was my eternal soul, and it was like that energy and I've just been thinking about that a lot.

Zane Lowe: Like free of identity.

Jim James: Yes, just like the most beautiful pure identity that I feel like we really all share-

Zane Lowe: Yeah, shared.

Jim James: ... but we're all unique, but we're all the same. It's like the ocean waves Brahman and Atman thing that I feel like there is this sense that, as I think about this more and more, that music and love itself are like little hints from the universe that are like, "Remember your true nature," but we're not supposed to be able to remember it easily because that's why we come here and take human form, to learn more and evolve and learn these lessons and suffer and have victories and love and all this stuff. I think that's why music is so important because it's like the invisible architecture that holds up the entire universe, and I think there's not enough value placed on music. When I say music, I mean even the birds chirping or whatever, that it holds this whole thing up.

Jim James talks with Apple Music about his struggles with depression and self-loathing and what led him to bring on producer Brendan O'Brien

Jim James: I feel like I've really, really struggled in this world. I've really struggled with depression and self-loathing and self-hatred, and I feel like music was my way of desperately trying to get the world to love me. It's like, "Please love me, look what I can do. Look at the tricks I can perform. Please, please, please."

I realised like slowly only in the last four or five years have I begin to realise this stuff that especially in the chaos of the modern world, one thing that no one can take away from me is the love that I cultivate for myself. No matter what happens in the world ... I can build this reservoir of love for myself, and instead of trying to erase Jim or trying to escape from Jim or trying to destroy Jim like I've spent most of my life doing, I was like, "That's not working. What if we try to turn the other way and we try to love Jim and take care of Jim, heal Jim?" The more I've been trying to do that, the more I've realised that I can actually be of greater service to the world rather than like trying to run from the world or escape from the world. If I'm nicer to myself, I can be nicer to those around me. I can also let go in this new way that's really come through in the music because that whole quest for love, I had to do everything with the music or it wasn't good enough. I had to produce it, I had to play it, I had to write it, I had to do the guitar solos, I had to make sure all the reverb was right and the microphones were right and every little thing. The more I've realised that like if I take my entire self-worth out of the success or failure of my music career and just try to love myself, then I can realise things like we did with this last record where we were kind of at this point where were banging our head against a wall. We had done two full sessions just by ourselves with me producing, and we had some cool stuff, but it was all murky and there was like so many ideas and we weren't really getting anywhere. There's this idea like, "What if we try a producer? What if we try a coach?" Oftentimes that's tough, too, because a lot of times big name producers come with big egos and they drag that in there.

I took some meetings and I met Brendan, and Brendan is so f***ing funny because he is like all he is interested in is the music. "What, is the tempo right? Is the key right? Are the lyrics right?" He's a sweet guy, he's a hilarious guy, but it's like he doesn't need to vibe out with you. It's like this really, really interesting thing where he's like so laser focused on music, and for us as a band, it was really fascinating because we all like sprung to life because you want to play good for coach. You're like, "I want to do a good job for coach."

Zane Lowe: He's got the playbook in his hand at all times.

Jim James: Totally. Oh my God. Yeah, he's seen everybody play. This guy's watched Bruce Springsteen play, and that kind of for us, I think, really inspired us. The beautiful thing about him was is it wasn't about his ego. It wasn't about this big character that he's building up. It was so-

Zane Lowe: He was serving at the alter of the songs.

Jim James: Absolutely, and he truly was. You feel that truth when you're with him.

Jim James talks with Apple Music about My Morning Jacket's hardest habit to break

Jim James: I think we're all trying too hard at times because we're all like get into that perfectionist way and just I think when you try to hard, everybody knows that phrase, things become too-

Zane Lowe: Hard.

Jim James: ... forced-

Zane Lowe: Yeah.

Jim James: ... and hard. The more you can relax and be flexible and be like the grass or be like the wind or whatever and you got to move, and I think those are hard habits to break. You're in the studio and there's so much pressure and you want this to be the most mind-blowing album of all time.

Zane Lowe: Everyone's standing to the other side and they're all just listening to it, and there's Brendan over at the desk and it was just like this, "Sounds great." Then, this thing happens where someone starts talking, but you're still recording. They start talking and you're like, "Oh, I've lost them. I've lost them. It's done. We're cooked."

Jim James: Yeah, and so you got to somehow just stop trying so hard.

Check out the Zane Lowe Show here