Jameson Connects Presents James Vincent McMorrow: Revisiting a Classic Hot Press Interview

James Vincent McMorrow's performance as part of Jameson Connects' remarkable online music experience, The Spirit Of Christmas, is just around the corner – see him play Jameson Distillery Bow St. at 9pm tomorrow (December 23) – straight to your living room! We can already feel the hairs on the back of our neck standing up!

To set the scene for what promises to be an epic online gig, we bring you this classic 2015 interview with James from the pages of Hot Press.

In what is as very special tete-a-tete, the widely acclaimed Dublin singer and songwriter – in addition to his own hit albums, he has worked with the likes of Drake, San Holo and Kygo – talks to our man Stuart Clark about musical adventures in deepest Texas; Quincy Jones and other musical heroes; his unexpected penchant for funk – and heavy metal; the magic of Nashville; and why, under no circumstances, will he be appearing on the cover of Playgirl!

And for a brilliant up-to-the-minute interview caught on camera, watch the video below, taken in advance of his Jameson Connects performance. And lastly, you can go to Jameson Connects, the place for epic rewards, incredible experiences, unique content and much more: www.jamesonwhiskey.com/en-IE/connects/landing.

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DEEP IN THE HEART OF TEXAS

Having consulted musicologists, scoured the internet and read 37 years’ worth of Hot Press back issues, I think I can safely say that James Vincent McMorrow is the only Irish artist to have recorded an album on a Texan pecan farm just a burrito’s throw from the border with Mexico.

“They’ve a massive fence to keep illegal immigrants out and border patrol cars passing by every few minutes, so the crime rate on the American side is virtually zero,” says McMorrow, who’s still snuffly following a near fatal bout of Man Flu, which means we’re meeting a week later than originally planned. “It’s like Ireland 40 years ago: no one, including the studio where I was, locks their doors. If anybody wanted to drive up, walk in and steal a million dollars’ worth of equipment they could, but they don’t because the security locally’s so tight.”

The world’s largest residential studio complex, Sonic Ranch – great name! – is located 30 miles east of El Paso in the town of Tornillo and includes the impeccably hip Yeah Yeah Yeahs, ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, Jenny Lewis, Conor Oberst, Animal Collective and Band Of Horses among its client list.

“When you looked out the studio window you saw this two-mile row of trees planted in a manmade basin, which once a month has water pumped into it because the ground’s like rock,” James resumes. “You go to bed and it’s a desert fi lled with trees; you wake up and you’re on an island. If that wasn’t surreal enough, the water’s milky because of the chemicals they put into it to balance the acidity out. It was like being in the middle of a soapy bath! As the day goes on it sinks down into the ground.”

The LSD trip-style recording experience aside, why did James abandon his own Dublin 2 studio?

“My studio is only five minutes from where I live, which was great for the initial building of the sounds on the album,” he reflects. “Some of them are literally me plucking stuff out of thin air. It wasn’t me picking up a guitar and finding the right pedal; it was deconstruction. ‘What’s an acoustic guitar? What’s a tuba?’ It was good to do those things in a safe and familiar environment, but when it came to start the actual recording I needed to be somewhere that I couldn’t just pop out of to meet friends or go to Whelan’s. Initially it was, ‘Let’s head down the country in Ireland’ – and then we ended up in Texas because that was the studio, which ticked all the boxes. I certainly wasn’t trying to make my ‘American’ album!”

Desperately Needed

Not that James Vincent McMorrow isn’t as enamoured of the US as the US clearly is of him. The Stateside reviews of Post Tropical have been universally positive, with the New York Times noting how “it takes McMorrow’s intimate lyrics and hushed vocals and soaks them in ’90s R&B and early 2000s hip hop, often with stunning results”; Spin pitching in with “ethereal Irishman turns himself into one-man alt-R&B choir” and, among a slew of regional endorsements, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel commending its “sweet strangeness”.

“In terms of my ideas, my clichés and romantic notions of making music it’s never let me down,” he says of the country that seems intent on adopting him. “In fact, they’ve actually been exceeded in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago – the grand old dames of rock ’n’ roll – and Nashville, which I was humbled to be in because of all the amazing records it's been the catalyst for. I can totally understand why Jack White’s based his Third Man Records in Nashville; there’s magic in the air. They’re the places you immediately think of, but my first album did incredibly well in cities like Milwaukee and Minneapolis. To be honest, they hadn’t been on my radar – but then you walk into First Avenue and they go, ‘This is where Purple Rain was filmed’ and you’re like, ‘Holy shit'!

“My favourite movie as a kid was Die Hard, so to see the Nakatomi Plaza Building in LA where John McClane takes down Hans Gruber was a real moment. You drive along and see the Scientology Center and think, ‘Fuck, it really exists!’ What you can’t do is let the place overwhelm you to the extent where you start mimicking its culture.”

A prime example of which was Ash’s “Downpatrick? No, we’re from Seattle!” Meltdown, 2004’s ill-advised attempt to outfight the Foos – a misstep from which their career’s never fully recovered. It was whilst touring in the States that James learned one of his most salutary music industry lessons.

“I’ve had the chance to share stages with bands that are in staggering ascendency – no better example of that being The Civil Wars who I toured with,” he explains. “The first couple of weeks were in 400 or 500-seater rooms and then suddenly, boom, it was 2,000 people and extra shows being added left, right and centre. Joy and John Paul, who I consider to be incredibly good friends, were being asked to do all these things which instead of weighing up they automatically answered ‘Yes’ to.

“If Rick Rubin calls and says, ‘Come out to my house in Malibu and let’s talk about making records’ – like he did – you go, of course. But making a five-hour detour to do one of those, ‘Hi, this is The Civil Wars on KXXX’ radio IDs? Every station I went to they’d been there half-an-hour beforehand, even though their song was already on the playlist and the album flying off the shelves. iTunes would ring and ask, ‘Why don’t you come up to our Cupertino HQ and meet everyone?’ and, forget that day off they desperately needed, the guys were there. Their instinct – and I have that instinct too – was to say ‘Yes’ – but when it leads to the kind of burn out they suffered it’s totally counterproductive. Even at my level, there are 30 or 40 decisions you have to make every day in terms of what you will and won’t do.”

Romanticised Notion

Having seen Joy Williams and John Paul White get to the point where never mind tour bus, they don’t want to be in the same state together – “Internal discord and irreconcilable differences of ambition” was the phrase used when The Civil Wars imploded in November 2012 – James has developed the ability to say, 'No' and mean it!

“Had this been a year ago, I wouldn’t have said to my Irish PR person, Lindsey, ‘You’ll have to postpone these interviews'. I’d have gone ahead with them and been running to the toilets every half-hour to throw up. There was a gig at the start of 2013 in Galway when I was ten times worse than I was last week. I couldn’t physically stand because I was so sick, but instead of cancelling I crawled into the back of a car; went to the doctor who pumped me full of God know’s what; slept all the way to the gig; was practically wheeled to the stage and somehow managed to do a 90-minute show without passing out. In doing what I felt was expected of me, I managed to make myself even more ill.

“I’m aware of the fact there are ten people directly working with and for me – whether they be bandmates, crew, managers or lawyers – and 40 record company employees each with their own agenda that needs to be filled. I do my best to accommodate them all, but at the end of the day I’m the benign dictator who says, ‘Yes’ or ‘No’.”

Lest we start to think he’s turned into a moaning muso of Thom Yorke-ian proportions, James quickly adds: “I dreamt of doing this when I was a kid. I closed my eyes and pictured myself on stage at these places like the Olympia where I’d seen Smashing Pumpkins, The National and Dave Grohl who blew my mind by climbing across the balcony. All these incredible bands and then I get to play two nights there. I’m on Jools Holland thinking, ‘This is fucked up, what am I doing here?’ I’m very comfortable in myself as a musician – for the first time in my life I actually know what I’m doing – but I don’t ever want not to be excited about selling-out The Barbican, which is a huge building.”

I’ve always felt that the day you stop being a fan, you might as well throw the towel in.

“I think that’s true,” James nods. “If you don’t feel giddy with excitement when you get your hands on the new Drake or St. Vincent record you’re obviously in the wrong game.”

What have been his most wanton acts of fandom?

“How do you mean?”
Any mild stalking or having his favourite artist tattooed onto his bottom?

“I’ve always respected people’s space. I’ll be in the dressing-room next to someone I really admire at a festival and not go, ‘Hi!’ because I feel I’m intruding. Which is odd because I don’t feel they’re intruding when they say ‘Hi!’ to me. As a kid I got backstage passes to Metallica in The Point and was close to meeting them and I was like, ‘No, no, it’s not cool'.

“I was the same recently when we ended up at this thumping party at the Montreaux Jazz Festival which one of my heroes, Quincy Jones, was at. I mean, I’m obsessive! A guy who played with me at the time said, ‘Do you want me to introduce you to him?’ At first I was like, ‘Yes!’ and then it was, ‘No, I don’t want to meet the 85-year-old Quincy Jones. I want to meet the 55-year-old Quincy Jones who wants to yell at me and tell me to find a new range in my register'. I’m sure he’s still really cool, but I didn’t want anything to alter this romanticised notion I have of him.”

Telephoto Lenses

Those who had him pegged as a weird beard alt. folker would have been surprised last year when McMorrow revealed his twin hip-hop and speed metal obsessions.

“Doggystyle by Snoop Dogg is still a touchstone record for me, as are the Chilis’ Blood Sugar Sex Magick and Live’s Throwing Copper,” he confides. “Up till then my favourites would have been Michael Jackson’s Bad and Queen’s Live Magic, which quickly fell by the wayside! Our babysitter brought us to the shopping centre – I was still in Fifth Class at the time – and I snuck off and bought all three of them. Then, and I’d never done this before, I went home and hid them from my parents.”

Was he one of those teenage “I didn’t ask to be born!” brats who made his Ma and Da’s life a misery?

“No more or less than other people. I probably came across as being a bit solemn, but I had friends, I was happy and when I discovered drinking at 15/16 I came out of my shell a lot more. I wasn’t playing or sitting with my ear to the needle then. Music existed in my house, but it was very much in the periphery of my understanding. That changed, though, when I met these guys who were all in bands and started playing drums because no one else did. The shed in my back garden was commandeered and there was no looking back.

“I don’t think I’d have been cut out for much else,” he ventures. “I’m not socially... I can navigate the waters, but my instinct is to stay indoors.”

Chatting to Conor J. Brien from the Villagers a year ago when he was almost at exactly the same point as James is today – fanbase established, eagerly-anticipated second album about to drop – he was horrified when I suggested that his anonymity and right to a private life was about to go out the window. How much of himself is McMorrow prepared to reveal to the media?

“I don’t care how much they offer, I’m not posing for Playgirl,” he deadpans. “Leaving Villagers’ show last night in Vicar St., there was a girl from downstairs who, having spotted me on the balcony, waited outside for 90 minutes to say ‘Hi’ and talk about one of the shows I’m doing in Dublin. She was lovely and wanted a photo taken, so I was happy to stop and chat. How would I feel if it was a dozen paparazzi stationed outside my house with telephoto lenses? I don’t think it’s going to happen, but if it did? Pissed off!”

As part of Jameson Connects' The Spirit Of Christmas, you can expect three incredible performances – from James Vincent McMorrow, Saint Sister & Lisa Hannigan, and The Scratch – straight to your living room!

Join us for an unforgettable online music experience at 9pm on Wednesday, 23rd December at youtube.com/jamesonwhiskey

Please enjoy Jameson responsibly. Visit drinkaware.ie