Louisville Magazine

JUL 2012

Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.

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we tried to make our "freakscene"(i wonder if we subconsciously named it after the dinosaur jr song?) a polar opposite of the post-hardcore scene. we wanted people to feel welcome at our shows. we wanted it to feel like a place you could come and get wild and have fun and be yourself and not worry. we wanted music to bring happiness... or at least some release... for everyone involved. not many people ever found out about it...but we had some good times. around the time of the freakscene i was asked to play in another band called "hotel roy" with some beautifully creative guys who really helped start to change my outlook on things. the guys in hotel roy were into our freakscene and that whole vibe, but were also really into the popular indie rock scene as well. they really helped build a bridge in my mind to show me that the feelings i was having about not fitting in to that scene were indeed mostly just in my own insecure mind...and that, aside from a few assholes, there were a lot of nice folks in that world as well, and that i needed to just stop worrying about it and shut up! ...and with their help i learned to calm down and focus on the beauty...because there is just so much of it. as month of sundays slowly disintegrated in a post non-completed college haze i started doing open mic nights and writing different music than i had written with month of sundays. for some reason i labeled the page in my notebook where i kept track of the songs "my morning jacket." i still don't really know why. one of my best friends, my cousin john, who had long been part of my musical upbringing, was very supportive of this new project of mine. whenever he had breaks from work and his own band "winter death club" he would help me record my songs at the studio on his grandparents farm. we had so much fun doing that and eventually started playing together and it grew and grew and took on a life of its own, with lots of great folks involved past and present- namely the long lasting gift of another musical guide and friend in mr tom blankenship. like my buddy dave's parents, john's grandparents are saints. they really gave us a place to land and stretch our wings...so we grew there in that beautiful place. my morning jacket would have never gotten off the ground if it weren't for johns grandparents support. to any parents or grandparents who let your kids bands practice at your house: you've earned a place of positive entry into the afterlife of your choice. modern day louisville to me is a very happy place. a place of endless creativity, artistic growth, and goodwill amongst fellow artists . being good friends and co-workers with one of louisville's greatest musical treasures: mister kevin ratterman- who provides a recording studio vehicle for artists to create and realize their musical dreams in the highest quality, i have been able to keep my ear on the pulse of what is going on here NOW in louisville- so much beautiful music being made by the brilliant minds who walk these streets. i feel very excited to be a part of this wonderful and wide family of new friends and old pals that stretch back before birth and out beyond the grave. i guess THAT -in the end- is what truly sums up louisville to me: family. not just blood family but deeply rooted friendships that began in childhood and hopefully will last until the day i die. i feel like that is a fairly rare thing to find in this life, and that i might not have been so fortunate had i not been born in this beautiful world of louisville KY- a place that southerners look at as "northern," a place that northerners and the rest of the world look at as "the south," but in reality exists right in the middle- a place all it's own with a pure palette and unique point of view to create from...being bound by no particular constraints or rules of identity. i have always felt extremely fortunate and proud to have been born here, and cherish that as part of my own earthly identity. -jim james 6/3/12 By Patrick Hallahan From a musical standpoint, Louisville is a do-it-yourself place. You want, you make. It has always been so liberating to live in a place virtually free from a cultural pull. We aren't Northerners, aren't Southerners. We're west of East, east of West. We are Louisville, and we define what that means. Many of my first memories are steeped in music, and I owe a great deal of that to my grandmother, Joni Brohm. During the first years of my life, she was a singer in a lounge quartet, and I would hang out in her basement as she and her band ran through the week's set [50] LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 7.12

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