My Morning Jacket Covers Gram Parsons

My Morning Jacket are from Louisville, Kentucky. They make rock music that is loud and reverberant and soaked in atmosphere. Their reference points are eclectic. The country and folk roots are less visible in their main catalog than the classic rock and psychedelic influences, but they are there.

The Gram Parsons cover noted here brings those roots to the surface.

The cover

Parsons's songwriting has a quality that makes it surprisingly accessible to arrangements other than the country-rock originals. The songs work stripped back. They work with different instrumentation. The emotional content of the material does not depend on the production context.

My Morning Jacket's approach to the Parsons song in this cover is to play it large. Jim James's voice, which has its own specific qualities of warmth and vibrato, sits well in the Parsons vocal tradition. Both voices carry emotion as texture rather than as statement.

The My Morning Jacket connection to country

The Louisville origin matters. Kentucky is not Nashville, but it shares a music culture with the country tradition in ways that coastal music scenes do not. The George Jones and Loretta Lynn records were part of the cultural air in ways that are structural rather than chosen.

Jim James has discussed the country influence in interviews, though the band's public presentation has emphasized the psychedelic rock dimension more often. The cover recording makes the country dimension audible without requiring the band to announce it.

Gram Parsons in coverage

This site has covered Parsons across several entries. The Picture Book: Gram Parsons, Keith Richards, and Anita Pallenberg in Joshua Tree is the visual essay. The Return of the Grievous Angel: The Story Behind the Song is the close reading. The Artists index has the full list.