Jim James on Sobriety, Backrooms, and Taking Care of Jim

This is a free post from Larry Fitzmaurice's Last Donut of the Night newsletter. Paid subscribers get one or two email-only Baker's Dozens every week featuring music I've been listening to and some critical observations around it, along with a Screen Memories column every one or two weeks where I write about stuff I watched lately.

Here's what is going down today: Longtime fan of what My Morning Jacket have done over the years as well as frontman Jim James' solo material; Jim just dropped his latest outing, Wowed Out, which finds him exploring a variety of fascinating textures (even some sampling!) that haven't appeared too often in his catalog at large. I interviewed Jim for Pitchfork back in 2013, and I thought it was a great chat at the time—so I was very happy to have him on the newsletter again, and he was surprisingly forthcoming regarding his views and life experiences in general. This is a really fascinating one, I hope you all enjoy reading it. Check it out:

The last time I talked to you was for the first record that you put out under your own name. Since then, you've amassed quite a catalog in terms of your solo career—but this is your first solo record in six years. Talk about how this one came together, especially in the midst of a relatively busy time for My Morning Jacket.
I've got a studio in my house, so I'm always recording. That's a big part of my life when I'm not on tour, because the studio is my favorite instrument. I love engineering, ProTools, tape machines, playing the keyboard and the bass—but I don't need to do that stuff in My Morning Jacket, so I have all this music that I'm playing and dancing with, and eventually there'll be some alarm that's like, "OK, I think an album is ready."

Years ago, I was invited to score this film with Brian Reitzell that we ended up getting fired from. I wrote all these themes that I got to keep, which was great. Every now and again, I'll pop back in there, because I always loved the little pieces we created—but I wasn't able to turn them into a song until about a year ago, when I was working on "Lost Child," which is the only song that isn't from that scoring stuff. I really love working with samples, and that song's based on a sample from Maxine Brown's "Oh No Not My Baby." For some reason, it gave me the idea to go back into the score stuff, so I opened those sessions and all the ideas started flowing. When I get a session going, I'll print a rough mix of it and take a walk with my headphones, where I'll get more ideas. I fell into this beautiful walking meditation with all these pieces, and it all just came together.

I love trying to listen to that voice of the universe that tells me when something is or is not done—or what to do, instead of worrying about some imaginary deadline or putting pressure on myself to keep cranking shit out. It's a more peaceful experience.

Do you have a process when it comes to deciding what goes on a My Morning Jacket record versus something you might save for yourself?
Every record's different. I've always got a pile of songs, and some very clearly want to be a My Morning Jacket thing, whereas with other songs we might try them both ways. For some solo songs, I really love the recording that was captured—because if it's an idea, I deliberately don't try to capture a good recording of it so that the band can capture a true recording that we all like. I found out the hard way, long ago, about creating insane demos that I love so much. Somebody was like, "Stop making demos—just get ProTools and good gear and start recording. That way, if you're making something, it can be the thing you actually want it to be. If you have something that you want to be a band thing, don't spend a lot of time making a great version of it. Just record a quick demo so you don't forget the song." That's been very helpful.

The last time I interviewed you, we talked about notions of spirituality and religion—Catholicism, specifically. Talk to me about what your relationship with spirituality has been like since.
Spirituality is such a complex, deeply personal thing. It's so different for everybody. For me, lately it's this realization that I'm not Jim. I'm part of the universe, and we're all connected to this thing that we can't understand—and we grasp at it, and we try to call it God and different forms of names or personifications. We flail at it because we're not supposed to be able to understand it with our cute little human minds.

But what's been my deepest spiritual feeling is that I'm part of the ocean that we're all part of. I feel like we're all a wave, but we're the ocean,—that Brahman, Atman concept of feeling like we're special and unique, and we're also not special and unique. We're all made of the same stuff, but we're having this experience that doesn't last forever. My experience as Jim will just be a brief one. I hope I get to live to be 129 or whatever, but I don't choose when I come or go.

So I'm trying to look at this whole thing as, how can I be the best caretaker and custodian of this being called Jim—like a horse I'm riding—and try and put as much love and peace into the world as I can through Jim, before I go back to the wall of God, or whatever the thing is that I think we all return to, and get out of its way and listen to it more and try to listen to Jim less. Because Jim has all these desires, needs, and wants, but the universe is going to do what it's going to do. So I try to keep reminding myself—especially when I'm disappointed or angry—"OK, this thing is happening that Jim doesn't want to be happening, but it's happening. The universe clearly wants it to happen, because it's happened." What do I do with that? How do I flow with that?

To me, the most deeply spiritual thing I can do is listen to the will of the universe—especially when things are bad and hard—and try and see that this moment is just not even a grain of sand. Zooming back from the earth itself—in the grand scheme of the cosmos, is it even a grain of sand? That's how small it is. We get lost in the human thing, and we think the human thing is all there is—and I think it's designed that way. I think we're supposed to come down here and get lost in it. That's part of my guess of what the evolutionary path is—waking up a little bit and realizing that you're not the star of the show. It's easier said than done, because we're built to do that.

Embracing an ego-free lifestyle is an interesting concept to hear you talk about, considering that My Morning Jacket has been capably filling out venues the size of Madison Square Garden since at least 2009.
It's funny you mention that. Most of my life, I thought if I had that quote unquote success, I could finally love myself. I thought if I climbed the ladder high enough, I'd be able to think I was okay and lovable. And I found time and time again that it wasn't true. I was so lost in the story of Jim that I couldn't even see the whole painting of the whole fucking universe. I even hate using the word "ego," because it lends a certain thing to the conversation. But I can begin to realize that Jim isn't the star of the show, and that I'm a part of the universe—but, for this moment in time, I'm still in this body playing the character of Jim. So I can still pop back into the Jim experience and try to do it the best I can, and one of the things I love most about being Jim is the connection to music. I've become more grateful for that, and that's my primary focus: How can I listen to the music that comes into Jim and follow that while trying to love this thing called Jim, versus trying to destroy it?

I spent the first 40 years of my life just trying to destroy Jim and drink Jim to death. I thought if I played enough rock and roll shows to enough people, then it'd be okay to love Jim. It feels really freeing to step back from that.

There's a direct quote in the press materials for this album where you say, "There are times where I felt lost or depressed." I'm curious to hear you talk about those times within the breadth of your career, which has been quite extensive at this point—specific and crucial moments of navigating transition and the unpleasant feelings that come with it, and how you made it through.
I honestly don't know how I made it through most of it, other than just the will of the universe. There were several times that I didn't think I'd make it through. I've also come to terms with my own alcoholism and struggles with depression, and all of the running that I did. Most of my life, I was trying to escape the burning building that I thought Jim was.

I do parts work therapy, which is where you spend time listening to different parts of yourself and their stories—the five-year-old you, the 12-year-old you, the alcoholic you, the drug addict you. I spend a lot of time with the alcoholic part of myself, realizing that he was trying to save us because we didn't want to be here. He didn't want us to kill ourselves, so he was like, "Alright, the best I know how to do is keep giving you this tequila or Miller Lite so we can keep going." I've found this incredible gratitude for him, because without that I'd probably would've killed myself a long time ago—because I did not want to be here. Somehow, there's a bridge that was built by this alcoholic part of myself that allowed me to get across enough life to be able to find a good therapist and do some real work on myself—to be a little bit more open to seeing more of the picture.

There's so many ways that it could've gone. It's so out of my control, but I've found this place now where I'm just trying to be more present and grateful for what's happening, and grateful to be experiencing consciousness right now in this form, because this is going to be gone soon—and I love thinking about that a lot. I love thinking and talking about death, because we're so wrapped up in our story that we think it goes on forever, but it doesn't. I remember that every day, especially if I'm sad or confused or I think the world's fucked up. I'm like, "Well, you're doing what you can. You're working on yourself. You're trying to be a good person. Everybody's going to fuck up. Everybody's going to make mistakes."

But, right now, I'm looking out the window at a tree, and I'm not going to get to do this forever. And who knows what's next? Maybe there's nothing. Maybe you go to heaven or hell. Maybe you take reincarnate as another being. I love that we can't know. That's so great. Nobody can know, so you gotta try to enjoy it and make as much peace and love as you can.

How long has it been since you quit drinking?
May 22nd was four years.

Awesome. I hit five years this past April.
Dude, congrats.

Obviously, there's this experience where you're filled with gratitude—and then the hard stuff comes, where you really have to dig in and work. You can't just be like, "Alright, I did this and I'm done," and walk away. You live with it. Talk to me about digging in. It's an underrated aspect of quitting drinking.
I'm sure you know this from your own life and friends—if you're an alcoholic, no amount of anything that anybody says to you can make you quit until you're ready to quit. I was hospitalized several times for very serious health conditions where they were like, "You gotta quit drinking"—and I was like, "Uh huh, yeah, sure, whatever." We have to have respect for people's paths and realize that people will find their path when it's time to find their path. For me, it was parts work and EMDR therapy, because it really allowed me to listen to parts of myself and begin to see why I was drinking.

With ayahuasca, ketamine, and various psychedelic therapies, I was able to have a near-death experience where I was able to lose contact with Jim but still be present in a conscious way where I was able to look at and see Jim with compassion. I had this vision where I was walking outside of a liquor store and I saw this guy sitting on a box, sipping on a bottle. I felt this deep worry and compassion for him. I walked up to him and I was like, "Man, you can't keep treating yourself this way. You got to find a way out. How can I help you?" The guy looked up, and it was me. I held myself in my own arms and saw myself as a person.

I feel like I was always able to be nice to other people, but I was so mean to Jim. I hated Jim so much. Once I was able to see Jim as a person just like everybody else, I could feel this new compassion for him—and I could see that, if this Jim thing is gonna keep going, I can never have any hope of peace if I keep destroying it with this bottle and ripping down anything I try to build, all while wondering, "Why aren't I happy? Why are things not going well?"

Even after I had that vision and did the work, it still took me a couple years to get to the point where I could even start to try and stop drinking. Most people who are alcoholics or drug addicts know the feeling of life as hurt, and you don't want to feel it anymore. The tequila gave me a vacation every night, but it comes at such a price that you don't realize, because you're willing to pay it at the time. That's why I'm on a big quest to talk about it as much as I can. If somebody out there reads that it's possible to get out—but it is hard, and it's not like you're just gonna go find one therapist someday and it's gonna be great and easy, and then you're gonna quit drinking. It's so hard, but it's also so possible if you can find that doorway to see yourself as a being that you need to have compassion for.

I saw you play a Transcendental Meditation benefit at Carnegie Hall way back in 2015. Talk to me about the role that TM plays in your life.
There's so many different forms of meditation, and I really encourage people to, try those paths. When you meditate, you're giving yourself a chance to see what's really going on up there. Most people think you're going to float off your pillow and achieve total consciousness, but so much of meditation is just seeing what's happening in your mind—sitting there, not being on your phone, not talking to anybody, not looking at the news. It helps us become aware that you're part of a consciousness that is not the human part. Your mind is chattering away and saying that you got to gotta go to the grocery store, drink some tequila, hate this, love this—but behind that is your true self, and that's very mysterious.

I don't think we're supposed to be able to understand quite what that is, but it's part of the consciousness that allowed me to have more compassion for Jim when I saw that I'm not Jim, but the caretaker of Jim for this period of time. And rather than destroy Jim, why don't I try to take care of Jim like I'd try to take care of any other person that I love? It's really important for people to try and discover that for themselves, and discover what's the best path they can take for their own healing.

I really do feel like everybody's so angry right now, and the world is so difficult and there's so much hatred being thrown around casually, and in so many directions.
If people turned off their phone, turned off the news, and tried to have some compassion and some mercy for themselves and tried to clean up their own house before they started trying to clean up everybody else's houses, we'd see a lot of change a lot quicker. The longer we keep pushing that off, the more chaos, hatred, and division we're going to see. But the more we can get in touch with trying to clean our own house, then we can come to the world with more peace. If everybody was doing that, we'd find a much quicker voyage to peace, love, and harmony—because it's possible. We've got all the room and the resources for everybody to live in peace—but it's all jammed up, because everybody refuses to look at themselves. They keep thinking, "Maybe tomorrow, but I'm going to go online and fight with this person about politics right now. That's going to solve everything."

The title of this record is a reference to your own digital overstimulation.
I keep having this thought: Imagine if aliens came down right now, paused everything, hooked us all up to feeding and water tubes so we wouldn't die, and assigned us our own therapists—and they're like, "Nobody gets to do anything until everybody figures their shit out." Maybe within six months, we'd begin to see a return to what humans really are capable of—living in sync with the earth and each other. But people refuse to do the work for themselves, so they just keep fighting

We've got this terrible drug called the internet that's probably the most effective divide-and-conquer tool anybody's ever created—and it's the same old boring storyline that we're playing out again, of humans fighting and killing. They can't seem to get it together, and I'm sick of this storyline, but we're all being fed this drug that is so powerful that nobody can put it down. This thing is insane.

I've never had a personal Facebook account, but there's all these things we have to have as artists—an Instagram page, a Facebook page. I'm lucky that I've never been that into it. I'm not really into telling people about my personal life. But even with that said, I had to purchase a Brick because I'm so fucking addicted to my phone.

I have a friend who uses a Brick as well.
Dude, the Brick has been amazing. You've got this drug in your pocket all the time that you're helpless to. I wish I could see how many times I've deleted and [re-installed] Instagram, dating apps, whatever the fuck it is. The technology is a great tool, at the same time. I often think that, if Instagram or Facebook was purely a factual information system—no commentary, no likes, no drama, no opinions, just "Here's a show tonight at 9 p.m," "This thing happened in the world"...I just keep thinking, how can I turn this stuff back into a tool? If you use a hammer to hang a picture in your house, you grab the hammer, you hit a nail into the wall a few times, you hang the picture, and you're done. You've used the tool. But we're using the hammer and pounding through all the walls and ceilings. We won't stop using the hammer.

If I have my phone Bricked, I can't look at any of the social media or dating apps every fucking time I take a shit. But I allow myself to look at it during the morning when I have my coffee, because it's not like you don't need to see the news or what's going on. You give yourself your time in the morning, and then Brick it and stay off it the rest of the day. It's been one of the most effective things I've found so far, because we're really in a crisis for sure.

Another thing we talked about last time was the evolution of masculinity. Since then, things have obviously regressed quite a bit in that regard.
We're obviously dealing with the effects of toxic masculinity and living in a patriarchal society. I hate to sound like a broken record, but if you refuse to deal with your own issues, you're going to take them out on the world. Look at these four or five men who hold all of the power and money in the world right now. They're deeply miserable, right? Their vibrations are off, but yet they're the quote-unquote successful ones who have the billions of dollars and power—but none of it is enough They want to kill more, get more money, take more land. If somehow aliens were able to reach those men and say, "Nothing happens until you face your demons," we'd begin to see them let go of all these illusions of power and money—these things that they're chasing—because they're clearly not making them happy. They're suffering deeply.

That's part of the whole illusion of masculinity and binary. I don't think things are zero or one. In my own life, I feel my energy shift from masculine to feminine. I feel things flow and change. I'm born into a male body or whatever, but I don't feel the need to live by those rules, because that's just a formation of spells that happen to form me in a male body. When people are born into a body that feels wrong and they need to change, like trans people—being that in touch with yourself, where you're that brave to take a step to alter your reality to find more peace and harmony, that's an evolution towards the light and the truth.

This backup that we're seeing, I guarantee that if there was some way to see what was inside the hearts of these people who are causing so much pain and suffering in the world, there's some deep truths that they're not wanting to face. Perhaps they're born into the wrong body, or they're queer and they can't face it—and they're trying to take it out on everybody else because they're trying to prove how manly they are, but they just can't come to terms with their own desires that they actually wish they were a woman or whatever it is.

People who are men in the culture who have been assigned these positions of power have a responsibility to talk about making the world into a place that is even and flows. It's only based on the quality of your work, spirit, and heart—because your gender, race, or whatever has no bearing on your intelligence or ability. All these things that we know to be so true, but people are still fighting them because they can't come to peace with themselves—the fact that they're a man, or their spirit is a woman trapped in a man's body, or whatever. Instead of facing and healing that, they're taking it out on everybody else or thinking that, if they make maybe three more billion dollars, then they'll finally be happy.

From my own experience of thinking, "Maybe if I just sell a few more records or play a few bigger concerts, then I'll be happy"—I spent most of my life doing that. I'm wishing we could get through to people to let them know it's okay to say that you need help—that you need to face your demons and look at your life and say, "Fuck, man, I've been running in the wrong direction my whole life, and I'm 75." If we could do this for each other, hold each other in peace—and I'm not saying in any way to condone any of the vile actions that any of these people have been doing—to hold the spirit with peace to help people get out of their bad, violent, hateful actions and back in touch with their true spirit, to move towards a peace of a place of harmony and peace that I know we're capable of....

I just know that it's possible for us to achieve peace and harmony, because it's so easy for me to envision a world where we live and, there's still sadness, suffering, and death, but there's no more hatred, racism and sexism—these things that are just so silly and old. Can we please move on to a new storyline? Humans are so insistent on the storyline of racism and hatred.

Do you like movies?
I love movies.

What's some stuff you've watched recently that you like?
Dude, I mean, Backrooms. Have you seen Backrooms?

Yeah, I liked Backrooms.
That was great. Backrooms, for me, is one of the greatest films I've ever seen in my life. I went to see it five times in theaters. I bought the scent kit that they put out for it. I don't get it until September, but I can't wait to watch it with the scent kit so it becomes a 4-D experience. Something about Backrooms really opened my mind and heart to a new way of just like thinking about how we store memories and our consciousness is in this realm. Backrooms, for me, felt like the first time I saw Twin Peaks or discovered David Lynch's art. I'm really excited to see where Kane Parsons goes with the rest of this Backrooms story.

I think Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the great works of art that we've produced in a long time. That film ripped open a new hole in the universe. Severance is one of the great works of art. That opened a new way of seeing things for me. Those are probably my faves at this moment.