My Morning Jacket to Tour With Preservation Hall Jazz Band

My Morning Jacket has recruited New Orleans' Preservation Hall Jazz Band for a short trek that begins April 20th in Birmingham, Alabama. MMJ frontman Jim James was inspired to bring the PHJB on the road after collaborating with the group on a pair of tracks for Preservation: An Album to Benefit Preservation Hall & the Preservation Hall Music Outreach Program, a compilation that teams the PHJB with vocalists like James, Tom Waits, Merle Haggard, Pete Seeger and many more. The comp is due out February 16th and proceeds benefit the Hall, whose mission is to preserve New Orleans jazz.

"When I got the invitation to go to the legendary Preservation Hall — where so much of the music we now know and love on this earth found its early roots — I did not waste a minute," James said. "Getting to sing while the guys played with such glorious bursts of sound — all live in that holy room with the ghosts and garbage trucks crankin' along — was an experience I'll never forget."

The Preservation Hall Jazz Band will open for MMJ on all dates. Check out the bands' schedule — including sets at the Big Easy's Jazzfest on April 24th — here:

My Morning Jacket with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band
Apr. 20 - Birmingham, AL @ Alabama Theater
Apr. 21 - Nashville, TN @ Municipal Auditorium
Apr. 23 - Atlanta, GA @ Chastain Park
Apr. 24 - New Orleans, LA @ Jazzfest
Apr. 27 - St. Augustine, FL @ St. Augustine Amphitheater
Apr. 28 - Charleston, SC @ Family Circle
Apr. 30 - Raleigh, NC @ Koka Booth
May 1 - Columbia, MD @ Merriweather Post Pavilion
May 2 - Columbus, OH @ LC Outdoor Pavilion

Related Stories:
• My Morning Jacket's Eclectic Covers: From Danzig to Dylan
• Oberst, Jim James and M. Ward Form Monsters Of Folk Supergroup
• My Morning Jacket's James Plots EP of George Harrison Covers

• 
  MUSIC 100 Greatest Debut Albums
• 
  MOVIES 'Star Trek' Is Crazy Good
• 
  TV 10 Shows to Watch This Summer
• 
  POLITICS No Price Big Banks Can't Fix

Song Stories

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell | 1974

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.

More Song Stories entries »

Twitter