My Morning Jacket Delivers A Sermon To Their Cult Of Musicality

Cult followings in music usually represent more than just a sound. To be a Deadhead is to also imply a specific kind of lifestyle, down to the colorful clothes you wear and even the way you dance. To be a fan of Black Flag can be synonymous with an expression of rebellion and anti-establishment at every turn. If you’re a fan of Misfits, assumptions can reasonably be made about the kinds of movies you watch or the way you dress too.

In the nearly three decades since their founding in Louisville, Kentucky, My Morning Jacket has amassed a fiercely loyal cult following by way of tight jams, genre fluidity and new setlists every night. In March, they released a new album, is, and embarked on a subsequent nationwide tour which came through North Texas with a stop at Toyota Music Factory in Irving. Though the room wasn’t completely full, the pit and front row maintained the energy of a UFC fight, jumping and headbanging all along to songs that have probably never been jumped or headbanged to.

There’s a unique kind of fervor that comes from those bands with a cult-like fanbase, with live shows serving as a sort of reflective expression from those on stage through their words and music to those in the audience through the way they enjoy them. That same fervor is found at a My Morning Jacket show, but without the shared calling card in interests or fashion.

Before the show, the folks pressed up against the barricade were all swapping stories of following the band on tour.

“This is my 55th, I think,” says a man named Omar.

He’s roped his son, Jack, into tonight’s festivities, marking the youth’s 4th MMJ show. The two have draped a homemade My Morning Jacket tapestry over the barricade. They’re super fans, no doubt, but there are levels to everything.

“Have you met Erica?” he asks, and points out a woman behind the barricade facing right at center stage. “She’s been to hundreds.”

How many exactly? Erica lit up.

“160 shows,” she says.

A few steps to the left, there’s another diehard named Jamie who’s initiating her friend, Brittainy, in a trial by fire right on the barricade. Culturally, these people didn’t seem similar to each other, there was no consistent visual motif or individual personality trait to connect the fans, only the shared desire to let tonight’s music speak for itself.

It seems like lead singer Jim James got that memo. He and the band took the stage at 8:45 p.m., opening with one of his solo originals, “Here In Spirit.”

At Irving’s show, as well as the band’s last Dallas date at the Factory in Deep Ellum, James only acknowledged the crowd once or twice, each time with nothing but a basic “We love you” or “Thank you.”

James resides in the vague. A career experimentalist, his music fluctuates between rock, folk, Americana, pop and electronic, all while maintaining the same voice and a specific sort of intellectual credibility. This means the listener trusts and buys into what James is selling as a new sound rather than self-indulgence.

The band brought out opener Grace Cummings for the sixth song, a cover of Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon.” It was her first of two reappearances during the headlining set, the other coming about 90 minutes later, preceding a cover of “Ride On” by AC/DC (more on them Tuesday morning).

Cummings has such a unique and rich voice, sounding like she’s straight out of late ‘60s and early ‘70s psychedelia. Our only comparison to her voice would be Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane. When she joins the band, she pulls them together in a really different way. For the songs where she took lead vocals, you could feel an energy shift from the weight of fronting a band coming off James’ shoulders. We wouldn’t mind her joining the band full-time someday, if not just for background vocals and the occasional lead.

“Holdin' On To Black Metal” was the band’s most rocking song, coming far heavier than the 2011 recorded version does and inspiring the same amount of collective fist pumps you’d see at a Def Leppard show.

“Dondante” was the standout of the night. The emotional, swelling ballad where James’ voice could really shine on its own. He sounded fantastic all night, but those high falsetto harmonies with pedal steel player Carl Broemel were in a realm of their own. The song reached its runtime before the band transitioned into the best jam of the night, with Broemel letting loose on a saxophone.

The band scattered six songs from is throughout the 24-song setlist, with the intro to each one drawing a vocal reaction from the crowd. The new record, it seems, is already a classic. They closed with “One Big Holiday” before returning for a four-song encore that ended with longtime favorite “Wordless Chorus.”

We get the obsession with My Morning Jacket. Saturday night’s show landed at over two hours of nonstop creativity, and we left the show ready to go right back to another one. It’s not a cult of personality but rather a cult of musicality, and one we’re happy to join the congregation of.