Talking 'Bout the All-American: JD McPherson
by Luke Taylor
June 16, 2015
JD McPherson's latest album, Let the Good Times Roll, concludes with the track, "Everybody's Talking 'Bout the All American." There's something almost meta about that song title.
Consider, for instance, the members of JD McPherson's band call many places in America home. "I live in Oklahoma; I've been here my whole life," McPherson explains. "[Bassist] Jimmy Sutton lives in Los Angeles, two of the guys live in the Chicagoland area and one guy lives in New York. We're really kind of all over the place."
McPherson has kind of recorded all over the place, too. His first album, 2010's Signs and Signifiers, was recorded at Hi-Style studio in Chicago, a labor of love constructed by Sutton, who was living in Chicago at that time. "I was looking at a couple studios [for the album]," McPherson recalls. "There was a studio in Texas that I had looked at, and then Jimmy said, 'Hey, I've got this thing getting ready to launch; would you like to do it here?' I jumped at that chance because those guys in Chicago, all the guys Jimmy works with and surrounds himself with are just really incredible."
McPherson's life has changed significantly since the first record released. Originally released on the Hi-Style Records label, it was subsequently re-released in 2012 on Rounder Records. In the midst of all that, McPherson was laid off from his job as an art teacher. "The record started getting attention from here and there," McPherson recalls. "Right at that time, I lost my job, so I was able to play some festivals in Europe. Little by little, things just started happening and there you have it: You never know what life is going to throw at you."
For McPherson, life presented him with a solid group of musicians and friends — bassist Sutton, drummer Jason Smay, keyboardist Ray Jacildo and guitarist/saxophonist Doug Corcoran — amidst whom he surrounds himself. And after the first record, new ideas started to emerge. "It was time to make a new record," McPherson says. "I had these songs burning a hole in my pocket."
As they began workshopping the songs, McPherson and Sutton realized the next record would require a slightly different treatment. Perhaps a new studio and a new producer. "A friend of mine, Matt Ross-Spang, who's a great engineer in Memphis and a like-minded individual, brought up the name of Mark Neill," McPherson says. "It just hit me like a ton of bricks — Mark Neill had produced some of my favorite records."
At that point, McPherson and the others in the band began organizing trips to Neill's Soil of the South Studio in Valdosta, Ga. Along with producing some of McPherson's favorite records, including the Black Keys' Brothers album (which McPherson calls "one of my favorite-sounding records of the last 15 years"), Neill is a proponent of analog recording. Earlier in his career, Neill had worked in Nashville, Tenn., with esteemed engineers Bill Porter and Owen Bradley, often cited as the creators of the Nashville sound. In the 1970s, Neill began purchasing disused equipment from Capitol Records, including Ampex multi-track recorders, an EMT plate reverb and other vintage gear that now comprises Soil of the South. "Mark definitely has the hardware store of sound capability," McPherson says. "He can really get pretty much any sound you would ever want."
After multiple trips to Valdosta and a few pickup sessions at Hi-Style in Chicago and at 3CG Studio in Tulsa, Okla., JD McPherson's second album, Let the Good Times Roll, was released Feb. 10, 2015, on Rounder Records. The title track gained a lot of notice not only for its catchy backbeat and inviting chorus, but also for its charming, black-and-white music video. "We know this couple who are really good friends and had recently had a little baby boy," McPherson says. "I had a camera and basically shot them being parents and dancing. It was shot in one night and edited in the van on my laptop."
Since then, McPherson and company have been touring relentlessly in support of the album, displaying a work ethic befitting a band and music that comes from America's less mythologized, more salt-of-the-earth cities and landscapes. "We're playing a lot of shows," McPherson says. "'Daunting' is not an inaccurate descriptor. There's a lot of puddle jumping, a lot of zigzagging — but you know what? It's all good."
Some of that zigzagging will take McPherson from a show in Spain on Friday to Minneapolis on Saturday for the set at Rock the Garden on Sunday. "Any visit to the Twin Cities area for us is a really happy one," McPherson says. "I would say if there was a kind of like a spiritual home for us, it's the Twin Cities area. It's one of our strongest markets. We have so many really good friends there, and we've never had a show there that we didn't just feel was one of the better ones."
Even if it means getting right back on a plane for a gig in England three days later? "It's fine," McPherson says. "I don't see it as a negative; it's an adventure.
"We're really excited to play Rock the Garden," he continues. "We've been talking about it for a long time."
JD McPherson performs at Rock the Garden on Sunday, June 21. Two weeks later, he'll be back in Minnesota to perform on the July 4 broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion, live from the Great Lawn at Macalester College in St. Paul.
