Outside the Musical Box, everybody is best friends with My Morning Jacket.
Just ask them. They'll tell you.
Actually, they're telling the doorman, a tall, bulky and increasingly agitated guy with a cell phone earpiece thingie, a clipboard and absolutely no time for your B.S.
"I'm on the list," one random guy insists, trying to convince the doorman of his legitimacy while simultaneously holding a conversation on his cell phone.
"No, you're not," says the doorman in that way that doormen at private rock star parties must be at times.
"My friend put me on there, I swear."
But it's too late. The doorman has already turned his attention to the other 25 or so "best friends" of My Morning Jacket who are standing on the sidewalk outside this bar on Manhattan's Lower East Side. The cell phone guy has been cast aside, but they keep coming. They all know someone. They all went to college with the band's road manager. Or the guitar tech. Or the guitar tech's girlfriend. They're all on the list. They swear.
They want to be close to My Morning Jacket, because people like to be close to celebrities, and that is what the five fellows in My Morning Jacket are, their own disbelief not withstanding.
One by one, they are turned away. Some storm off. Some laugh and retreat to the sidewalk. Others trot across the street to another bar.
This has been building for a while now. But it doesn't matter how many times you're compared positively to Radiohead. A lot of bands get glowing write-ups in Rolling Stone and Esquire. Twelve bands make the cover of Spin every year, and even an appearance on "Saturday Night Live" isn't what it used to be.
All that makes you almost famous. To be truly famous, you must conquer New York. Tonight, one thing is certain: My Morning Jacket has conquered New York.
Proof came several hours earlier and a 10-minute cab ride away at Radio City Music Hall, where MMJ played for a crowd that was in such a frenzy to see the show that all 5,900 seats were spoken for 22 minutes after going on sale. More proof would come a few days later, when "Evil Urges," the band's fifth studio album, debuted at No. 9 on the Billboard Top 200.
"We used to make fake fliers for Radio City and Madison Square Garden," said Tom Blankenship, the band's soft-spoken bass player. "It was a running joke."
From selling out Radio City in less than half an hour to joking around on TV with Conan O'Brien and a four-hour set at Bonnaroo, My Morning Jacket hasn't only survived in an industry that now laments record sales and celebrates ring tone downloads, it has somehow figured out how to thrive.
And it almost never happened.
In early 2004, this was a band on the verge of disintegration. Band members were quitting and the remaining ones were questioning the point of it all.
The band had built a reputation for being road warriors who would go anywhere and everywhere -- Albuquerque, Sacramento, Amsterdam -- if they thought there'd be 10 people there to listen.
They were making progress; this relentless, almost pathological, approach to touring won them good reviews and a loyal fan base. But it gets difficult to keep the big picture in view when you've been in the back of that van for so long.
"We were just so beat down from the road, and kind of tired and pissed and just run into the ground," singer Jim James said.
Keyboard player Danny Cash and guitarist Johnny Quaid departed; James, Blankenship and drummer Patrick Hallahan weren't especially optimistic about carrying on. "We didn't know if we would keep going, if we should keep going," James said.
Lest we get too maudlin and ruin the celebratory tone (plus, it's obvious how this turns out), we'll quickly note that suitable replacements were found in guitarist Carl Broemel and keyboard player Bo Koster, and the revamped MMJ's next record, 2005's "Z," would sell 210,000 copies.
"We got very lucky and we are very blessed for whatever reason," Blankenship said. "We really needed those guys to pull us out of a pretty dark place."
Inside the Musical Box, the band is communing with 300 or so of its closest friends -- family members, managers, publicists, handlers and old pals whose connections and hook-ups have been vetted, tested and approved. The scene is remarkably similar to that of most any crowded NYC bar on a Friday night -- people standing elbow-to-elbow, a long line for drinks and another one for the bathroom.
Of course, it is different, and that's not lost on people like Hallahan.
"It is completely surreal, with a capital 'S,' " he said of the sold-out show and the rest of the hullabaloo surrounding the band. "It was just not real, not something we could believe."
The My Morning Jacket of "Evil Urges" seems to have left the soaring reverb of its earlier records echoing in the now famous grain silo on Quaid's family farm in Shelbyville. In its place, James has inserted brash funk arrangements and chilling falsettos.
Where My Morning Jacket once seemed consigned to a career of Allman Brothers comparisons and taunts of "Freebird," the fingerprints on "Evil Urges" are those of Prince, Curtis Mayfield, even Cameo.
"I've just come to the realization that I love dance music," James said in a heart-wants-what-the-heart-wants defense.
"And I love funk music, and I love soul music just as much as I love rock music and folk music. Sometimes people think that's a bad thing, and they think it makes our music too scattered. I can understand someone coming from that point of view, but from my point of view, I just want variety."
The variety James seems so insistent upon with his music has clearly resonated with My Morning Jacket fans, a group as diversified as the cast of James' influences.
That could be the key to My Morning Jacket's enduring -- and expanding -- allure. If any one demographic tires of them, there are four or five others still eager to spazz and space out, be it in a muddy Tennessee field at Bonnaroo or in the plush aisles of one of the world's most storied venues.
It seems every new day brings a new milestone for My Morning Jacket. Success, even the slow boil that has represented the band's ascent, can so often spoil.
They aren't five buddies from Louisville anymore. James just got an apartment in New York, though he says he's looking for a place in Louisville as well. Broemel lives in Nashville and Koster makes his home in Los Angeles. Only Hallahan and Blankenship are still in Louisville full-time.
The brown van that criss-crossed the country is long gone. Old friends quit, new friends join, girlfriends become wives and sold-out shows move from Headliners Music Hall to Radio City Music Hall. The list of people trying to squeeze into their world keeps getting longer, but there's no more room today than there was in 1999.
Blankenship, the band's least likely spokesman, remains wary, and somewhat in awe, of where My Morning Jacket has ended up.
"Every time we play for more than 50 people, I'm still thinking, 'Wow, this is pretty remarkable.' "
