My Morning Jacket stops in St. Louis to wrap up first tour wave

My Morning Jacket recently wrapped up the first half of their Is Tour. We caught up with them at the second-to-last stop at The Pageant in St. Louis to see what the Louisville band was up to.

The last time I saw My Morning Jacket was on the backend of a three-hour set that they ripped late-night at Bonnaroo in 2023. The band has become a staple at Bonnaroo, performing on the Farm at least six times (probably more)… as close to a ‘house band’ as the festival could have. They are well-known and well-loved by Bonnaroo-goers, to say the least. I’ve been going to Bonnaroo since 2014, so catching MMJ on the road near home felt like a special pre-festival treat (even though they are not on the Bonnaroo lineup for 2025).

Opening for MMJ was another band hailing from Louisville, Bendigo Fletcher.

Formed in 2016, the indie-folk group from Kentucky did a great job of finding a balance between heartwarming, soulful music and explosive, cathartic lyricism. They were the perfect warmup for the rest of the show to come.

When My Morning Jacket took the stage, the first thing to catch my eye was lead singer Jim James’ intoxicating stage performance. I had seen it before, in the middle of the night during that aforementioned set at Bonnaroo. Due to the length of that performance, the line to the pit was very short and the audience could basically walk right up to the edge of the stage to watch MMJ perform. Now, once again, I found myself face-to-face with James as he stood there, wailing on his guitar and belting lyrics out across a sea of people at the packed Pageant. Just a foot or two away from them, the closeness to the band immediately brought me back to that night in Tennessee when I got to experience them for the first time at such similar proximity. 

MMJ presents themselves as a band with nothing to hide; they don’t shy away from getting up close and personal with their fans. They don’t hide behind overproduced stage designs or gimmicky performance add-ons. They are just some guys, standing there in your face, playing their songs with the same enthusiasm as they had when they started back in 1998. Their show also had some of the best lighting I have seen in a long time. Once again, they were not hiding from the fans in the shadows or trying to distract us by using some sort of production spectacle. Everything took a backseat to the music.

My Morning Jacket’s Is Tour is only halfway through, too! It starts back up again in August as they take another lap around the US and anyone who misses it will be missing out.

Photography by Sean Rider; review by Michelle Zigler

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