My Morning Jacket Performs Spooky Hometown Halloween Concert In Louisville

By Andy Kahn Oct 30, 2022 • 11:37 am PDT

My Morning Jacket staged a celebratory hometown Halloween concert on Saturday night in Louisville. Costumes, confetti blasts, balloon drops, giant puppets and cover debuts were among the enhancements the band brought to the KFC Yum! Center.

Saturday’s concert was originally intended to take place as a two-night run in June but was postponed after frontman Jim James came down with COVID. Consolidating into a single Halloween Costume Ball And Celebration, the return to Louisville was long in the making.

Before MMJ’s set, a large white curtain was raised at the front of the stage. The band assembled behind the curtain while a pre-recorded intro led to a countdown and a Kabuki drop revealing the costumed musicians as they launched into a fitting “One Big Holiday.” James was dressed as a witch, guitarist/saxophonist Carl Broemel was a skeleton, drummer Patrick Hallahan wore a Beetlejuice costume, keyboardist Bo Koster looked like an old woman and bassist Tom Blankenship was Eddie Munson from Stranger Things.

A few songs into their performance, MMJ treated the hometown audience to the first of two cover debuts of the night, “Spooky” by Classics IV, which featured Broemel on sax. The subsequent “Love Love Love” saw the KFC Yum! Center engulfed in confetti. The setlist also saw Jacket bust out the mega rare “Friends Again,” which according to Setlist.fm stats was played just five times prior, way back in 2010.

James tagged “Golden” with an outro interpolating the hymn “Let There Be Peace on Earth and Let it Begin With Me.” Toward the end of the set, the witch-costume-wearing frontman led the band through their debut performance of Donovan’s “Season of the Witch.” The three-song encore was punctuated with “Wordless Chorus,” more confetti and the stage getting filled with large puppets created by Squallis Puppeteers.

Two local Louisville groups opened the show on Saturday, Producing a Kind Generation and Louisville Leopards Percussionists. Hallahan’s daughter is part of the Louisville Leopards Percussionists and he and James joined the large ensemble during their set for MMJ’s “Off The Record” (which was later played during Jacket’s set).

Watch additional audience-shot video footage of highlights from last night’s My Morning Jacket Halloween Costume Ball And Celebration below:

Setlist