Photos and Review by Stephen Bloch

My Morning Jacket, the jamband for people who say they don’t like jam bands (but they really do), has been wowing East Coast and Midwest fans this fall, touring in support of their 2025 release Is.  They are also celebrating the 20th anniversary of their 2005 release Z.  The album has been played in its entirety for a handful of shows so far this year. Every show has been a catalog spanning adventure.  The Sylvee show in Madison, WI and the finale of three shows at Chicago’s Salt Shed were no exception.  The absolute standout at both of these shows was the set closer “Phone Went West” off of their 2001 release, At Dawn.  Drawn out and certainly jammy with snippets of Steve Miller’s “Fly Like an Eagle” and Kris Kristofferson’s “Help Me Make It Through the Night”.  The tour ends this Saturday with the last of the Z shows in Atlanta.

One other take away from this run of shows is that Columbia (South America, not South Carolina or elsewhere) should be given props for sharing one of the new rising stars of the psychedelic/jam/rock scene.  Balthvs blew the minds of early gatherers.  The three piece band now has a legion of adoring fans.  They were the talk of the tour for many.  They shared with me that “they really had to bring their A game and play distinctly different shows each night because they didn’t want to disappoint the same dozen faces on the rail they saw each night.  They figured out the MMJ crowd pretty quickly!  On that note, Sunday’s show included mindblowing renditions of the Grateful Dead’s “Birdsong” and Pink Floyd’s “Breathe”.  I think that really caught people’s attention, but it was their surfy psych sound with international flair that kept people talking at setbreak and beyond. This is just the start for Balthvs. They will be making the rounds for sure.