You guys took a few years off between 2011’s Circuital and May’s The Waterfall. What were you up to? [Frontman] Jim [James] did a solo record that he had been working on for some time; that came out. [Drummer] Patrick [Hallahan] worked on [side project] Spanish Gold. And I worked on some music, too. Everybody just split off and took a little break. It seems like that’s our way of working now—we’ll go real intense with My Morning Jacket, and then everybody needs a little break, so we come back to it with fresh ears, eyes and minds.

I have a young child, too, so it was really a perfect time for me to take a little break. It all kind of worked out. When we reset and started working on the new record, we definitely took our time with it. A lot of times when you let the record label know you’re working on a record they expect there’s all of a sudden some date that you have to turn it in, so we purposefully pushed that question as far into the future as we could. We didn’t even think about when it was going to be released as we were working on it. That’s the first time that’s ever happened. I think that was a healthy way to approach getting back into music, and I think it reflected pretty well on the album, the way it turned out. I’m really happy with it, front to back, eight months later.

It sounds like you ended up with lots of songs to choose from. Yeah, Jim had a ton of demos that we worked through, and we actually recorded a lot of songs that aren’t on the album. Because we always have a lot of different styles or different ways of going about things, some of the records come out with a lot of variety, and this record feels like it’s very solidified stylistically. There’s still some variety on there, but by working on a bunch of songs we were able to work through the songs and get them to make sense together.

The setting for the record was the Panoramic in Northern California, which is a remote recording studio-house. Do you think that helped provide a more relaxed sonic feel? Definitely. We’re deeply affected by the environment in which we record. We’ve recorded in New York [City]; we’ve recorded out in the boonies in upstate New York; we’ve recorded in a gymnasium in Louisville. So a lot of different variety, and this one was so different. Everybody except for [keyboardist] Bo [Koster] lives in a landlocked state, so to be close to the power of the ocean … and cell phones didn’t really work and there weren’t a lot of people out there. It was nice isolation, and you’re steps from an inspiring hike at any moment.

If you wanted to take a break you could walk out to a cliff and look up and see vultures flying above you. It was just a beautiful forest and that Marin County air. We were staying in rental houses right on the beach, and we would hike up to the studio-house every morning—it would take about 40 minutes—and then at night we’d hike back. There’s way less light in Stinson than there is in Nashville, so we could see stars, maybe grab a beer and walk down the road, hang out together after we had worked on music all day. And it definitely seeped into the record. I’ll never be able to separate the views, I’ll always remember standing outside that crazy, old castle building, hearing the songs blasting out of that open door with a deer walking down the creek next to me. That’s just where we were and what we did.

MMJ is known as such a great live band. Did you road-test any of the songs before deciding which to record or which made it on the album? Nope, we didn’t, and we haven’t actually done that in a long time. We usually keep everything secret and work on it in the studio. It’s not a bad idea, though, to road-test it beforehand, but this time we hadn’t really messed around with any of the songs before we got into the studio and set all the gear up.

How important is it for you guys that the songs are able to translate to live performance? Or do you just have some songs that are too intricate to play live, so they’re studio-only cuts? It’s pretty important. One of the filters we have is, will this song translate live, or do we think it will be useful to us in the live realm? And we factor that in. But sometimes you can achieve things in the studio that you can’t on the stage, and vice versa. So it’s okay if every song isn’t a huge live hit. Sometimes at a live show it’s hard to get across something that’s obfuscated or subtle when you’re playing to a big drunk crowd or a rowdy crowd. I mean God bless ’em, we love ’em, but sometimes it’s hard and you don’t wanna play a song like “Only Memories Remain,” and everybody is just gonna talk through it.

You’re playing two nights here at Brooklyn Bowl. Will you take a different approach to the two shows? Both nights will have 100 percent different music, I can tell you that much, but we haven’t specifically planned those gigs out. It should be fun though. Vegas is a strange place to play, a strange realm, as I’m sure you know. I think since it’s two nights, some of the people who are traveling to Las Vegas that weekend will be coming specifically to see us. And you know, Vegas lends itself to some ridiculous behavior so maybe there will be some ridiculous stuff (laughs).

When did you last play Las Vegas? I think the last time was with Bright Eyes in 2011. Oh no, wait, Postal Service played Las Vegas [in 2013]. What’s funny is that the Bright Eyes show was much more memorable; no offense to the Postal Service, it’s just that we were on the roof and on the Strip and you look up [at the video marquee] and there you are, 50-feet tall, which is pretty cool It’s as Vegas as it gets (laughs).

Between 2011’s Generals and August’s Lovers Know, you did a ton of traveling all over the world. Do you think that colored the songwriting on the new album? It definitely affected it, but it’s hard to know which came first. It’s funny, one of the first things I ever put out was a solo album called Wanderlust. I self-released that on my own record label when I was living in D.C., and as I’ve gotten older I think that’s just deeply who I am as a person—there’s a lot of wanderlust, I’m an adventurous soul. Generals was very much an album about knowing, about being self-assured and feeling empowered. Then I went on The Postal Service tour, and that was just so much fun. It was like a victory lap. They were celebrating this record that they made as a side project, and the fact that it became so widely popular was kind of like icing on each of their cakes.

So when I came off that tour I felt like I was riding this high, and I got back to my home in Omaha and thought, what am I gonna do next? Then the relationship that I had been in for six years started unexpectedly dissolving, and I suddenly felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me. So I just started traveling, I didn’t know what else to do.

When you’re on a bus tour with a big band like The Postal Service, you don’t really feel the road. You kind of feel like you’ve been teleported to each city—you just wake up in the next place. So when I got off that tour I started feeling totally lost, and driving was a way to either feel more lost or to hopefully, eventually find myself.

Playing with other bands will make you rethink songs in general—melodies, the way things are put together lyrically or as far as the chords or structure goes. Being on the road influenced what I was writing, but it was kind of my need for being on the road that mostly influenced it.

Listening to the album there are recurring themes about love coming to an end, couples growing apart or even just overall regret. I really tried to write in a more open and vulnerable and honest way than I ever have before. I come from a literary background—I’ve got a degree in literature, and I love good writing. I was kind of writing as we were recording, and I would come to the producer Bradley [Hanan Carter] and say, “What do you think about these lyrics?” and he would say, “Well that’s fine, but you’re hiding behind a metaphor.” He really challenged me to say exactly what I was feeling, and that to me was really difficult because I think that some of that writing can come off as trite or just sort of dumb and I’ve shied away from that. But I think if you’re writing a record of love songs it’s really important to say exactly what you mean.

I was listening to a lot of pop songs that I’ve liked over the years, like Sinead O’Connor singing a song that Prince wrote, “Nothing Compares to You”—that song is so simple, but it says way more. It describes the scene, and just singing it over and over again— “Nothing compares to you, nothing compares to you”—can be pretty powerful.

How much of your writing is inspiration-based like that versus grounded in music composition and knowledge or proper songwriting? It’s all inspiration (laughs). I studied composition, I studied classical music and theory, but I made peace with the fact that I was a songwriter and I was never going to be a great composer when I was about 18. I remember I played at this composers’ showcase when I was in college. I played a song that I wrote that probably had six chords in it, and the chair of the department was like, “That was an interesting choice, Laura. You chose to use so few chords and perform the piece yourself.” And I thought, who am I kidding? I’m a songwriter.

I think there’s a reason why some simple three- and four-chord progressions are so popular and have stood the test of time, because it just connects with people in a really deep and meaningful way.

I try not to write in front of the piano. I write a lot driving or walking the dog. I’ll just come up with melodies, then I’ll go back and try to figure out the chords later. That way I don’t get caught up in a spot of my brain knowing what the math should be.

A little over a year ago you moved from Omaha to LA. How has the West Coast transition been for you? It’s been different. I miss Omaha so much. I have deep, deep love for the city and the people there. It’s a real gem of a place, and the people are some of the best you can meet in the world, and I can say that after having traveled all over the place.

It was weird to come to LA in the middle of winter and write an album of heartbreak in the middle of a hot-as-hell drought (laughs). It’s sunny every day! That was a really strange thing. Luckily, I have a lot of great friends here; this city attracts loads of musicians, so it feels like a new home in that sense. It’s kind of a good challenge to go to a place where there’s so much emphasis on the business of music, to kind of dip your toes in but not get swept away in it. Because I don’t do well with falsities and bullsh*t (laughs).

The first time I was here I had a really interesting experience. I came to LA when I was 18 and I swore, “I’m never going back there; that place is terrible.” Then the more you visit, you realize it’s like any other city—there are good people anywhere you go, doing interesting things; it’s just a matter of finding them. I think there’s a really great community of musicians and artists doing really great things in this city, and actually they’re very supportive of each other.

Do you think not being holed up in the cold weather for a few months will affect your songwriting? Yeah, it’s harder to get things done, because it’s really easy to say, “You know I could just go to Malibu today.” The other day a friend had a birthday and her friend has a boat. I drove up to Paradise Cove and a dingy came and picked me up and we went swimming. It’s really hard to say no to things like that (laughs). I know I should be at home working on a tour budget, but what the hell—that tour budget will still be there.

I do miss the weather in Omaha, because some of the blizzards were the best. Nobody could drive anywhere, so it’d just be the friends who could walk to your house when it’s zero degrees, and you’d just make a pot of chili and hang out and play board games. who knows (laughs).

Web Link: http://lasvegasweekly.com/ae/music/2015/sep/30/six-questions-laura-burhenn-brings-her-mynabirds-t/