MORNING GLORY

Both guitarists remember the moment as if it were yesterday. The connection so innate and immediate it felt as if fate had drawn them together. It was 2004 and My Morning Jacket were on the brink of dissolving after the departures of keyboardist Danny Cash and guitar player Johnny Quaid. Bandleader Jim James began the search for a new guitarist but no-one felt right – until Carl Broemel walked into the room. “It was so funny,” says James. “Everyone else that came to the audition, there was no way in hell it would work. But Carl was absolutely perfect. It was divine intervention.”

For Broemel, a classically trained player raised in Indiana, the story began months earlier. After a decade spent with bands that “got record deals, fell apart and ran their course”, he found himself in Los Angeles “playing in a band to make money. It wasn’t really a heart and soul-filling thing.” One night, driving through the City of Angels, listening to KCRW, Broemel heard a song that brought tears to his eyes. “It was what I now know is by My Morning Jacket, that beautiful guitar part,” he says. “I remember thinking, ‘I would do