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Why My Morning Jacket wrote an elegy and other stories from their back catalog

In every musician's career, there are the songs that stand out among the rest. Perhaps it's a song that changed everything for them, the song they grew to love or the song that was the hardest to write.

Those are the songs we want to learn more about on a new World Cafe feature called Backtracking. The premise is simple: We'll give artists a long list of prompts they can choose from. Then, they'll look back through their catalog and pick the song that fits best. They'll tell us the stories behind them and perform them live.

In our latest installment, Jim James of My Morning Jacket joins us to talk about the song that came to him in a dream, about the late friend who inspired "Dondante," and how a Roland Juno-60 synth was the start of a new journey for the band.

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Miguel Perez. Our senior producer is Kimberly Junod and our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.

Copyright 2025 XPN

Raina Douris
Raina Douris, an award-winning radio personality from Toronto, Ontario, comes to World Cafe from the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), where she was host and writer for the daily live, national morning program Mornings on CBC Music. She was also involved with Canada's highest music honors: hosting the Polaris Music Prize Gala from 2017 to 2019, as well as serving on the jury for both that award and the Juno Awards. Douris has also served as guest host and interviewer for various CBC Music and CBC Radio programs, and red carpet host and interviewer for the Juno Awards and Canadian Country Music Association Awards, as well as a panelist for such renowned CBC programs as Metro Morning, q and CBC News.
Miguel Perez
Miguel Perez is a radio producer for NPR's World Cafe, based out of WXPN in Philadelphia. Before that, he covered arts, music and culture for KERA in Dallas. He reported on everything from the rise of NFTs in the music industry to the enduring significance of gay and lesbian bars to the LGBTQ community in North Texas.
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