Review: My Morning Jacket at Red Butte Garden

My Morning Jacket headlined a concert at Red Butte Garden on Monday (8/11/2025).  

Not long before My Morning Jacket was set to begin, something that doesn’t normally happen did: the time the band started was bumped up by about 30 minutes or so, all because they wanted to play longer. So, after nearly two-and-a-half hours of 80s-esque lights and hair blowing in the wind and heart-shaped sunglasses and guitar solos and following each hit in its catalog with another, the band from Louisville offered up 23 songs in all. If there wasn’t a curfew to consider, chances are they’d have sailed right past it. While some showmen are committed to leaving their fans wanting more, MMJ is cut from another cloth entirely: they are fans of giving a lot more than you paid for. A welcome change of pace, that.

After 27 years of doing this, the band’s at the point they could stop creating music if they wanted to. Monday night’s concert proved that point many times over. Having listened to and seen the band throughout its long career of bigger-and-better albums, it’s clearly evident that they’re the best they’ve ever been at this rock band thing. And while favorites are always hard to pick, live takes on “At Dawn,” “Off The Record,” “Mahgeetah” and “Holdin On To Black Metal” were each thrills of their own to hear. Prediction/hope? They could take this exact show to Vegas and make everyone happy about doing so for many sold-out months in a row.

Want my high point of the whole evening? Here’s one: For the encore, lead sing-song-sanger Jim James invited Melt’s Veronica Stewart-Frommer to sing “Golden” with him as all the lights behind them shone like stars (or well-placed fireflies). Golden and beautiful, it certainly was, and the melody’s still ringing in my ears.    

Was it one of the best shows we’ll see at Red Butte this summer? Probably. Does making a grand statement like that one matter in the long run? Not a whit.

Photo gallery by Natalie Haws of Beehive Photography. Instagram @beehivephotovideo

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