Carl Broemel - Wished Out (2018) Hi Res

Payday at the Chinese restaurant was always a big day for young dishwasher Carl Broemel. The eatery paid in cash, so Carl would pocket the money, bolt the Indianapolis eatery and skateboard to Karma Records, where he’d “slowly purchase the entire Van Halen discography.”

“For me, Eddie Van Halen is kind of like a master, like Segovia or somebody, a really important guitar player,” says Broemel, the My Morning Jacket guitarist, who released newest solo album, “Wished Out,” today. “When I played that for my dad” a symphonic musician who played bassoon and had little interest in rock “he kind of understood. I played him ‘Eruption,’ and he was like, ‘OK.’ ”

A musician raised on radio — he loved Michael Jackson, Men At Work and Bryan Adams, and covered The Outfield and The Police in his “first horrible band in junior high school” — Broemel would go on to earn a degree in classical guitar from Indiana University. The disparate influences and education have helped inform a musician who is rather hard to pigeonhole and as equally open to using his classical training as abandoning it and entering the unknown.

The new album is a prime example. If there is a common thread on “Wished Out,” it’s simply “my mental state,” Broemel says. “Over the last couple of years, I’ve been reading a lot of interesting books that have kind of opened my mind a bit, books about philosophy and science. There are a couple songs that are kind of about how we’re using knowledge and how we’re not using it, and how beautiful the world is, even from a purely scientific viewpoint.”

“Wished Out” is the first album he recorded in his new home studio in Nashville. “I built kind of a simple, one-room studio/music space in my backyard,” he says. “I had a piano and drum kit in my basement and drove everyone bananas, so I moved them out there. I just started out with the idea of trying to (record) all by myself. I had written some songs, so trying to record them and see if I could get things to sound good here.”

Here, Broemel laughs. “I quickly realized how limited I am as a drummer. So the first concession was I had by friend Russ (Pollard) play drums on every song. As I got more comfortable I added more people to the mix.”