My Morning Jacket Win the Lottery With Metallica

My Morning Jacket surprised nobody when they pulled out surprises and general awesomeness for their nearly four hour Bonnaroo performance late-night at the Which Stage on Day Two. Can we just call them the Band of the Year already? Despite a downpour, and a time-slot immediately following Metallica, frontman Jim James led his band through yet another historical My Morning Jacket Bonnaroo performance. The band has played at this festival almost every year, and came onstage to cheers of, "We missed you last year," and the like.

Opening with the title track from the new album, 'Evil Urges,' and getting right down to business with 'Off the Record,' the Jacket performed virtually the entire new album and a smorgasbord of everything else under the sun including covers ('Get Down on It'), a horn section (feat. Jeff Coffin from Bela Fleck's Flecktones), and, um, oh yeah - -did we forget to mention that Metallica's Kirk Hammett sat in during 'One Big Holiday'? He did. And it was great. But the actual highlight was whatever it was they played between taking the stage at midnight and taking their final bow around 4 in the morning.

Looking surprisingly fresh on Saturday afternoon, considering his band slayed it until 4am the night before, James caught up with Spinner while sipping drinks in the artist lounge. Discussing the guest appearance by Kirk Hammett, James said, "I grew up listening to Metallica. So playing with him, I felt like we won the lottery." As any in the audience can attest, they certainly hit jackpot.