Touring with Jim James, M. Ward, and Mike Mogis in the indie super group Monsters of Folk has been like "a fantasy, an erotic dream" for Conor Oberst.
The acclaimed songwriter doesn't mean that in a kinky way, though these Monsters - who will don shiny suits to play the Academy of Music Monday in support of their self-titled debut album - showed a talent for role playing by dressing up as Kiss in Louisville on Halloween.
The Omaha singer/guitarist is simply saying the spotlight-sharing shows have been thoroughly gratifying for all.
This week, Oberst and James - the singer for the Louisville rock band My Morning Jacket with the celestial sans vibrato voice - sat together for a speakerphone chat backstage from Toronto's Massey Hall.
The duo met in 2001 in a run-down London hotel while separately touring England. "Once we started palling around together, making music became the next natural step," Oberst says.
In 2004, Oberst and fellow Nebraskan Mogis, his collaborator in Bright Eyes, went on a short tour with James and Ward. They called themselves Monsters of Folk, a playful reference to the 1988 metal-tinged jaunt Monsters of Rock that included Van Halen and Metallica. (The MOF were too young to catch the MOR: "I think I was about 5," says Oberst, who's 29.)
Since then, James' MMJ has grown big enough to sell out Madison Square Garden, and Ward - first name Matt - has scored significant success with solo albums of American vernacular music and last year's charming She & Him, with singer-actress Zooey Deschanel.
Meanwhile, the peripatetic Oberst, who established his next-generation New Dylan credentials over the last decade, has lately branched out as Conor Oberst & the Mystic Valley Band. The group's underrated 2009 effort Outer South was recorded after the auteur lived for a spell in Tepoztlan, Mexico.
But the lure of MOF lingered. "The idea of making music together again was appealing to all of us," Oberst says.
What finally spurred the fab foursome to record the stylistically varied, occasionally electronica-flavored, never-all-that-folky Monsters of Folk?
"We needed the money," says Oberst, jokingly.
"Gotta get the green!" James chimes in.
But seriously, the songwriters say, getting together in the style of the Traveling Wilburys - the fake brother band of Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, and Roy Orbison - has been a mutually admiring growing experience.
"The cool thing about this," says James, 31, who lives in Louisville, "is getting a behind-the-scenes look at how these guys [in MOF] make their music."
If we stick with the Wilburys analogy, James combines aspects of Orbison and Harrison. He's the guy who employs his otherworldly voice in a quasi-religious way. Visitors to his Web site, yimyames.com, can download Tribute To, a solo EP of Harrison covers, of whom James has told Paste magazine, "When you listen to his music, you hear God."
James' particularly strong MOF tunes include the trippy, ecstatic "Losin' Yo Head" and the luminous country-flavored "The Right Place." Mogis plays steel guitar and mandolin on that one, and Oberst plays piano. (On tour, Centro-Matic's Will Johnson joins the four Monsters on drums.)
"Conor's such a good piano player," says James, who calls the Monsters "spirit guides." "We were sitting around the kitchen table when I played it for him, and he came around and gave me a hug. It made me feel real good."
As a songwriter, James says, "I've always been content to build the surrealist word puzzle I was trying to build, and let it be. But working with Conor and seeing how he constructs things made me take a step back . . . to try to make it more coherent and more applicable to somebody's life."
Oberst praises James' vocal abilities: "Just the texture and sound of his voice is kind of out of this world. It really is rare. And to hear it every night where it just kind of bounces around these beautiful rooms, it's a special thing."
Both James and Oberst ask big questions in their songs, though Oberst's are often more skeptical. ("Don't ever buy nothing from a man named truth," he sings in one MOF standout.)
And while James ponders the universe from a fixed point, Oberst, who began touring at 14, is always on the go.
"I think we're all seeking something, that's just the human condition, and, for us, we have music as an outlet to express that," says Oberst, whose wanderlust comes through on "Map of the World" and "Ahead of the Curve." (Ward, by contrast, urges a listener to "Slow Down Jo.")
"I have an expiration date on how long I can stay in one place," Oberst adds. "I hear peace and peacefulness in Jim's music, and M.'s music, too, and that is something I'm envious of."
The MOF tour winds down in Europe this month, and the fellow travelers will go their own ways. My Morning Jacket are on a break till 2010, but James has other projects, including a collaboration with New Orleans' Preservation Hall Jazz Band.
Will Monsters of Folk work together again? "I hope so," Oberst says, adding that he and Mogis may record next year, perhaps as Bright Eyes. But he has no fixed plan.
"This was always something that was meant to be positive and not stressful," he says of MOF. "So if we can't do it again for another five years? Great, you know, whatever. I think we're all planning on being friends for a long time."