It’s not too often that a young band comes around and reminds you why it is that you love rock n’ roll in the first place. Moon Taxi, it’s safe to say, is one of those bands. Not only are they capable of writing a catchy tune with a pleasing melody, they’re also pretty damn good at jamming that tune out when the moment calls for it. The moment, it would seem, is most of their shows.

Moon Taxi are the latest not-quite-jam-band (think My Morning Jacket or White Denim) to develop a solid following, particularly in the Southeast. They may not have the setlist variation of the Grateful Dead or the meandering improvisational prowess of Phish, but the instrumental chops are there and they know what it means to take a song into uncharted territory.

After touring heavily on their excellent 2013 release Mountains Beaches Cities, the Nashville-based quintet now finds itself supporting a brand new album, Daybreaker. The record, which dropped last Friday, showcases some serious songwriting while still leaving Moon Taxi plenty of room to rock out. The group will take the stage at New Orleans’ Civic Theater on Saturday, October 10, so I caught up with bassist Tommy Putnam to talk about what they’ve been up to.

Your new album Daybreaker was released last Friday. How has the response been?

It has been really big. It has been almost 100% positive feedback, a lot of people talk about on Twitter and Facebook. That’s great.

How has your sound evolved between your last album, Mountains Beaches Cities, and Daybreaker?

One way is that we actually had a real studio and a real producer in Jacquire King. One of the main things that he did was help us really get good sound with absolutely every instrument that we used in the studio. I mean every drum head, every guitar tone, every bass tone, every keyboard tone, every single aspect of the record is as sonically good as it possibly can be. So you can really hear everything come out, whereas on our previous records you couldn’t hear some things as well. The songwriting, I would also say, is a lot better.  As you get older and you write more songs, the songs your write get better. So those two things combined.

How did you end up working with Jacquire King?

We talked to a couple of producers. We had a list of guys who we wanted to work with. And it’s kind of up to them too. I’m not going to name any names, but Jacquire told me about some pretty big artists he has credits on. We liked him him and he really liked us. He said really good things about us and was very exciting working with us because we are kind of known for being a band full of pretty good musicians. I think that excited him.

You guys have a show coming up this Saturday at the Civic Theater in New Orleans. I know you reference New Orleans in yours song “Run Right Back” from the new album. Has this city had any impact on you guys musically?

If you ask me, I think New Orleans is probably the most culturally diverse city in America. I don’t see how you can really argue with that. That French influence down there just makes it feel in a completely different place. There’s nothing else like it. When we started to play music years ago, someone told me that people listen music in New Orleans like they go to the movies.  You’re not going to see a band because “hey, there is a band in town.” It’s more like, “hey, you wanna go listen some music tonight?” It’s just like a movie, it’s just some regular thing. Most people in the United States, they only go see music if it’s some band they love that’s in town. It’s kind of hard to explain, but we just love it. We’ve made a lot of friends down there. We’re really good friends with The Revivalists, and we did a tour with them. We’ve played in a bunch of places down on Frenchmen street. Maison and, I think, Blue Nile. We’ve done the House of Blues too. That New Orleans lyrics that you’re talking about, Wes (Bailey) wrote that line and that chorus when he was sitting at home playing keyboards with his wife. I don’t know if we’d just come back from New Orleans or not, but it definitely had an influence on us.

Have you noticed your fan base growing as you guys have been touring relentlessly over the past two years?

It has been growing, but it’s been a steady growth. There has never been a moment where we were like “Oh wow, we just got a lot bigger!”. It’s just like a steady growth. This steady line going up at the same rate for six or seven years. There’s never been this huge break where we all of a sudden thousands more fans.

What’s next for you guys after this tour wraps up and you’re done with this album cycle?

I’ve already my head thinking about writing new music. I’m going to try to keep everyone focused on that because, no matter what you do in this music business, it always feels like everything is about your next record.  Even though we just put one out. It’s not in our hands anymore. Hopefully the fans like it. I think they will, I think it’s the best record we’ve put out by a lot. But it takes so long to get a record out there, we should start writing for it right now.

Moon Taxi will perform at the Civic Theatre in New Orleans on Saturday, October 10. Tickets for the show are available here.