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MANCHESTER, Tenn. — Live, with its simple song forms blown up to cathedral dimensions, the Kentucky band cheap north face Jacket can suggest so many different sources that at least in print it looks ridiculous: Pink Floyd (in all eras), Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Rolling Stones, the Grateful Dead, Television, Prince, the early Paul McCartney solo records and Bob Dylan’s “Nashville Skyline,” which more than any other source seems to have given Jim James, the band’s singer, his voice. That voice is soft and big and throaty; tonight at Bonnaroo, in a two-hour set that just ended (I write this at 10:15 on Friday night), he stuck his tongue halfway out on the loudest and highest falsetto notes.

Mr. James, with shaggy hair and shaggy boots, closing his eyes most of the time, verges on a cartoon of mellow intensity drawn by Ed Koren. But if you’ve heard enough singers, you recognize him as quite real. He is an improviser — this was pointed out in a sweet-hearted documentary, screened earlier in the day in the festival’s film tent, cheap the north face, about his recent collaborations with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, and tonight in his singing and gnashing, headlong guitar solos. And he reminded you of a useful definition of that term: he sounds like he’s singing each song for the first time.