Umphrey’s McGee

The heart and soul of Umphrey’s McGee is the band’s knack for improvisation during their monstrous live shows which are filled with generous portions of on-the-spot jams. The band’s intricate instrumentals reflect an inspiring level of musicianship. Their music drifts stylistically from jazz to prog rock to folk and everything in between, making their musical signature a complete sonic smorgasbord. The band’s ability and willingness to expand to other genres has earned them the right to play with a diverse group of musical greats such as Bela Fleck, Sugar Blue, Dr. Didg and Adrian Belew.

From their humble beginnings in South Bend, Ind., in 1997, the band has greatly expanded their fan base by constantly innovating their sound live and in the studio. Their continuous musical metamorphosis reflects a thirst and a willingness to expand their musical horizons. The band says their newest studio album aptly defines their sound, offering fans the most intricate Umphrey’s release to date.

Stereo Subversion’s David Cawthon spoke with keyboardist Joel Cummins about the inner workings of Mantis, their encounter with guitar wizard Adrian Belew and their date with bookstore heavy metal.

SSv: On your Web site, it says, “Mantis is the first Umphrey’s album to consist entirely of material never previously performed on the road.” Is that completely true?

Joel Cummins: The only extension of that truth [that is a lie] I would say is that there were sections of songs that we came up with live that we’ve been manipulating into songs and rearranged. Yeah, it’s all material that we hadn’t kind of played live before. We really just wanted to give our fans, a new experience as far as how they hear our music. Putting a studio album out like that and having it be an all new experience for them was a really, really fun thing for us to do.

SSv: There were a few newer songs that I heard live about a year ago that I thought would make Mantis, “Wizards Burial Ground” being one of them. Why didn’t you include those songs on the album?

Joel: It was a possibility. We talked about it at one point. One of the things we really wanted to do with the album was make something that was cohesive where the songs fit together – sort of pieces of the puzzle. We wanted to create a flow from start to finish. We worked on the sequencing of the album for months, trying to get that exactly right. It was one of those things we felt that “Wizards Burial Ground” was something that was not quite the vibe we were going for with the album.

I think that there are definitely some related themes for sure. It was one of those things that was a call we made and an instinctual thing at the same time. There’s always a possibility that it will be put out in another form in the near future because we don’t have a studio version of that. I know we really liked that tune. Maybe it will just end up being a live tune, and we won’t have a studio version. You never know.

SSv: You said you had sections of songs you would play live and then incorporated them into songs on Mantis. When did it click for you guys and you said, yeah, I want to put this riff that we’ve played live on the album?

Joel: There were conversations that would happen after shows that one of us would bring up a riff that we enjoyed, and we would make a mental note of it, revisit it with the recordings and see if there was something that makes sense in a way we could develop it. I think we have a lot riffs that we have that we want to revisit. The trickiest part is finding another section or creating another section that makes sense with it.

We definitely like to add an element of complexity with the arrangements of songs that we have. Most of our tunes aren’t verse, chorus, verse, chorus. So having a lot of available things on hand is a nice thing as well. That’s something we did with Mantis as well. We went through about 30 or 40 little sections like that and picked out our favorite ones, and then talked about whether any of them could function together.

SSv: I noticed Mantis has a lot of string parts. It’s almost like a rock orchestra at times. What made you guys include that on the album?

Joel: We really felt this album in particular really emphasized our 70s progressive rock roots. Something that really goes along with that is the intricate arrangements and sonic depth. There were notes and phrases we heard that weren’t necessarily being played by keyboard or guitars, so we wanted to really get a lot of different instrumentation on this and make it as interesting experience for the listener as possible. I think you’re going to hear that on this album in particular more than a lot of other things.

We branched out and we’re using a lot of different sounds. There’s some bells, some glockenspiel is on there too, some strings, horn parts – there’s all these kind of layers of things. At one point, we would have a chorus of 15 different swelling guitar parts like on “1348.” We really pulled out all the creative stops – different ways to create sounds and different ways to layer them on the album. Definitely a lot more vocally going on too than our past recordings. I think that was kind of the spirit of that ’70s sensibility. That was the main reason we went with so many different layers and strings and such.

SSv: Have you found it’s hard to translate all of that instrumentation live?

Joel: That’s a good question because when we started rehearsing this stuff in January (actually there were a couple of things we rehearsed in December, but for the most part we were working on this stuff in January), and were going through and deciding which parts were the most crucial and which parts were weak and [we] could potentially leave out live.

There’s one part in particular that I miss. It’s a vocal part in “Cemetery Walk.” [It is] the last time the chorus comes around and this descending vague figure in the background that I did vocally. We just don’t have enough voices to sing it live, so to me that’s one of the only ones that got washed out. Some of the string stuff I can actually accomplish nicely with some of the keyboards that I have. I have some pretty good sounding string pads.

SSv: How difficult was it to piece all of these songs on Mantis? They’re sound very intricate and complex.

Joel: Definitely difficult. The hardest thing for me was the parts where I was playing two different things with my hands and having to sing as well, something that maybe rhythmically didn’t gel with what I was playing. Those parts were the most challenging.

As far as playing the actual music, for the most part, it’s kind of like riding a bike in that once you’ve done it a couple of times, you figure it out, and it comes back to you whatever you did in the studio. I’d say for the most part it’s been fun to play these songs. There’s so much going on, especially in the keyboard department for me.

SSv: Do you feel like the band accomplished what you wanted to on this record?

Joel: Absolutely. We spent two and a half years on it. Our biggest goal was taking our time with it, knowing that we would be happy with the end result six months after the fact, and I can definitely say that’s the case. This was one of the first things we put out that we really have still felt strong about after the fact. We wanted to go out there and create something that could only be created in the studio, and hopefully, the best thing we’ve put out to date.

Obviously, that’s what we’re trying to do with everything we put out. This one was really important to us I guess. We felt like it really captures our identity and our sound of where we’re at. For the first time we felt like we have an identifiable sound that could be called Umphrey’s McGee’s sound.

SSv: How do you feel that you’ve grown as a band from Safety in Numbers to Mantis?

Joel: We’ve learned how to use the studio as a tool. We’ve gotten experienced how to use the studio as a tool. I think we can accomplish a lot when we take our time. I would just say that we’ve become a tighter band since then. We just try to push each other as a band and try not to repeat what we’ve done in the past.

I think a lot of it has to do with knowing how to use the studio as a tool and knowing how to be creative with the studio. We just realized a lot of different methods of how to do things, how to layer things, just different things that were options. We used a lot of double tracking, triple, quadruple – maybe using 20 tracks of something to really make things sound bigger. A lot of it was those sort of things where I think we had little bit more of a more expanded vision because we had the time to create.

One of the things we did with every song, was we would work with the arrangement for a while and get the arrangement down. We were trying to record the drum takes, and really that’s what we’re trying to get. We’re trying to get Kris to have that magical take while we’re playing live as a bad, so the rest of the band can go back and re-record all of their parts. So for me, it wasn’t necessarily essential to have my exact parts down at the beginning. What was important was that I created a part that fit with the song and that had a really good energy so that encouraged Kris to get his best performance out of it.

One other thing that we did from a technical aspect that allowed us to be creative was record most of these songs to a click track, which means we synched them up to a metronome and played them in time. Whenever there was an interchange, somewhere where something went out of time and changed, we actually created a new time signature, so the click track changed with it. We would go back and have Kris record different drum sounds depending on what he wanted to get out of it. He went all around the city to different studios and used different snare drums for different tracks, different symbols – all kinds of these different options – to have all of these different [tonal] options that he would create would be arranged appropriately. I think that was another huge thing: giving ourselves as many options as possible would get us closer to what our creative vision was at the beginning.

SSv: I saw you guys St. Patrick’s Day at the Morris Performing Arts Center in South Bend about 2 or 3 years ago with Adrian Belew. What was it like playing with Adrian?

Joel: That’s interesting because going into it, we had spoken on the phone a few times. We talked about what tunes to play and learned a couple of each other’s songs. This was somebody who we had listened to from King Crimson to Talking Heads to solo stuff. Listening to it as a fan and a student of music and somebody who loves what he is creating … to have him walk into your rehearsal space and say, “OK. Now I’m going to be a part of your band.” It’s really funny.

We groomed him nicely by taking him out for some of his favorite drinks, lemon drop margaritas. By the end of the night it was absolutely hilarious. We had gone from having Adrian Belew, this guy we were really nervous about playing with, to being our buddy and goofing off with us. We ended up down in Jake’s basement that night, and I brought him his guitar. I had to carry him and his guitar because we didn’t want him to walk up and down the stairs. We were like, “We can’t let Adrian fall down the stairs. We have to take care of him.”

So I brought him the guitar. We were doing avant garde versions of Beatles tunes. At that point we were a little bit buzzed and not really able to play our instruments. Having the experience of getting to hang out with somebody you’ve looked up to for so long, [I thought,] “Oh wow. He’s just like you and me. He just wants to hang out and have a good time.”

We were both fans of music. As a musician, it was a dream come true. I had to pinch myself. I didn’t believe it was happening. Part of it was just amazing to see our two fan bases come together. I felt like a lot of our fans were introduced to him, but a lot of his fans had the opportunity to come see us. It was a cross-pollination of our fan bases. We were playing in one of our favorite rooms too. We started in South Bend, Ind., and had this goal of throwing a successful party at the Morris sometime. That was honestly the first time we were able to make it a successful venture. To be able play with Adrian was just so cool.

SSv: When you guys are going off on an improv jam on stage, it seems like you’re really cued in to what everyone is doing musically. Did you guys always have that or was that something that took time to develop?

Joel: A lot of it is communication. Some of it takes time to develop. Some of it becomes natural for sure. We definitely rely on communicating to each other on stage: maintaining eye contact, visual cues. Sometimes we use talk back mics to make sure everybody’s on the same page. There’s six of us up there. One person could not be on the exact same page as the other five.

It definitely takes work, and it’s something that when we write a set list we’ll go over multiple times back stage and talk about what we intend to do to make sure that everybody’s clear. There’s definitely some times when we’re trying to do some kind of off the wall stuff. Fortunately, the audience doesn’t know what we were trying to do, so if we don’t quite nail it, we can make it seem like it was intentional – intentional mistakes. It’s always better to be on the same page.

SSv: One of the funniest things I’ve seen was when all of you were playing “Wizard’s Burial Ground” at Borders. What’s the story behind that?

Joel: [Laughs] The story behind that is that we were probably really hung over, and when that happens you kind of tend to do things that maybe amuse yourself more than other people. We decided what would be the most extreme thing that we could possibly do? Playing “Wizard’s Burial Ground” in the cooking section of Border’s seemed like the appropriate move at that point. The guy who was the manager, I think really enjoyed it because when people come there, they feel like they have to chill out. We might not have done much for cookbook sales, but hopefully coffee sales were up I suppose. They loved it. They thought it was hilarious. At least there’s some good changes going on there. We had some nice time signatures. The mass of people that were there were entertained, hopefully.

SSv: I read somewhere you guys would study tapes of your performances to improve your live show. How did that idea come about?

Joel: I would say that happened more as a group when we were driving in the van with four hours in front of us and we were trying to be productive. [Laughs] We definitely have that happen on the bus. When I get back home from a tour, I’ll pick a show or two. I probably listen to shows in a different way than most people do. I’m looking more for things to improve or just constructive criticisms to help us or me play better. Yeah, it’s definitely a cool thing to be able to deconstruct what happened and what you were thinking. I think it’s a valuable tool to make better music.

SSv: It almost sounds like something a football team would do.

Joel: It’s really true. It’s something that you go back and discuss intentions of things. Sometimes things worked out as planned and other times you said this, but you meant this. [Laughs] It happens, you know.

SSv: Looking down the road when everything is said and done and sadly, Umphrey’s McGee is no more what do you want to take away from your music?

Joel: Good times, good music, good friends, and usually good decisions. Occasionally we all make some bad decisions. It’s a heartbreaker. We’ve all been there.

SSv: What do you mean by good decisions?

Joel: Maybe you’ll have a day like, “Man, today was a really solid day and look back on all the decisions you made throughout the day.” That’s all I can really say because for all of us it’s different.

Related posts:

1. Adrian and the Sickness – B.F.D
2. The Whigs
3. Felice Brothers
4. Eulogies
5. Silversun Pickups

Tagged as: indiana, jam band, Rock

blog comments powered by Disqus