Umphrey's McGee is Not Necessarily Going Phishing
Average Guys Make Impact on Music Scene
by Lazarus
To his way of thinking, there is no reason for pretense, says Joel Cummins. After all, he reasons, he and his fellow members in the genre-breaking, critically acclaimed rock band Umphrey's McGee are deep in Midwestern roots.
The people there are, by and large, humble, he says. "And we are just average guys. Why pretend we are something else?" he asks.
So they don't, even when some, perhaps many, want to confer to them the exalted title of "successor to the throne of Phish."
It's not that Umphrey's doesn't accept that as a compliment, the keyboardist acknowledges, and he does see it as more of a positive than a burden; it's just that he wants to keep it in perspective.
"I don't see how being compared to Phish can be a bad thing; as long as we are not compared to the Back Street Boys, it will be OK," he says, laughing. "Those guys [Phish] were a real band and made real music. Our philosophies of music are pretty close. We're not trying to go after their sound per se, but we have a lot in common with how we go about constructing stuff that makes sense."
Umphrey's McGee, whose new album is the double disc The Bottom Half, considers itself part of the jam band community and is happy to be in it. "It's a great thing to be out there. We definitely fit that category. Hopefully we are not limited to just that. There are a lot of other things the band does," Cummins says.
His group takes its music, but not themselves, seriously, he says. Come to a live show and you'll see that, he implies. "It's a progressive rock show, but not in a sense where it will be all serious music. We want people to have a good time. We want to challenge people and challenge their ears and try to reward them with something they can move to a little bit," he explains.
His favorite part of performing live is not knowing what will happen. Improvisation abounds. "I love being able to create music in the moment with these guys, and having fans being part of that. That's one of the coolest things we do," he says.
Umphrey's McGee will again be taking the festival stages this year. "I like the opportunity to mix and match with other musicians," says Cummins. "By and large what we try to do when playing festivals is create the whole vibe of a show. That can be challenging, but overall we are trying to create some sort of vibe," he explains.
Improvisation keeps it fresh. Every night brings a different set list and show. "We'll write a small section for a particular show and play it just once," he says. "We work hard trying to keep it different for everybody every night."
They try to use the recording studio as another instrument to help create and shape their sound, he explains. "That's totally different than what we do live. We're about exploring two different ideas in the studio and live. Those are really separate things for us. Live is a lot more experimental. A lot of what we do in the studio, we view those songs as a springboard for what we do live."
The latest song grouping comes in The Bottom Half. The first CD features 10 songs that did not make it onto 2006's Safety In Numbers album. The second disc has outtakes, alternative versions of songs, a cappella recordings and other segments from the band's 2005's studio sessions. It provides an insight into how the band makes its music, Cummins says.
Safety was intended to be a double album, but the musicians could not quite make it work as one, Cummins says. "It was nice to have these other songs that didn't make that album. We felt we had a good start with the quality of the songs and great production. It's definitely a step up. We are always into the next new thing we're working on. In January we started working on new material, 11 or 12 songs."
With The Bottom Half, he says, they were "dealing with things that didn't fit into another setting." There are a lot of different styles of music they try to do, he says. "By nature of the fact these sounds came from the same people, it was something that tied them together."
The musicians all are thankful to have the opportunities they do, he says, to be able to make music and create together. "We are definitely into evolving as we go," he says. "We're not interested in producing the same album or sound. We're into musical growth and change and seeing where that takes us."
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