Umphrey’s McGee keeps sound fresh
The band shall go nameless, Joel Cummins insists. But he recalls the episode at a show years ago: “There was some kind of problem between the drummer and the rest of the band. While they were still playing their last song, kind of an ambient piece, the drummer started packing up his drum kit and just left.”
A dozen years into their own career, Umphrey’s McGee has avoided any similar meltdowns. Cummins seems a little scarred after a streaking incident during a 2001 show — “If you’re a dude in a bar,” he says, “nobody wants to see that….”
Otherwise, it’s been 12 smooth years of jam and groove for Umphrey’s McGee, playing Wednesday at Water Street Music Hall. Since it started out as a quartet playing Phish and the like covers at parties at the University of Notre Dame — “We were a bunch of green college students,” Cummins says — Umphrey’s McGee has added a couple of guys to round out the sound. But basically, a dozen years later, it remains the same band.
These bands all hate to get pigeonholed, perhaps out of fear that they’ll be labeled neo-guitar hippie toe jam. At the risk of offending musical minds far greater than mine — a couple of them, including the keyboardist Cummins, have music degrees — Umphrey’s McGee seems to move in a prog-rock direction. The band’s new album, Mantis, shows off the kind of shifts in tempo, non-traditional song structures, lush strings, intricate instrumentals and an interest in studio tricks that more organic-minded brethren might not consider.
And Frank Zappa appears to be an influence, although perhaps that is only my imagination. Actually, I think it is their imagination. Umphrey’s McGee called its first album Greatest Hits, Vol. 3, which is either extraordinarily optimistic for a band with little hope for radio airplay, or an extraordinarily brazen lie. It was followed by Songs For Older Women, and then the band’s first studio recording, 2002’s Local Band Does O.K. This was followed by yet another live album, Local Band Does Oklahoma. As you can see, Umphrey’s McGee’s sense of humor is relentless.
Time spent away from the band revives the spirit, and Cummins is a traveling man. He and his girlfriend were recently in Arizona, where they walked across a natural arch called “The Devil’s Bridge,” an activity “not endorsed by the parks service,” he concedes. Less daunting, he is currently serving as the commissioner of the band’s fantasy football league. To stoke interest, everyone changes their team’s name each week. Last week Cummins’ “Jimmy Clausen’s Fur Coats,” named for the Notre Dame quarterback who notoriously turned up at an event in a fur coat and stretch limo, was scheduled to take on “PETA’s Hands off the Buns,” saluting an anti-fur ad featuring the nude Australian supermodel Imogen Bailey snuggling with a bunny (sorry, the final score was not available at press time).
The music does not stand still. Cummins figures Umphrey’s McGee has 120 original tunes to work with, but those are rarely the same from one night to the next. Improvisation is the jam-band way.
The band has found another exercise to help keep the minds limber. Maybe once a month, it plays another one of what it calls the Stew Art Series, “a more intimate and interactive experience with fans,” Cummins says. Separate from the band’s actual tour schedule, these are small daytime events in which Umphrey’s McGee takes descriptive phrases that have been texted to the band. When these words are projected on a screen, it jams on the concept. “They can be very funny, or more descriptive,” he says. “Someone put ‘Pink Funk’ up there, and we came up with a funkier version of something Pink Floyd would do. There was a phrase ‘Spiraling Down,’ so we created what that would sound like.”
And for “Reggae Safe Sex PSA?”
“The reggae part was self-explanatory,” Cummins says. “And we remembered back to our days living in Indiana, when they had these public-service announcements featuring, um, not-very attractive people. We used them as the vocals: ‘I can wait, you can wait, sex can wait.’”
Alas, Rochester won’t be graced with a Stew Art afternoon. Maybe it would be too much for us to handle. Umphrey’s McGee is already improv off the deep end. The band’s Halloween show wove its own music with Michael Jackson’s “Wanna Be Starting Something” and “Smooth Criminal,” the Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams,” the Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight,” Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler,” Corey Hart’s “Sunglasses at Night,” Public Enemy’s “Bring the Noise,” MGMT’s “Electric Feel,” Genesis’ “Land of Confusion,” Led Zeppelin’s “Good Times, Bad Times,” Queen’s “Fat-Bottomed Girls” and Metallica’s “Seek & Destroy.”
“There aren’t many bands,” Cummins says, “that play Toto and Metallica in the same night.”
JSPEVAK@DemocratandChronicle.com
If you go
What: Umphrey’s McGee.
When: 9 p.m. Wednesday.
Where: Water Street Music Hall, 204 N. Water St.
Tickets: $20 advance, $25 the day of the show, available at Record Archive and Ticketmaster, www.ticketmaster.com or (800) 745-3000.
Call: (585) 325-5600.
Web: www.umphreys.com.
