Improvising the key to Umphrey’s McGee
For at least part of their show at House of Blues tonight, the Chicago band Umphrey’s McGee will have no idea what they’re about to play. Though they have no problem writing formal songs, they always leave a few stretches in their set — known as “Jimmy Stewarts” in band lingo — where they have to fly without a net.
“We put maybe three of those into every set we do,” guitarist Brendan Bay liss said. “If they’re really good, they can go on for 10 minutes. The goal for us is to create something that we can revisit and turn into a formal song later on. The trick is not to plan too hard and not to overthink it. Some of the best ones have just popped up out of nowhere. Then we’re all surprised and we can write together on the spot in front of people. Sometimes Jake (coguitarist Jake Cinninger) will play something so great that I just crack up laughing. At those times, thinking just gets in the way — what we always find is that when you’re thinking that you stink, you do.”
Don’t lump Umphrey’s into the “jam band” mold, however. Their musical roots are more in Talking Heads, later Beatles and prog rock. This year they released two new albums, “It’s Not Us ...” and “... It’s You,” drawn from the same set of sessions. Almost every song falls into the tight fourminute range.
“We think of live and studio as two completely different things,” Bayliss said. “For these albums, we nearly did a bunch of stylistic EPs — a funk one, a rustic one, a heavier one and a prog one. But instead we just wound up putting it all down on tape and letting it go where it would, which is typical of us. We’re pretty consistent in being inconsistent.”
Their status as firstclass music nerds was confirmed by another recent album, “Zonkey.” One of the weirdest covers albums in history, it featured live mashups of two or three songs at once. One track blended Radiohead and Beck with Phil Collins.
Bayliss said, “Those came out of our Halloween shows over the past 10 years. You spend time trying to find songs that blend together, and even more time trying to convince your bandmates that it’ll work. There were some that came very easy, and others where the tempo needed slowing down or the key was a halfstep apart.”
Umphrey’s started an anniversary tour last year. It’s now been 21 years since Bayliss, bassist Ryan Stasik and keyboardist Joel Cummins began playing together at the University of Notre Dame. But Bayliss is none too nostalgic about the old days.
“We were really nobodies on campus. We were playing to our friends and our roommates’ friends, the same 20 people every time — and that’s one reason we started changing the set list around, so the same friends at every show wouldn’t get bored. We’ll come up with something at the end of the tour to put a nice bow on it, but we’re not thinking of the anniversary as too big a deal. What’s really on our minds is the next 20 years.”