PART II – WELL, WE GOT IT WITH BRENDAN BAYLISS
Somehow I had a hunch you’d show up.
– Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters – 1917-1961, edited by Carlos Baker
RR: 30db is playing Chicago’s Lincoln Hall just a couple of weeks after a landmark gig by your regular band. On April 24, Umphrey’s McGee played one of the most improvisational, if not the most improvisational, shows of their career. Tell me about your thoughts in the aftermath of the four set/quarters of the UMBowl. Was it really fun? Exhausting?
BB: It was really exhausting. I don’t think any of us realized how long it was going to be. We started at 8:15, and we finished at 1:15. It kind of felt like a New Year’s show. We had to do a lot of prep work. We had to do five-hour rehearsals, and a lot of it was stuff we were only going to play one time, or learning an arrangement of a specific song acoustically. It was a lot of work. I don’t know if people there realized how much work it was. When we were done with the [last] set, he didn’t realize we were going to do an encore; he was about to collapse. We were joking, “All right—we’ve got a three-song encore,” and he was saying, “No, no, no, we don’t.” He was out of gas.
RR: Were there any challenging quarters, or sets, where you felt like “WOW—I don’t know how we put that all together?”
BB: Yeah, the second one [the mashup set where fans were allowed to text requests]. There were so many texts coming that Kevin [Browning, UM sound engineer and producer] couldn’t filter them. Things were just popping up, and he was looking them up, and said, “Guys, I’m really sorry.” There was nothing we could do. There were a couple that popped up that we had to do.
RR: “Cemetery Walk This Way.”
BB: Yeah. We were just looking at each other like “What the hell?” We put ourselves out there, so we had to do it.
RR: Do you feel that you’ll do this again at some point?
BB: Yeah, but only once a year. (laughter)
RR: You’re in the middle of a brief tour right now. Are there plans for dates in the fall? Is there a long-term plan for the group, in general?
BB: We’re looking at doing another run maybe in September. I think we’re only able to do a week. We’re already looking at figuring dates that work for everybody’s calendar. We’re already talking about having new songs for the set, and new covers, and turning it into a legitimate entity.
RR: Right. What’s interesting is that One Man Show doesn’t sound like someone had their own ego and songs, and then it would be on to the next person with his own ego and songs. You guys blended and worked really well together.
BB: It is surprising how easily it fits—the flow and everything. I think it is what you just said. It seemed like a team. I think of how easy the sessions were. Some of those songs are second takes, and we had worked on them that day, like the first time we had played them with everybody in the band. I think what surprised me the most was how many songs we kept. You’re actually hearing us rehearse when we’re rolling the tape, and we’d listen back, and go, “Well, we got it.”
RR: And you are content with the direction of Umphrey’s at this point?
BB: Yeah, absolutely. We just went to Jake’s [Cinninger] house last week, and cut five new tracks—three, we’ve played live before; two, no one’s heard, so we’re starting to compile a new studio project.
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