RR: What are your thoughts about the S2 improvisational idea which evolved into the concept of the UMBowl?
JC: They are a really fun, innovative thing for us to do with the fans. It’s great because it allows us to do something a little more intimate with people who really want to be there. So, when you start with that sort of enthusiasm with 50 people, I think it really sets you up for success. Improvising is one of our favorite things to do, so to be able to do that as kind of an activity with our fans has been…I didn’t even know how to describe it because I think this is the first time something like this has ever happened. But it is really rewarding, and, afterwards, to be able to go out there and do a meet-and-greet with them, and hang out with people—I still haven’t heard one negative comment from people after the event. Everybody really seems to be loving them, so I think we’ll keep doing a few of those for the foreseeable time being.
RR: I was wondering if it would be feasible to do those S2 events at various venues.
JC: The one thing is cell phones have to work so that rules out most House of Blues. The other thing is that they really need to be indoor venues, so that everybody’s able to see the screen. You can’t really do that outside in the afternoon. But, yes, we definitely plan on continuing to do those. We’ve probably done about eight or ten of them so far, and there are a lot of our markets where our fans are that we haven’t come close to, and we haven’t done them yet, so I know that is something that we’ll be looking at as we map out the rest of our tour itinerary for 2010.
RR: Let’s talk about some big events you have coming up in the summer. There is the inaugural Nateva Festival in Oxford, Maine where UM plays on July 2.
JC: I know this will be our third trip to Maine, and it’s absolutely amazing up there whenever we’ve been up there, so I’m sure it’ll be gorgeous. It’s going to be a fairly intimate festival. I think they were only selling five or six thousand tickets, something pretty small, so I think that’s probably good. Obviously, Phish has done some big festivals up there, but you don’t have quite as much as a concentrated fanbase of people up there, as opposed to trying to come in and do something massive. Doing something where you build it up has always been a better business plan for a lot of places.
RR: On July 3, Umphrey’s McGee headlines a bill with Galactic and the Wailers at Red Rocks. That will be quite a flight from Maine to Colorado. However, once you get there, I’m sure there will be some opportunities for incredible collaborations.
JC: Oh, absolutely. We’ve had a couple of calls with the Galactic guys already, and we’re working on something special that we are going to do together. But, yeah—it’s really an amazing thing to know that we’re going to go in there and close the night at Red Rocks. It’s truly a dream come true. I know that there will be a lot of diehard fans there, so I think there will be a ton of improv that night, there will be a sick light show [via longtime Relix and Jambands.com writer and current UM lighting designer Jefferson Waful], and a few surprises, both cover-wise and maybe some originals, as well, that might be a little bit surprising. I just can’t wait. It will be one of the highlights of my life, for sure.
We love the Gothic Theatre, too (in Colorado where Umphrey’s McGee plays on July 4). I think the first time we played it was 2001 opening for Max Creek. Since then, we’ve done a number of headlining shows there. That’s one of those buildings where the energy in there goes through the roof.
RR: It has been a year and a half since Mantis hit in full force. That was the first record which included all new material that had not been previously played on stage. Umphrey’s then developed those songs quite a bit in the live environment. In a prior interview for the site, Brendan Bayliss mentioned the fact that the band had just recorded some new material. Will those songs become part of the new setlists that fans can expect to hear in the next few months?
JC: Well, you know, it seems like we are always reacting to the last thing we put out. We had this hugely dense album with all this stuff going on with Mantis, and so, now, I think we’ve gone back to some of the groovier, funkier stuff that I feel is part of our sound. I never want to say that we’ve settled on a certain sound because I think we can accomplish a lot with different sounds pretty much live and in the studio. So we are going back to focusing on raw songs, lots of melodies and grooves, and stuff like that. The three new songs that we’ve been playing—“The Linear,” “Conduit,” and “Booth Love”—all definitely fit that category. We’ve got a couple of other new ones that we’ve been working on in the studio. One is almost done that I think we’re going to release at some point this summer, but we haven’t come to quite a definitive decision about that yet. We’ll definitely be playing it live sooner rather than later. That one is called “Well Wishers,” and I was actually in the studio today for a little while working on that, and doing a little bit of vocal arrangement and some organ parts for that.
It’s cool to get back to that, and especially for summertime. Those are the kind of songs that you want to have that you are playing. With the Mantis stuff, we definitely tried to get those songs in good, live working order. It took us a couple months to really get tight with them, and now, we’re feeling great about them. It’s kind of cool because you don’t have to play Mantis material every night to make sure that we’re still playing it well. (laughs) They just feel like they are part of our normal repertoire now. It’s absolutely good stuff—having the Mantis album songs moving into a more regular rotation. I know that our diehard fans are definitely fans of that because they’ve heard that stuff the most over the last year, and now we’re opening up those songs quite a bit and doing a lot of improvisation. It’s fun to do that—surprise people with songs where they feel like “Oh, I know where this is going,” and out of left field, comes something completely different.
RR: In early 2009, when Mantis was released, there was a concentrated effort to focus on delivering this studio album in a fresh, new way with several innovative web-based ideas, including ways where fans could get bonus material. Now that time has passed. Is it easier for the band these days with less of that pressure to continue to seek some new way to present your studio material?
JC: Oh, for sure. Every album that we put out there, we want it to be our strongest and best album to date. We feel that Mantis —from start to finish—is still our strongest thing that we put out. It’s a great feeling to have that a year and a half down the road, right? (laughs)
But, yeah, at the same time, that doesn’t mean that the next time needs to be even more and bigger than that. The albums that become so-called hit albums now—some of these are only selling 150 to 200,000 albums. To be out there having a number of albums in the 30 to 50,000 sale range is something that I feel like we’ve had some good success with.
Our goal has never really been to have a Top 40 hit. One of those things would be a cool, ancillary thing to happen, but from the get go, we’ve been about building our fanbase from the ground up, and bringing people in and getting them into our sound, and having them discover our catalogue. I think that will always be the focus for us—trying to reach out to our core fanbase first, and make them happy, and then, let them do our work for us, as far as getting our name out there.
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