For Umphrey’s McGee, 2014 has been bittersweet. The band played their first sold out Red Rocks gig, rewrote the Around the Horn theme song and put out one of the year’s finest rock records, but they also lost original drummer and friend Mike Mirro in January. Most everything the band did this year was done with their late friend in mind, from video tributes at UMBowl to a special dedication in their Similar Skin liner notes.
We recently caught up with Joel Cummins to assess the year for the band and what 2015 may hold, including a tease of a potential “career-defining” announcement coming early in the year. Cummins, who owns a degree in Music Theory and Performance from Notre Dame, alsp discusses his most recent solo set at Brendan and Jake’s Holiday show which featured the compositional work of Claude Debussy. As Cummins explains, the inspiration for the set came from his friend and bandmate, Mike Mirro.
Let’s start with the solo set you just played at Brendan and Jake’s Holiday Show. You incorporated some classical arrangements, which is fairly unique in your solo sets.
It’s the most nerve-wracking thing for me in the world, so it takes a lot for me to even agree to do something like this. With the music of Claude Debussy, he had been my favorite piano composer for a long time, and then when we decided to do the holiday show as a tribute to the Mike Mirro Neurological Foundation, I thought this is the perfect time to play some of this stuff because I introduced this music to Mike and he completely flipped out about it. It was exciting to see. It’s not everyday that you turn on one of your friends to classical music. I made that connection, and thought, ‘This is music that more people need to know about.”
One of the things that I think has been important in the history of Umphrey’s McGee, we’ll play some covers that are obvious and that people know, but some of the other stuff is more educational. We want to introduce people to music that they might not otherwise know. That’s certainly something that I wanted to do with this stuff.
I also did some improvisation and some original music after that to give them something sweeter. At the same time, Debussy’s piano music is some of the most listenable classical music that’s out there. He was about breaking the rules and, one of the things I talked about at the show was how much of an influence his modality and uses of floating seventh chords and destabilizing the root are. That sort of stuff really found its way into a lot of Umphrey’s McGee compositions, at least as far as my contributions to it go. So, there is that connection that happened there too.
Shifting to Around the Horn, you just did an interview with ESPN where you dug into the process a little bit more. Is it right you guys took the theme song from something you performed on stage?
Well, just to be clear it’s kind of a hybrid because they wanted to retain the original melody they had in their old version but they wanted the basic instrumental part underneath it to be hipper and funkier. [ATH Producer] Aaron Solomon who is a friend and a fan of the band sent he came across exactly what he wanted and needed for the show. Whenever you can get a super specific example of what somebody wants it makes it a lot clearer about—how can we execute something that the producers and everybody involved are going to like.
This relationship had been building over the last few years. For those who don’t know, you guys hung out on set last time you were in DC.
Yeah, and I have to give credit where credit is due—Andy Farag was the first one who suggested to Aaron that we should rewrite the theme song. He had mentioned to Andy that they were looking to redo it and Andy said, “why don’t we do it for you?” The initial conversation was really on him and by that point we had become buddies and were joking around in person and on Twitter about stuff and unbelievably it’s worked out really well.
And then, of course, Tony Reali sits in with you guys in Silver Springs, MD.
Yeah, I think that was the real kicker.
How was he as a player?
He was good. I have to admit, I was nervous getting him up there, I worried about “Okay, is this something that’s really funny but a complete musical disaster.” I couldn’t really hear him that well when we were playing it live but I listened back and I was like, “Dude, you nailed the changes.” He might’ve snuck in a rehearsal beforehand.
The reason that I knew he knew it was because he played me a video of him, I think it was after some awards show and there was a piano in the lobby. Someone recorded him playing it and I was like “Damn, that’s pretty good.” And he was like “Yeah I played that and thought I was all cool and then [J.A.] Adande sat down and played “Clair de Lune” by Debussy from memory and totally smokes me.” So there are a couple panelists on there who have some musical talent.
I don’t know if Kevin Blackistone is a player but he’s certainly a very well-versed listener, famously from the night that Tony and Aaron came out. Kevin came out for dinner with us too. We ended up shooting the shit and he was going to go to a jazz show downtown and he was like “Yeah I was just going to come out to dinner but I feel like now I want to see what your deal is, so I’m going to come to the first set and then go downtown.” He ends up coming to the first set and we talked to him at set break and he was like “I’m not leaving, man.” It’s always interesting to see people who are completely out of the scene and how they react to one of our shows.
I should also mention, those guys completely crushed it for our UMBowl segment this year too. Waful and I basically tried to write the script for them and feed them with as much denigrating information as possible because obviously they’re the best when they’re completely ripping something apart, so that was fun too.
They were a great addition to UMBowl. Shifting to New Year’s, what is it like planning for a five-night run?
The first thing that happens is we always have a horn section for New Year’s Eve, so probably in about August or September we started talking about what songs we wanted to do with that. We always like to add a new cover or two and figure out a couple of originals that maybe horns haven’t been on before. Now, with Mad Dog’s Filthy Little Secret, we’ve got 45 or 50 originals that they’ve played on in the past 12 years so they have a ton of charts now which is really cool. We have a lot of flexibility with that, but that’s the first step—figuring out what are going to be the New Year’s songs with the horns.
And the nice thing about five nights for us now is that we have so much material that it’s really not an issue. I don’t think there will be any dead spots or weirdness. We’ll probably hit a couple obscure, original tunes but for the most part we’ve probably got almost 200 original songs and we might be playing a new one or two as well so we have a couple of things we’ve been working on that will hopefully be ready at some point in the run. That’s part of the benefit of being in a band that’s been together for 17 years. You have that sort of flexibility where you can play five nights and make it work. I just don’t know if the fans will be able to hold up for five nights in a row. I remember going to some two or three night runs as a fan of other bands in the past and being like “Oh my God, I’m exhausted, how does the band do this?”
But needless to say, we’re thrilled that we’re doing our first five night run ever at such an awesome venue in The Tabernacle. I think it’s a great experience for the band, it’s a great experience for the fans. The energy in that place is really off the charts, no matter what. I feel like ever since our show that we played there February 6. 2010, there’s been something really special that’s been happening for us.
One of the interesting things over the last couple of years has been the addition of horns on the newer tunes. “Bad Friday” debuted last year with horns.
We hadn’t even played “Bad Friday” before and we did it with a version with the horns and that was kind of a fun thing to do. Who knows, maybe we’ll do it again this year with a song people have never heard before.
Looking at the big picture—Atlanta has become a hub for you guys over the last few years. You first played there in 2002 at the Variety Playhouse.
There were probably 300 people there or so for those, which for us at that point was a major success. I feel like we’ve always had a really good base in Atlanta and people who have wanted to come check the band out.
Would you say it’s your biggest base outside the Midwest?
Yeah, if I had to give you a top-five of where we do best it’s definitely Denver, Atlanta, New York, Chicago and maybe something else on the east coast. Maybe a Boston or Philadelphia or one of those major cities. It’s been cool to see this sort of epicenter of excitement that’s centered around Atlanta and it’s kind of spread out from there to the point where we’ve started doing really well in places like Asheville. We sold out the Thomas Wolfe and are doing the arena next time we go there. Same thing for Nashville, Birmingham. Even a little bit, I don’t know how much Atlanta has to do with this, but Florida has definitely become a more important place for us over the past couple of years.
Speaking of Florida, you’re doing a special event there in April at Fort Clinch in Fernandina Beach, FL.
I’m really excited for it too. We’ve got another month, maybe less, before we announce the final details of it—who’s playing with us and what exactly is going to happen. That’s something we’ve been working on for a long time and we’re thrilled that it finally came through and we were able to announce it. I think that’s going to be a really cool, unique experience and if it goes well maybe we’ll do it again.
The good thing about this site is that it’s a fort that was never in use. So there aren’t any weird ghosts or strange shit that’s going to happen. We’re going to be the first ones to really get crazy in there, so watch out.
Shifting to the upcoming New York run, you guys will be joined by Joshua Redman, someone you’ve mentioned as one of your favorite sit-ins. What do you like about playing with him?
The first conversation that we had with Josh was something that really left a huge impression on me, both as a member of our band but also giving me some perspective on what it means to sit in with other people. As we were talking and trying to figure out songs that would work for him, one of the things he said was “Listen, I don’t want to be the guy who’s playing sax and soloing over your music. I want to be someone who is in the fabric and texture of what’s happening, I want to write my own parts or be playing something that you guys are playing.” He said, “I really dig the compositional style of what you guys do and that’s what I want to dig into.”
Right from the get go, he blew us away with that and said “Throw me your hardest stuff, I want to learn how you guys compose stuff.” The first song we gave to him was “Der Bluten Kat,” which probably took us three months to learn as a band. He showed up at the first rehearsal and played through the whole thing and I shit you not he didn’t make a mistake. We looked at each other like, “Yeah, you’re fucking amazing.” From that point on we knew this was going to be really cool and he’s super into the compositional side and wants to dig in. He’s always expressed interest in working with us and after the Denver run last year he wanted to do it again. Fortunately our schedules lined up and we were able to get the NY dates together and also get him on our LA and San Francisco shows in March. He lives in Berkeley, CA so that’s nice—he gets to do some hometown shows. But Josh is certainly the official seventh member of the band.
The Umphrey’s compositions aren’t easy to learn, it’s pretty impressive that he just dove in head-first like that. Particularly to a song like “Der Bluten Kat.”
Very, very true, so the fact that he can navigate those waters that easily really speaks to his incredible musicianship and it’s pretty amazing looking back that we got this guy who wants to play with us, so we’ve got to keep him fooled. He’s really a super guy too. The fact that in 2004 he was like “Yeah, let’s do some shows together.” I mean, he rode around in the van with us, so he definitely immersed himself.
Jumping back a bit, after Atlanta you guys will return to Jam Cruise. What advice would you give to someone making their first trip on the boat and what makes this experience so unique?
The first thing is to pace yourself but also make a general plan. That plan can change at any moment’s notice because you never know who you’re going to run into or who’s going to become your new group of friends on Jam Cruise. It’s really just this huge world of possibility and you’re in this amazing place with enlightened people. There’s no other experience in the world like it.
You have to accept that you’re going to miss some things. There’s too much happening, you can’t catch everything that’s cool that’s going down. For that reason, it’s probably good as a fan to plot things out a little bit. The other thing I would say is definitely get off the boat and do some stuff at the stops. I’ve had some really life changing things happen. A couple of years ago I did this thing with Moog where we went to this school at Turks and Caicos and showed the kids some instruments and let them play with them. I got to go with Bernie Worrell and Rich Vogel from Galactic and getting to see Bernie play “Flashlight” and “We Want the Funk” and him being like, “Oh yeah, this is something that I wrote on the Moog” and watching these kids’ eyes light up and be like “Oh my God, this dude wrote this stuff?” We left the school a theremin so they could play with that.
There are some really cool side things that are happening too. Don’t be afraid to do a non-set up by Jam Cruise excursion. I did one with Benjy Eisen last year and we went to this underground cave system in Jamaica and then we went tubing in the jungle. It was nuts. It was insane and you’re really far from the ship and you’re like “Okay, are we going to make it back?” (laughs). I think in addition to the music there’s a really unique opportunity for some adventurous stuff that you can do with your friends and have a good time.
So, I’d say pace yourself but also push yourself. Make it to sunrise a couple of days, there’s no better place to do it.
What can Umphrey’s fans look forward to in 2015 aside from the relentless touring schedule?
I’ll tell you this, it’ll probably be early February that we’re going to drop something that is going to completely blow people away and they’re going to be like “How did they pull this off?” There’s something that we did in 2014 that nobody knows about, that is going to happen in 2015 that I think is going to be pretty awesome. That’s all I’m going to say right now.
Be ready, come about February, to see something that—this is going to be, I’m not going to say “career defining” thing because I don’t want to build it up too much. But when it happened, it was something that we’re incredibly proud of and something that I’d never dreamed would happen for us. That’s all I’m going to say.
