The members of Umphrey’s McGee have always cited metal and progressive rock as primary influences, so it made sense that the group quickly gelled with metal titans OHM when they met on tour. What is surprising, however, is how quickly that friendship has turned into an actual band. After a chance jam-session, Umphrey’s McGee members Jake Cinninger (guitar), Kris Myers (drums) and Joel Cummins (keyboards) formed the group OHMPHREY with guitarist Chris Poland (OHM, ex- Megadeth) and bassist Robby Pagliari (OHM). The five musicians quickly recorded a self-titled disc, released those sessions on Magna Carta Records last May and hit the road for a few West Coast shows. The collaboration worked and the musicians already plan to work on their next studio collaboration. While on Jam Cruise, Cinninger, Poland and Cummins discussed their initial meeting, recent recording sessions and where exactly metal meets Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew.
Let’s start with some background on your history with Chris Poland. I know OHM opened for Umphrey’s a few years ago. Is that how the idea for OHMPHREY first came about?
Jake Cinninger: We were playing with OHM, I’d say about three years ago. We did a little run on the West Coast with them where OHM opened for Umphrey’s and that started this relationship. We really love their music and they really love our music, so it was pretty much a no brainer to do a side-project together. Chris was one of my childhood heroes—I really looked up to him. Out of all the gunslingers back in the ‘80s and ‘90s that were very much on the train to speedville, no one could really touch Chris’s playing as far as his character. He really sounded like himself, which was the hardest thing to do when everyone was trying to play with a crap-ton of distortion on their guitar. So he really sounded like himself, or if anything, he sounded like Jann Hammer from Jeff Beck Group or Mahavishnu Orchestra —just on the guitar. I never expected in a million years to get a hold of him to ask us to play in his band.
A few years his band was playing in Chicago and then he said, “Why don’t you come out, have a night out on the town, come in and sit in with us.” Kris was there, Joel was there and I was there. They randomly had a keyboard at the venue, luckily. Kris replaced OHM drummer Joel Taylor, and we did an hour-and-a-half jam at Martyr’s in Chicago. It was videotaped and recorded, so we literally took it home and couldn’t stop watching it. We were like, “This really worked—there’s like 30 bits of information in this hour-long jam and it totally kicked our ass.” It was kind of the nucleus to go, “Why don’t we do an improv record- together.” So literally, the jam that we did that night at Martyr’s kicked off the ideology of the group, which is supposed to be Bitches Brew meets metal.
Chris how familiar were you with Umphrey’s and the whole jamband scene at that time?
Chris Poland: You know, I was a fan of the Grateful Dead of course, but my heart and soul was always Clapton and the guitar slingers—especially Jimmy Page and Hendrix and Leslie West and then Robin Trower. I heard [John] McLaughlin and then I reheard Jeff Beck and all of a sudden I was just on my way. But as far as jam stuff goes, Cream really is the original jamband. That’s why I feel that we all have the same heart when it comes to the music that comes out of us. It all stems from place I think.
Jake Cinninger: We all probably have the same records at home,
Chris Poland: Exactly, except I’m sure Jake has more records, and I bet they’re not scratched. I swear I’m the worst. I open up my CD case and its empty. I don’t know where it is. And I’m talking special CDs, like Jack Bruce Out of the Storm. That’s a really rare CD and I’m like, “I gotta hear this right now.” Empty.
In 2009 you also recorded a self-titled OHMPHREY album. If I am correct that album was record in only a few days?
Jake Cinninger: Two days—two eight hour sessions, which we were saying in an earlier interview, is really hell on a drummer. So for Kris to be put through this brutal eight hours…
Chris Poland: Let me put it this way: I’m there with my own gear. It’s like I’m getting a massage. I got my rig, all my shit’s my own. He comes in, he’s got nothing he’s ever seen before. Jake’s playing one of my guitars, he’s totally out of his element, he’s playing through this Fender amp that I borrowed. Dude, it works.
Jake Cinninger: I’m smiling the whole time…
Chris Poland: I was so impressed. Everybody was like, t“hat dude walked in here out of nowhere, he could have played through a radio.”
Jake Cinninger: I appreciate it, man.
In terms of the material on the album, did you have a map of what you were going to do when you went into the studio?
Chris Poland: To tell you the truth, a lot of the ideas came from Jake. They were just spontaneous things, and we followed his cue. There were a couple things that everybody kind of contributed to. You know, it was mostly like somebody would start something, usually Jake, and we’d finish it.
Jake Cinninger: That was the cool thing: to bring in these ideas in a very infantile state—like a little riff—and then we’d arrange it. So it’s all about kind of the arrangement of the moment and what we can get out of this little riff.
Chris Poland: And the thing is, he’s there with the strength of the band, his band, which is basically Kris and Joel. And so they have their arranging—there’s a certain thing when you’re a band, you have these arranging ideas that you use. And me and Pag have ours too. So we kind of molded that together and made our suggestions and things came out differently.
Jake Cinninger: And you know, to be quite honest, it’s really a tricky thing to have two headstrong guitarists in the same atmosphere. It could be a real problem in most cases. But because our styles sound really opposite it works—I tend to go more ticky and percussive and Chris is more fluid and legato. And it’s really the polar opposites of styles.
Chris Poland: It’s kind of like Dickey Betts and Duane Allman and the way they played on some of those early Allman Brothers records.
That is an interesting analogy.
Chris Poland: But, I mean, I can’t play the way he plays. Even if I fuckin’ sat down and tried for a million years.
Jake Cinninger: I don’t have the strength in my left hand to pull off Chris’ power though. It’s all pull-offs and hammer-ins.
Chris Poland: But I want to tell you. He’s tricky—he’s got a right hand like a drummer. He’s a freaky drummer man. At the end of the session, we’re all tired, everybody’s like, “Alright man, let’s go.” Then he sits down at the drums. And I was like, “Dude, do you want to play drums in my band.” If he played drums at home, it’d be stupid.
Jake Cinninger: It’s cool. If Kris gets sick at a gig, we could pull right through with Umphrey’s with me on drums, so it’s kind of fun. I’m almost waiting – I might throw some clear eyes in his drink. I think I’m going to play drums tonight.
Chris Poland: Does that really work?
Jake Cinninger: I don’t know – I saw that in a movie.
Jake, how much preparation did you put into these songs before the recording sessions?
Jake Cinninger: What was cool was that we got together at my studio up in Michigan with Chris and Joel. We sort of pieced together a few little bits, we recorded them and we had them on disk so that we could figure out what riffs would work that we would take out to L.A.
Joel Cummins: So I had a couple chord progressions that I brought to the table, and Jake had a few, and we kind of worked at it before hand so we had a few different sections of things to bring out.
Chris Poland: It made all the difference in the world because what it did was it gave us momentum. All of a sudden we had two songs – we were like, “Hey, we’re somebody.”
Jake Cinninger: It’s like, “Hey, if we just came up with two songs in three hours, we could probably do another two songs in three hours.”
Chris Poland: Yeah, and we did.
Jake Cinninger: I mean, musicians are the laziest people in the world but when you get in that working blue collar environment where you got to get something done…
Chris Poland: These guys [in Umphrey’s] aren’t lazy at all. You know that.
Joel Cummins: It was easy and fun, honestly. It felt like it hanging out with my friends, making music. And what Chris said earlier, Kris just really put his best foot forward on these takes and gave us a nice bedrock to kind of build on.
Chris Poland: It didn’t matter what style we threw at him. A lot people, a lot of drummers especially, don’t want to be told how to do something. What’s great is he’s a drummer. When he speaks to Kris he almost goes, “Ahkahapukatekapukaja.” And then he goes, “Oh yea, ahakakhputakaja.” I got it – of course.
Jake Cinninger: It’s like the old if you can say it, you can play it.
You mentioned before that you might be doing some more recordings soon. Is that something you’ve figured out for next year?
Jake Cinninger: Yes, hopefully this coming May, we’re going to pen in a week where we go out to Chris’s studio. He’s got a bunch of new gear—we’re going to do it at basically the same studio, his rehearsal/studio spot—and just do almost the same sort of thing and see what we get. Keep that sort of tradition going – almost the chemistry of what it is that we did on the first record and carry it into the second.
Chris Poland: But we have a label that is interested too, so they’ve already offered us to do it.
I’m sure it’s the same feeling, like having two songs or more – you have a label interested, you have the momentum now…
Jake Cinninger: I guess we’ve got to get busy. It’s great!
Chris Poland: I think it’ll be really good, because I think everybody is going to have ideas to bring to the table this time because we know what works.
Jake Cinninger: I can see us getting a little more progressive—a little more avenues and then blow up the wide open jam, and then go back to that a little more complexity. Have a little bit of that old school complexity, prog-fusion thing in there and see what happens with it.
Chris Poland: I’m into that. I’m a slow learner but that’s ok, we have four days.
Jake Cinninger: We’ve got all that new technology – slow it down half speed. We’re safe man, we’re safe.
Imagine if you had two weeks. You’d have a double album.
Jake Cinninger: If we had two weeks in the studio, that’s like six records.
