Justin Powell, Karl Engelmann, Jake Cinninger, Steve “Krojo” Krojniewski
In the midst of Umphrey’s McGee’s first headlining summer tour, guitarist/vocalist Jake Cinninger finds time to return to his roots with Living Room from Ali Baba’s Tahini. ABT was the band the seasoned six-stringslinger was in at the time he joined the fledgling Chicago jamband in September 2000. The rest, as they say, is history, as Umphrey’s enters its second decade as one of the ‘new generation’ jam/improv/prog rockers. UM may have created their own genre onto themselves. And that word genre is the key here, as Ali Baba’s Tahini has created a dynamically eclectic album, five years in the making, with many sonic twists and turns, showing a range of genre influences from rockabilly to country to punk to a trip down melancholia way with Simon & Garfunkel. Jambands.com sits down with Cinninger on the day of a UM gig in Buffalo to discuss the project’s genesis, recording sessions, and meticulous mixing process, which produced a fine album that serves to disprove that old adage that you can’t go home again.
Indeed, you can, and Cinninger in his delightfully detailed, humorous, and open way, ponders the work in astute fashion while always appearing like a master craftsman toiling in his trade to get everything just exactly perfect. Well, he and his longtime ABT cohorts and new recruits have done that even while Cinninger prepares for fatherhood for the first time. “I’ve got a baby boy that’s due around August 18,” says Cinninger. “I’m the first one out of the whole organization to have one; so hopefully, it’ll be a domino theory. We’re going with Townes Jacob, which is after Townes Van Zandt. I think he’s the most amazing lyricist, and I always really liked that name and how it is spelled—Townes. And people don’t really use that a whole lot. It’s kind of a cool, unusual, old Southern name.”
RR: I am familiar with your work and interests, but I was surprised at the unexpected pleasures found on Living Room, a fantastic record on diverse levels.
JC: Thanks. (laughs) That’s why we took so long because we wanted to make sure all the music was in the right spots. We had so many songs, and I didn’t want to cram the disc full of stuff, but I wanted it to be versatile, and show off all the little dips and turns and melodies and dynamics that the record could go through. It kind of comes off like a Ween record in a way because it goes everywhere.
RR: I have that Ween comparison in my notes for the record. With any other artist, a band is often not able to show that many colors over the course of a record and get away with it. But you made it work.
JC: It was just basically over five years we had been working on the project, and it’s nice when you can work, and get away from a project for a while, and then go back to the drawing board. Throughout five years, I would slowly start adding things, maybe taking away, and doing rough mixes because I did everything ‘in house’. The only thing that was done outside was the mastering job. It was a project that I really took close to the heart, and worked at very slowly to make it sound like the way it does, which was multiple mixes, and finding the right mix. We did everything old school through analog gear, and mixing on a big analog desk, and did everything the old way. Nothing was Pro Toolsed-out or modern at all on the record, which is nice because we live in an era of nothing but Pro Toolsed-out music. (laughs)
RR: Tell me a little bit about where Living Room was recorded.
JC: I’ve got a great little studio in my hometown [Niles] in Michigan called Boon Dock Studios. It’s basically where I grew up. [The studio] is way out in the woods, it’s on a dead end road, and it’s great. Over the last twenty years, I’ve been building this place up, and getting it where it’s pretty much a professional recording studio.
RR: Describe the songwriting process you have with Karl Engelmann, and his importance in the collaborative nature of this project.
JC: Oh, yeah, Karl is the brainchild behind a lot of the music. He’ll come to me with a kind of folk ditty that is simply on acoustic guitar with chords and lyrics, and we tried to manifest it into a special recording session. A lot of it is just stripped-down thought like “How are we going to turn this simple song into something special?” as far as the way it is arranged, and the way it’s recorded.
The track “Living Room,” for example, we did a lot of that stuff live in one take. The vibe of the take was perfect. That’s what we wanted. It’s like going back to the old way of recording, and Karl is all about that. He puts the production in my hands, so he can manifest his role as the singer and a songwriter. I’ll come in and clean up some of the form, and do a little haircut to some of the songs, and get them at a certain time. Some of the songs are like two minutes. (laughs) We wanted to keep them short and quirky.
So Karl is really integral. He lives in Charleston, South Carolina, and we send stuff back and forth. He’ll say, “Oh, what do you think of this song? What do you think of that?” He is constantly writing. If I’m Frank Zappa, he’s Captain Beefheart. (laughter)
RR: What are some of the changes that have happened with your relationship?
JC: I think we started to get away from writing about food and stuff like that. (laughter) We’re a little more grown up, so the subject matter of the new record is a little more closer to home. I just love some of the topics that Karl sings about—the quirky lyricism.
RR: Not to mention the fact that you have other band members who have been with Ali Baba’s Tahini for a while, and some who are new.
JC: Yeah, Justin Powell on keyboards, and a touring bass player, Jeff Hinkle. When we tour or do studio stuff, we can play as a band and get that band vibe, instead of multi-tracking everything out one at a time. [Longtime drummer Steve “Krojo” Krojniewski rounds out the quintet.]
RR: Right from the top, Living Room begins with “Bikes,” after, literally, a “One Two Three” count in, and I wrote Ween meets alt country about that track.
JC: We wanted to create the vibe of when you can imagine riding around with your buddies back pre-adolescence and all that great stuff when the world was a lot simpler, and there weren’t all the expectations of adulthood. It is sort of a nice, reflective piece. That’s probably one of my favorite tracks on the record because of the way that we recorded that. It was really a great recording. Krojo, in the drum booth, is counting out “One Two Three” before the song, with a cell phone going off, and somebody closing it. It’s kind of funny because I think Karl was in the bathroom doing the vocals, and that was his phone, and Krojo’s in the drum booth, and the bass and guitars are in the main room so we can all play to tape together. Then, there’s all the sweetening that I do later—(laughs) that’s what took the five years.
RR: “Unity” is the single with a reggae feel to it.
JC: The whole reggae thing is big with Karl because he used to be in a reggae band called the Natty Love Joys, so he’s got a big reservoir of reggae. We just love compin’ reggae. There’s nothing better than sitting back on a hot day and listening to some reggae. For a bunch of white boys, we just hope we can do it right. (laughs)
RR: The ‘sweetening’ you referred to definitely works on that track.
JC: I’m using a Moog Taurus pedal, which is creating some of the synth sounds. [Cinninger scats the synth sounds from the “Unity” track] I’m using some nice, old, analog synths. The Moog Taurus II is kind of like what Rush would use, a floor modular synth. You just step on ‘em and blow up the room.
RR: The title track features the band stretching out into a unique arc and has an almost Simon & Garfunkel pop ballad quality.
JC: That’s one where I’m standing in the middle of the room and playing a tambourine to try to hold everything together. Everyone is basically listening to the tambourine and playing. The tambourine goes throughout the track, and that is really all I’m playing in the song. It’s like lead tambourine, bro. (laughter) If you listen to the song, the tambourine keeps the song moving and pushing forward. It’s weird how effective a good ole tambourine part can be.
RR: Yeah, I think you may be the Hendrix of tambourine players on that track.
JC: Yeah, man, I’ve got it covered. I’m doing session work. You can call me whenever. I’ll do it. People’ll pay triple scale for tambourine work. (laughs)
RR: “Dose of the Real World” has elements of rockabilly and country.
JC: That comes into the crazy Ween mentality with the vocals and the sound effects. There’s a lot of beck and call with the sweetening and treatment of sound—I’m trying to beck and call the situation that Karl talks about with a physical sound. You hear all of these sound effects happening in between the lyrics. I said, “How are we going to make this song pop and be kind of weird?” because it was just kind of a country/bluegrass tune, and all the sound effects came later, and made the track pop.
RR: “Temptation” features a dub vibe.
JC: Yeah, we wanted to keep that thing flowing because even the previous record, Partyin’ Peeps has that same dub-like quality. I think that’s an ace in the hole for us as far as a style. We definitely like kicking back on the dub reggae. I love the backbeat on that song. Krojo’s got a monstrous backbeat. He’s like the Charlie Watts of jambands.
RR: I was impressed that there are not a lot of Umphrey’s textures to the songs and yet, your personality is very paramount on the tracks. Perhaps, it is a nod to your sophisticated tastes, but there are also patient, self-contained solos on the record.
JC: A lot of that is that when I’m tracking guitar solos they’re usually done later, so I can be by myself, and hope for the best. I can’t necessarily log a bunch of takes—you know, the old way where you’ve got to wait around until you’ve got the right take, and that’s the one. A lot of it is that it might take me three hours to nail the right feel of a particular solo, and I’ll be like “that’s it. That’s the one. That’s as far as I’m going with it. It’s done.” It is a slower process for me when I get those better results when it’s more of a patient, mature style of playing. It’s very opposite of what I do live—a studio treatment guitar like, you know, a Steely Dan guitar player that lays those colors like Larry Carlton, or someone like that. That was what I was going for throughout the record—not to be over bossy, but to subtly have my fingerprint in there.
RR: Let’s talk about some of the tracks where you did open up your playing, and offered some different variations on hard rock styles. For example, there is the heavy fuzz tone on “Cold Beer at Mickey’s Pub.” I love the live sound of that song.
JC: Yep. It’s crazy. Funny you mention that because what I did is I wanted to emulate the sound of a nasty, trashy old punk club, so what I did was that I would re-amp the drums through a Vox amplifier, like a guitar amp. I would take the kick drum, and send it into a guitar amp, re-mike it, and then send it back into the recording unit, so the bass drum doesn’t sound like a natural kick drum. It sounds trashy. I ended up doing the same thing with the snare drum. [Cinninger imitates the sound of a trashy snare drum] It’s like a classic old technique of getting a trashier sound out of a clean sounding drum kit.
And I did the same thing with the guitars. I would crank up an amp on 10, and put condenser mikes in the room, not close mikes, but mikes from afar, so it gives you the sense of space. We wanted to create that little punk club vibe on that one.
RR: And the band went to the other end of the spectrum on “Lust,” which went from metal to prog to stoner rock all in one song with some great layering.
JC: What was cool about that song is that right at the end of the Tahini sessions five years ago, we were getting ready to pack up, and I said, “Come on, we’ve got one more song in us.” Karl goes out into the yard, jots down a few chords, and writes a few lyrics—because they have to head back down south because they were leaving—so he managed to squeeze that song in, at the end of the sessions, write it all in the moment. It was great. We all threw our ingredients in, and I really wanted to…that song was the hardest to mix because of all the dynamic textures. Again, I’m not doing everything in Pro Tools; I’ve got to mix live on a console, so even something like the mixing side of the record is a performance in itself. That’s actually one of my favorite guitar tones I’ve ever gotten—the end solo out; it’s one of my all-time favorite guitar tones I’ve ever laid down to tape without a doubt.
RR: I’ve read many stories where the musicians used to play the mixing board as an instrument, almost like another instrument, to be able to get the right sound, and someone could stand back and watch this performance going on. Now, of course, that art of the performance has been lost in time.
JC: It has. There’s really no compromise for the sound of 32 tracks being crunched through an old British mixing console. You can’t really fake that sound with a plug in, or a digital program. I have an old Soundcraft British console from the late 70s, and that’s the sound that we’re going for. It sounds dated before it’s really old. It’s kind of funny, but everyone wants to sound like it’s 20 years old, and it’s brand new. (laughter)
RR: A couple of instrumentals are on Living Room —“Guilt,” which is a slide-infused piece, and “Armadillo,” which has been in the ABT catalogue for some time. It has a bit of that glorious prog sound about it, too.
JC: Yeah, it’s kind of like a Police mixed with prog. It’s got a little bit of that Andy Summers, big guitar chords, with that sort of choppy Stewart Copeland sound with a little odd meter in there, which makes it prog world.
“Guilt” was something that we recorded at like four in the morning. It’s actually Karl and I on acoustic guitars, and that’s basically the track. I did all the treatments later. The first beginning sessions it was Karl and I playing through the thing on acoustic guitars, and I added everything later. That was a total treated, multi-track freak out. That’s about as unnatural as you’re going to get on the record as far as treatments.
RR: “Ringo Likes the Velvet” has my favorite whimsical lyrics on the record.
JC: “Ringo” goes back to 1998, I think. Karl had written that song way back, and we’d just never really gotten to playing it live, but we had a nasty little four-track version of it, and I came across it and played it for him. He said, “Oh, yeah—I totally remember this cut,” I said, “Let’s try it,” and we did, and it ended up really gelling, and it had that really relaxed swamp-y feel to it. And, again, the lyrics paint a crazy picture.
RR: “Altitude” has a beautiful David Gilmour-like interlude passage.
JC: Yeah. Yep. We wanted to go for that—sound like you’re going to the dentist or something. It has that phase-y, swirl-y thing going on, again, in the mixing process, trying to emulate the feel of the song through the mixing process. It’s like helium in the dentist’s office. (laughs)
RR: “Rollin’ On” is an acoustic travelogue piece that concludes Living Room.
JC: Again, at the end of a session, we were just trying to get as much down to tape. I said, “Hey, Karl, I’m going to put this mike in front of you, and give you this acoustic guitar.” He said, “Really? We’re not going to use that.” I said, “Just trust me. Try it.” I stuck a 58 on his face, and put a Road MPT-1 on the guitar, and, again, it’s all about the mixing at that point; later, trying to really make this simple thing, maybe, larger than life. It’s such a great way to end the record—a light-hearted goodbye, in a way.
RR: ABT has three live dates in September. What is the plan for those shows?
JC: We’re definitely going to try to do a week of rehearsal, which is really crucial for these shows to really pop. We have so much in our catalogue. There are 60 or 70 tunes. Right now, we’re getting a list together, and going through it. We want to play some of the old stuff off of Hopi Champa, and some of the stuff when Kahlil [Smylie] was playing bass; just comb through our whole history: “what’s going to be the songs that are going to pop?” With having more personnel on stage, with keyboards and a bass player and Karl plays guitar, too, we can flesh these songs out a little bit more.
RR: You also play in a side project called North Indiana All Stars with one of my favorite musicians, bassist Tony Franklin, who played with Jimmy Page in the 80s.
JC: I love Tony. He’s my favorite bass player of all time. So whenever I get a chance to play with that guy, I do it. He’s amazing. We’re all so busy right now, so it’s like when the schedule opens up, we can maybe fit a few in there. We always keep in touch. He’s actually the bass rep for Fender, so he’s really busy in his own right.
RR: And, let’s see, you have another side project with a band called Umphrey’s McGee. I believe you just played a low key gig at Red Rocks.
JC: (laughs) Yeah.
RR: What was the first headlining experience at Red Rocks like?
JC: Oh, man, it was kind of frightening. I never really get nervous before a show, but I was really nervous on that night. I don’t know why. There was so much expectation. It was a really great show for us because of the turnout. The night was beautiful. We had 6,000 people there. It was like the energy was festering up, and I was so nervous going out there. I don’t know what it was. I felt like maybe a Native American was poking the back of my head the whole time I was up there playing. (laughs) I really felt like there were spirits and presence around me while I was playing. I can’t tell if they were good or bad at the time, but I was having a good time. It was just so intense to play up there because it’s like a vortex of energy. You can really feel it when you step on that stage.
RR: You spoke of expectations upon you. What are your expectations of Umphrey’s McGee going forward as you continue on in your second decade as a band?
JC: Well, we’re all getting along better than ever now, which is all you can hope for as you toil through the years. It’s like we’re all brothers. We’ve been doing this for years, and we still all hang out together. For example, yesterday, we all go to Cedar Point together and freak out on rollercoasters. It’s stuff that’s really healthy for us.
We’re looking forward to doing some more writing when we have some time off. I’ve got a little bit of time off with the baby coming up, and that’ll give me some time to write, and it’ll give [Brendan] Bayliss some time to write, and we’ll get back together, and see where we’re at. We’re touring our asses off, and trying to get home when we can. (laughs)
RR: Yes, your first summer headlining tour, as well.
JC: Yep. Yep. It just gets more intense—that’s the thing. (laughs) It never really slows down. It just gets more crazy and bigger. It’s nuts.
