Photo by Keith Griner
Umphrey’s McGee is enjoying a well-deserved respite from the touring life, but that doesn’t stop keyboardist Joel Cummins from hitting the stage. Cummins checks in from Colorado, where he recently completed the first of two shows with Roosevelt Collier, as a part of his Colorado Get Down event along with members of Big Gigantic, String Cheese Incident and others.
Of course, Cummins is eager to talk about what the future holds for Umphrey’s, including their upcoming “Real to Reel” event as well as the notable collaborations spread out over their early touring schedule in 2016. And yes, the longtime Cubs fan also dishes on his baseball team’s near brush with history this October.
What part of the world are you in these days?
Denver, Colorado. I’m out here playing some shows with Roosevelt Collier. He’s great, he killed it with us at the Fillmore that night in Miami. He’s asked me to do a bunch of things over the years, but we’ve been busy or I’ve always had something else going on, so finally he asked me about this run here in Colorado and I said, “I think I can make that work.” So we played that first show last night, we played with Jeremy and Dom from Big G, and Bill Nershi, and Matt Lapham, who plays bass with Roosevelt. Those guys killed it.
You pop up at a lot of these Superjam-type shows. Not just Roosevelt Collier’s Get Down but also Everyone Orchestra, Bonnaroo’s Superjam, etc. What do you like about those type of shows?
In particular I like things where it’s more improvisation and less learning songs. I spend most of my brainpower on songwriting and learning stuff for Umphrey’s. I’m all about playing with different people but it’s a lot more fun and easier when you’re playing with players who are really good listeners too. So that’s kind of what I shoot for when I’m doing things that are non-Umphrey’s.
Now onto more important matters, on a scale of 1-10, how jealous are you that Kris Myers gets to play with Dave Coulier and John Stamos?
I try not to be a hater. Nobody likes haters and jealousy, so I try to be happy for my friend Kris. Like the other day he was telling me, “Yeah, Dave Coulier is over. While they’re practicing, he’s pretty hilarious.” So I’d put it on like a 2. Definitely much more love than hate.
I’ve always been curious about this—do you guys check up at all on each other’s solo shows? For example, Jake’s recent solo show in Chicago, Brendan’s gigs, Ryan covering Nirvana with Turbo Suit.
Yeah, mostly to critique them on their setlist writing, that’s my main purpose. I don’t know, not too much, unless I’m in on the show. But a couple of people posted videos from Jake’s thing, so I watched a little bit of that, which I thought was really cool. He brought a drum machine, and had recorded some stuff, and had some keyboards and a bass and guitar. I liked that he really played to his strengths in the solo show—instead of just acoustic guitar and vocal.
Shifting gears slightly, how excited did you allow yourself to get about the Cubs possibly winning the World Series? At what point in the run did you say, “Alright, it’s okay to get excited, because this might actually happen”?
The first one was of course the game against Pittsburgh, when Jake Arrieta just absolutely shut them down. Schwarber hits the first of many big postseason home runs. That was the first moment where I was like, “Okay, this time we might actually advance past this first game.” Because, you know, obviously you’re incredibly nervous about that. The wildcard format gives heart attacks everywhere. But you have to love it, it’s like a super intense playing game that almost feels like World Series Game Seven before the playoff season starts.
That moment was big, and then the moment when I really believed “Wow, I think we have the series,” it was when Javier Baez hit that home run off John Lackey in Game 4 that gave us, I think, a 3 or 4 run lead. That was really cool.
I was actually there for game 4 when the Cubs lost to the Mets in that final game. I was also there for the first game of the year when the Cubs lost to the Cardinals, so I got to see a lot of games this year. It’s just the beginning of this window for us. Nobody expected the Cubs to be this good this quickly. So to me this was all an unexpected bonus. And the fact that we were able to knock the Pirates and the Cardinals out of the playoffs—that gave me a lot of pride, because they’re so…you know the Cubs-Cardinals rivalry, for years has been just this huge thing. And this was actually the first time they’ve ever met in the playoffs. So I can safely say Cubs versus Cards, head-to-head, all-time playoffs, Cubs are undefeated.
Could they have beaten Kansas City?
I don’t know. I mean, baseball is such a game of whoever the hot team is. And the Royals are obviously a fantastic team, and it’s really tough to say. They took advantage of every possible little thing that they could get in the World Series against the Mets. Those guys really know how to play the game. But I’m sure it would have been fun. The Cubs got ice cold right when the Mets series started. But I’m looking forward to the next couple of years there.
Now on to Umphrey’s business. Let’s go back to Halloween—how did the mash-ups come about?
Well, originally we had a different idea for Halloween, and due to some of the current events that were happening, this idea was kind of scrapped about halfway through the process. I’m not going to say what it is because we could still potentially do it in the future. We wanted to kind of take a little bit of the emphasis off that, and we weren’t really totally sure that we were going to do it, even probably a month or two out. Given that we only had four days to prepare this time, and that’s a little bit different than last time, we thought, ‘Okay, it would be better to focus our time on a couple of these.’
We actually had a new original that we were going to play too, but Brendan got kind of sick that last day and was losing his voice, so we had to put that on the shelf for the moment, but I think that will be appearing relatively soon, for one of our next shows.
We just decided, let’s just do two of these this year—we’ll try to do two of them really well. One of them, the first one that we did was kind of more in our traditional wheelhouse of trying to find a couple of songs that kind of sound similar that you might not think of right out of the gates. The Weeknd tune and Fleetwood Mac—“Dreams” and Michael Jackson’s “Rock With You,” I thought worked well together. And then the second one was one of Brendan’s ideas which we thought was just really funny, and we weren’t trying to make it really good or serious, more just for a laugh. That being “Back in Black,” and “Sexual Healing,” together—two songs that have nothing to do with each other.
We really just wanted to have the show to be more of a rock show, focused on more original material. I think that’s kind of a general trend that we’ve been moving in and that we’ll continue to move in for over the next couple of years.
What’s the status of the mashups moving forward?
Personally, I would like to take a little break from the mashups just to do something different. And I’m not sure what that would be, but when I put it out there on Twitter it was really interesting, at least the people who are my followers, they said, “Just play a great rock show.” It’s always cool to do something that’s different and unusual, but sometimes it’s also just good to play to your strengths and not worry about having to do something that’s going to be clever or witty or funny.
I think our mash-up costumes this year were definitely clever, witty and funny, so I would give us that—going with the Game of Thrones theme and everybody was a variation of Jon Snow. That was pretty entertaining, I thought.
Would you ever consider covering a whole album, or is that Phish’s thing?
I don’t know, you know, again, it’s the same thing. I just feel like, if we’re going to dedicate that much time to working on songs, I’d rather we were working on original stuff at this point. A lot of people always say, “Oh, you guys have got to play by ‘Inca Roads’ Frank Zappa, or by ‘La Villa Strangiato’ by Rush.” And I’m like, “Okay, this is going to take us like, five weeks to really get this to where we want it to be.” I just think our time could be better used. We have so many original tunes that are kind of in the process of being made right now, and a few that are pretty close to being ready to play, so I always want to keep pushing forward on that because I think that’s really what will keep the life-blood of the band going more than learning a new cover.
Since you brought up the new originals, let’s talk about those. So far we’ve seen “Piranhas” and “In the Black” in heavy rotation. What else is coming?
We did “Full Frontal” at the beginning of this year, too, which is kind of just more of a jam as opposed to a full-fledged out song.
We got together in May for a couple of days and worked on some new songs that we’ve kind of been tossing around. We’ve got about I’d say four to five that I would guess will probably be played within the next four to six months, they’re close to being ready.
It kind of feels like it’s back to the Anchor Drops vibe where we have four songs, or five songs that sound completely different from each other. One of them’s a little bit funkier, one of them’s more of an acoustic tune, one of them’s a little more straight ahead rock and one of them’s kind of more on the prog/metal side. I think that variety is also nice to have as far as when you have a bunch of new songs. It’s a little harder to work in five new songs that are all like, super funky or very heavy rock and roll. Yes, I’m really excited about all of these and just happy to have some new things to sprinkle in the rotation.
How do you feel “Piranhas” and “In the Black” have progressed after some time in the rotation?
I think with our new originals it’s very extreme because you don’t want to overplay them too much, and we’ve been playing both of those a little bit less than once a weekend but pretty much every five shows or so for the past six months, so they’re really kind of getting into their comfort zone now.
I think they’re both strong in completely different ways, which is cool. “Piranhas” kind of has this dark, brooding but danceable, focused groove, and I like it for that, I think it’s got some great lyrics from Brendan. “In the Black,” you know, it’s the same thing, it’s kind of got the three part, three sections going on. That’s one that I wrote with Jake earlier this year and then Brendan came and did the lyrics after that. So it was cool to have something, again, that’s a little bit heavier, and it has some pretty good dynamics in it between what happens in the verses and the choruses—the parts that are really sparse and then some parts that have quite a few more parts.
How far into finishing new originals does the talk of releasing a new album start?
Something like maybe 12-15 new tunes and then it opens a whole can of worms of “Should we be putting these out as an album? How do we want to release this stuff?” That’s the next thing. At this point, we’re trying to get them together, and hopefully we’ll have a new batch of songs that we feel pretty strongly about. At this point we’re still just trying to write and come up with more new things. And I’m sure we’ll get back into the studio again in 2016 and start putting some stuff down.
There’s no real time-table right now, there’s no rush. We obviously put out Similar Skin last year, and then we had The London Session this year, so we’ve got plenty of things coming out. We put out some new live videos as well, our Red Rocks performance from this past year, and then we are getting ready to put out five separate discs of the Atlanta New Year’s run from last year.
“Miami Virtue” – The Tabernacle – 1/1/15
All of this brings us to Reel to Real, which you guys will present in Denver. No one is entirely sure what to expect, so what can you tell us about it and is it loosely based on the True Hollywood Stories event you put on in Los Angeles?
Yeah, as far as the music portion of it. And the other twist on this is that we’re working on a ballot of songs now because the fans are going to vote for whatever it is that we get to play and the songs that we play and tell stories about. We’re trying to come up with about a 30-35 song ballot for people to vote on. I think that’s kind of a nice twist in trying to engage the fan base a little bit more and we get up there and play things that they want to hear and that they want to hear stories about.
That’s the musical part of it, and then the film part of it is probably going to be about a 60 minute compilation of some of the cooler home video stuff that we had starting from about 2000 or 2001 through probably about 2006 or 07. I’d say that’s where most of the stuff was happening. It’s not necessarily having a distinct storyline to it, but Jefferson Waful is the guy who’s producing this more or less for us, and he knows our story and understands us better than most filmmakers, so I think he’s going to come through and create something pretty entertaining for us.
Give people a glimpse into the footage you’ve collected so far. What’s your take on it?
Oh my god. Well first of all, personally, I just literally did not give a fuck about how I looked, what I was doing. I mean, it’s so funny looking back. Not a lot of good decisions on attire, various comments to the camera. I think I pretty much look like a huge asshole. A lot of people might say, “What’s changed?”
Anyway, it’s certainly funny to just look back and see where we were and what we were doing. A lot of this stuff I don’t even remember, and a lot of the footage the band isn’t necessarily going to see, at least before a couple of weeks, when it’s going to happen. I’ve only seen a few portions of it, so it could be a surprise for me too. I think it will be a really fun thing to do.
We were just trying to come up with something that would be different for January 1st. Last year, while that show turned out to be pretty good, I think, overall, it was certainly one of the most difficult for us as a band, feeling like we were being probed about it. We kind of wanted to redo the vibe a little bit for the January 1st event this year, and do something that was fun and different and that was a little more laid back. I mean, obviously we have the open bar, so those who will continue partying are encouraged to do that. I think in general it will be a little bit more of a laid back thing, it will probably be over by 11 o’clock, so it gives people a little bit of a recovery period, and then we come back January 2nd with one final rock show there.
Moving into 2016, you guys will play a pretty special show with Josh Redman where you’ll do an all-improv set. How did the idea come about and how did he receive it?
It was very funny—when I brought this up to Josh after we kind of talked about it as a band and said, “Okay, let’s try something, and we’ll give this a shot. We have so many fans that are always saying, ‘You should do more improv, or have a night where you guys go off…’” We figured, number one, it would be cool to do in Madison because it’s a Midwest town that we’ve played for years and years and a lot of our diehard fans are within driving distance of it and the fact that it’s a two-night stand gives us the opportunity to do plenty of other things throughout the two nights.
When I wrote Josh, he was like, “Yeah, in theory this sounds like a cool idea, but you guys are so in tune with each other with the improv thing, I wonder if I might just feel left out.” And I told him, “Dude, you are the one person that gets what we do up there more than anyone else, so don’t even start with that.” And I told him as well, “Really, you can come out and play as much as you want, but if you just want to come out for like fifteen or twenty minutes of it, that’s totally perfect. We’ll play a couple of other songs throughout the night, don’t feel pressure that you have to insert yourself for all of it.” But I definitely think having him as a voice to kind of break up the—you know, we’re probably shooting for about an hour of improv total to make this up—I think it would be really great to have him somewhere there in the middle and break it up a little bit.
Speaking of collaborations, you guys have a bit of a bromance with TAUK these days. What do you like about those guys?
There’s a lot of things with support bands. And one of them is, do they get how to work with our crew, and making that process very seamless, and they definitely do. Number two, are they cool people to hang out with, just hardworking, and kind of in our vein of taking the music seriously, but not taking yourself too seriously? And the third thing would be, do our fans like it, and do their fans like us? So when you have all of those things kind of mixing in, then we get a great response from our fan base, and our fans are really into their sets. Our fans have been known to be kind of picky about support acts that we bring out with us, so whenever we find somebody that really checks all those boxes, it’s like, okay, let’s keep a good thing going. In doing a couple of after-shows with different people from each band, it’s just another one of those fun, low-pressure things that we can do and have some fun with each other after the main event.
Jumping back briefly to the Redman idea—someone checked you on Twitter about ripping off Phish’s Drive-In Jam idea with this all-improv set. You said you listened to the band’s set at Magnaball. From a musician’s perspective, what’d you think?
There was a video, too, which I didn’t see, but it seemed like a very cool artistic statement. Maybe the connection here is that, I feel like our band—we’ve kind of struggled with that line of some nights it’s more of a party and some nights it’s more of an art thing, and some nights it’s a mix of both, and that sort of vibe. So I think, just as far as it being just a good challenge for us as musicians, I think it’s just as much of an exercise as us working on this stuff just as much as it is like, “Let’s go out and put a performance on.” Kind of how I felt about Stew Art when we did those, except those were a little more fan-driven and now this is all coming from us. I think that you saw how well the fan-base responded to that set. And maybe that just gave us a little more confidence, like, “Okay, this is something that could work.”
We’ve talked about various ideas like this for a few years, so it’s not like this was something that was brand new. But we finally got to the point where it was like, “Okay, I think this is the time to pull the trigger on this.” And the fact that another band like Phish out there did something pretty cool like that on a car—and they’ve done stuff like this before that too, where they’ll like cruise around on a flatbed at their event, so it’s not like this concept is totally new for them either. But the fact that it’s fresh in people’s minds and was really well-received I think only bodes well for us to try something like this. And obviously the music will be completely different from what they’re doing, but I certainly think the concept is a great thing and a good way to keep things fresh for a band that’s played over two thousand shows together.
Last question: Your thoughts on the Ween reunion?
I’m so happy. I’m glad that those guys are getting back together and making music again, I think that their fans will appreciate them even more now. And also—this is kind of a really cool, little footnote–but hopefully Umphrey’s McGee played a little bit of a role in opening that possibility back up to Aaron. The first night when we got together and we were practicing stuff together, we worked on things to make sure we were like airtight going into it, we wanted to be really solid as a backing band, and just to be in a little rehearsal trailer and to see him light up and just be so happy singing these songs with us, it kind of gave me a little glimmer of hope, like, “Okay, maybe this will be one of the little steps that will lead him back to going back to making music with Ween.” I hope the best for those guys, Mickey’s been really cool to us over the years, too, and we obviously know Dave Dreiwitz, and a couple of other people that are part of that crew and the band. There are a lot of different connections now. The music is so great and you just hope that they’ll be able find some common ground. I mean those guys were obviously best friends for a long time, and everybody changes, and that happens, but now hopefully they’re back on this path and they can play their music for more people.
