A Conversation with Joel Cummins of Umphrey’s McGee – HuffPost 8.3.11
Mike Ragogna: How are you, Joel?
Joel Cummins: I’m doing great. I’m home in Chicago right now and enjoying the heat of the summer.
MR: And didn’t you guys have this amazing rainstorm the other day?
JC: Oh, it was very exciting, I have to say, I’m into the weather myself. It’s kind of been like that for the past three or four days, but I think we got seven inches overnight.
MR: It seems like everybody everywhere has the strangest weather right now. Wait, we’re talking about the weather, we better quickly get into your new album Death By Stereo. Is that a wink to the old vampire movie The Lost Boys?
JC: Yeah, it totally came from that. Our album cover is a little bit of a tongue-in-cheek play on that. There’s an outline of a body next to a boom box and you’re not sure whether the music is the thing that killed him or it’s just death-by-stereo–where the guy just died next to the stereo. We’re trying to be a little silly with it.
MR: I love that you’re referred to as “improg.”
JC: (laughs) Yeah, for me, this is an album that goes in a lot of different directions very quickly, and certainly has some of our shorter recorded performances of songs. I think there are only one or two tracks that are longer than six minutes, and most are around four. So, we really tried to get a lot into these songs in a short amount of time. Much like our album Anchor Drops, it’s got a huge variety of sounds from start to finish, with “Miami Virtue” being more of a synth-driven pop tune, “Domino Theory” being this kind of heavier, almost punky-edgy tune, “Booth Love” being this really laid-back kind of Hall & Oates-style dance party, and “Search For” being this really in-your-face heavy guitar-rock-riff tune. So, there’s something for everybody here. We have a couple new songs on there, and then there are also maybe six or seven live staples that we’ve been playing for a number of years–some newer than others–the oldest one being “Hajimemashite.” That one, I believe, we actually played at our first show in 1998, and this is the first studio version that we’ve ever put out.
MR: Your recorded output is amazing, it’s like you’ve been releasing albums every year. Let’s get into some history, you formed in 1997?
JC: Yup, at the end of 1997. We sat at the Mishawaka Brewing Company in Mishawaka, Indiana, and said, “Let’s try this instead of going to work for an accounting firm.” That was with Brendan Bayliss, Ryan Stasik, and Mike Miro, our original drummer.
MR: And you’ve been knocking out projects ever since with like thirty or so albums so far.
JC: (laughs) The definition of “albums” being in quotes. Some of these are a little bit less official than others. Yeah, we’re all about trying to get as much material as we can out there. We probably have about 120 or 130 original songs that we’ve written together at this point. Some of those, we’ve let go by the wayside and we don’t really play anymore, but there are at least 100 or 115 out there that we still play live. I think that’s one of the things that keeps us going is that we have a lot of old songs that we love, and that we’re constantly coming up with new things and working on new things at the same time. We probably have another five or six songs that are basically done that we just have to learn how to play live as a band. So, yeah–just keeping things fresh is something that’s really important to us.
MR: “Miami Virtue”…what’s going on with that topically?
JC: “Miami Virtue” is really a song about the perspective you get once you have the ability to reflect on your childhood–maybe it can be from the perspective of a parent, although it doesn’t have to be–but it’s about looking back and realizing that maybe somebody was looking out for your best interests but you were too stubborn or too convinced that you knew exactly what you needed to do, and so you didn’t listen to them. It’s about trying to put all that aside and then coming back to the present moment and really focusing on that idea of “it’s okay to be a good listener and to take advice.”
MR: Nice–I like that. I myself am just starting to understand that. You just have to let go of the mistakes while understanding that listening to others who want to help is also important.
JC: Yeah, it’s no big deal.
MR: With “Search For,” is that intro sequenced or did you guys actually play that?
JC: You know, that’s all live performance there–that’s really what we do live. Brendan and I are kind of doubling up on this mixed-meter figure that kind of flips around as the main heavier guitar riff goes. So, yeah, that’s something that actually sounds harder than it is to play. It’s all about making sure you start in the right place. That’s the trick.
MR: Yeah–everybody is looping these days, so it’s gotten harder to tell.
JC: Right, right. You know, I have an arpeggiator and I use that for a couple songs, but in “Search For,” that one is a live loop.
MR: In “Search For,” you have the line “…if the time couldn’t be more perfect.” Perfect for what?
JC: (laughs) We have to leave that open to the listener. I don’t want to rule out what somebody else comes up with when they say, “This song makes sense to be because it means this…” I think, you know, for us, part of when lyrics succeed is when they’re able to have that sort of vague open-endedness where it could be applicable to a lot of different situations for people. Yeah, it can be a lot of different things.
MR: My favorite song on this album is “Booth Love.” It’s such a soulful song, can you talk about how you put that together?
JC: Yeah, Booth is actually the name of the guy–he’s a person. That one’s a little bit vague too, but for us, sonically, that was really a fun thing to put together. We don’t have another song where we have all four of us singing and covering three different octaves of range. I don’t know how Chris sings those high notes, but he’s the one that’s doing that kind of Roger Taylor/Queen thing there, singing way up in the upper register. And then Jake’s got the main one and Brendan doubles him, and then I’m singing the lower one. So, that’s always a really fun thing for us and kind of a cool effect. I got to add–and this is something that we haven’t really incorporated yet live–that little synth outro line there. That’ll be a little bit of a surprise for the listeners when it comes out on September 13th.
MR: I wanted to talk about “Conduit” as well, which is more like the Umphrey’s McGee sound that we’re all used to.
JC: You’re so right. You know, I was writing a couple lines about each song and what I said about that track was “‘Conduit’ is quintessential Umphrey’s McGee.” It’s really a lot of the elements that I feel like we’ve come to embrace as a band, with fun, melodic, kind of weaving guitar lines. And there are vocal melodies happening, and then it kind of goes into this reggae-jazz hybrid, but with metal guitars. So, yeah. (laughs) For that one, we actually took from a guitar riff that Jake had written probably ten or twelve years ago and just had never done anything with. Then we got together and worked on it and created a few of the other sections to go with it as a band backstage one day before a show in Kansas City.
MR: By the way, one of my favorite album titles is Jimmy Stewart 2007. I love that.
JC: (laughs) You know, the Jimmy Stewart thing–we have a very funny history with that. We were actually performing at our good friend’s wedding in 2001, he’s now our webmaster. He was getting married in Pittsburgh, I think downtown in maybe the Renaissance Hotel–a nice old building. They set us up in the Jimmy Stewart Ballroom and we played the wedding. We didn’t want to pack our stuff up that night because it was such a horrible load-in, so we convinced them to let us leave our stuff set up, and then, of course, about five hours later–who knows how many drinks we’d had–we were down there playing at three in the morning with the lights out, because we thought that maybe they wouldn’t find us then. (laughs) That really taught us, “Wow. We can do this. We can improvise as a group without having to plan what we’re doing in advance. We can do this. We can listen.” So, that was really, for us, this major point of discovery for improvisation with the group. Ever since then, whenever we have something that’s kind of an open-ended thing, it’s become a “Jimmy Stewart.”
MR: What advice would you have for new artists, at this point?
JC: Well, a couple things. I think first and foremost, work on your music. Work on your sound and take the time to invest in that before you go out there. There’s no point in trying to come up with a brilliant marketing plan for something that isn’t that great. So, I think that’s the main thing. As an artist, focus on being an artist now. Don’t focus on being somebody who tweets. (laughs) The rest of that stuff will come, it’s very easy. It’s great because once you do have something good, you have so many avenues to get it out there and to have people listen to it. You’ll find out very quickly whether or not it’s something that people are into.
MR: You know, we’re going to need a progress report on all things Umphrey’s McGee since you guys are always doing something. Speaking of that, what does the tour for this record look like?
JC: We’re starting to tour in the beginning of September, and we’re going up and down the east coast for the first couple weeks. We’re going to be doing a couple Halloween shows down in Atlanta, and we just announced that we’re going to be doing a couple of Thanksgiving shows in Chicago, so we’ll have a little bit of touring going on around Halloween, and then Thanksgiving shows and New Years shows, and then a lot of touring in 2012.
MR: I really appreciate your time. Thanks so much, Joel.
JC: Your welcome, Mike–and I’d be happy to come back to give you that progress report in a few months.
Transcribed by Claire Wellin