Interview with Umphrey's McGee - Part 1

I first came upon Umphrey's McGee on the Jambands.com website. After exploring the band's own website, I know that I needed to interview them. Several phone calls and emails later, here we are. The band is Joel Cummins (keyboards, vocals), Brendan Bayliss (guitar, vocals), Ryan Stasik (bass), Andy Farag (percussion), Jake Cinninger (guitar, synthesizer, vocals), and Kris Myers (drums, vocals).

I spoke with guitarist Brendan Bayliss prior to the sound check of a sold-out show at Irving Plaza in New York City. He explained, "We've been on a really good tear. We sold out in Boston, Philadelphia, and Atlanta. Things are really on fire for us right now." As they should be for a band The Village Voice proclaimed "No one...is doing anything else as ambitiously musical as Umphrey's McGee."

Enjoy the first of a four part interview with UMG guitarist, Brendan Bayliss.

TGB: FIRST, HOW WOULD YOU DEFINE "JAM MUSIC"?
BB: It's always been synonymous with the free form and extended improvisation and soloing. It's not rooted in structure as much as live and in the moment.

MANY OF THESE BANDS TEND TO COVER THE MUSIC OF OTHER BANDS VS THEIR OWN. DO YOU FIND THIS TO BE TRUE?
Certainly with the bands that came before, such as the Grateful Dead. You can consider Zeppelin a jam band. In some capacity, they were improv in that they were doing other people's music, old blues tunes, etc. But, that's a very fair statement.
It comes from many of these bands playing a lot and not playing the same set list. They play other people's music. They don't want to play the same songs and in order to do that you have to have a large repertoire.

DO YOU FIND THAT THIS IS MORE PAYING HOMAGE OR A LACK OF CONFIDENCE IN THEIR OWN ORIGINAL MUSIC?
I would say it's more paying homage. If you don't have confidence in your original stuff, I don't see the point in doing it. That's just me. I would imagine it's more of who you're influenced by, so you want to play it. It would be fun to play. There is also the whole element of fun. When you're not confident, you have issues of ego and self. When you eliminate that with a cover song, you can detach and have fun and not have to worry about whether it is a good song or not.

WHAT IS THE PERCENTAGE OF ORIGINALS TO COVERS FOR UMPHREY'S McGEE?
I would say that we play about 8 songs a set and one or two will be covers.

I NOTICED IN YOUR BIO THAT YOU HAVE WRITTEN OVER 200 SONGS IN A RELATIVELY SHORT SPAN OF TIME. DO YOU CONSIDER YOURSELVES PROLIFIC WRITERS?
I guess. There is certainly something to be said about that. The number doesn't necessarily reflect quality. It's all relative. It's something we've pushed on ourselves because we want to do this full-time, long-term. For us, the only way to do that is to be fresh and not get stale. It's what we do and that what we do.