Umphrey’s McGee: This is UM Bowl
I often find myself wishing bands cared about my opinion on their song selections. Maybe it comes from a place of ego, but I tend to think that if they'd play what I want, it would be best for the common good.
There are two primary violations which tend to arise: ignoring significant portions of their repertoire and a lack of improv. These issues have been temporarily solved to varying degrees with a few of my favorite bands but only in a fleeting sense. Enter Umphrey's McGee....
Somewhere in their development process, Umphrey's decided it would be cool to create an event which brought together the intensity of a special occasion show (say Halloween or New Years), collided it with the hoopla of the Super Bowl, yet maintained a grassroots spirit. Six years ago, UM Bowl was born. I can't explain its evolution, but I can tell you what it is now. It's an unprecedented opportunity for fans to cast their influence upon the music transpiring over the course of a marathon performance.
When Umphrey's goes into an improv jam which deviates from song structure, they refer to it as "Jimmy Stewart." Each year a curator from their organization assembles a roughly seven-hour compilation of the best examples of this phenomenon. Fans who purchase tickets to attend UM Bowl receive electronic ballots and are able to vote on eight selections in each of the first two quarters. We put great thought into listening to the "Raw Stewage," picking out the jams which will be transformed into new songs, embellished, given names and woven together into a fluid set of original material.
Take a moment to grasp that...Umphrey's extracts the nectar from their most exciting moments extending over the past ten years and doesn't just recreate it, but takes it to unforeseen places. This is quite a testimony to how systematic they are in their improvisation. Their jams are so well-structured off the cuff that they are able to naturally evolve into songs which fit into their regular repertoire. Each year at UM Bowl a few "stews" are debuted which immediately enter frequent rotation.
The second quarter is the All Request set. Here we are given about 30 covers and originals. Many of them are so obscure even the most astute person might have no idea what they are. Some are stews from previous years. Some of the covers haven't been played in years or perhaps never before. Some of the candidates are vague concepts like "New Original." You worry it might be a popularity contest and songs like "Eye of the Tiger" or "Enter Sandman" will walk away with the nod. Not the case. Umphrey's fans do not take this lightly. The same can be said for the Raw Stewage. Two of the stews which many of us thought were locks didn't make the cut. The element of mystery is a crucial component of the intrigue.
The third quarter is pure improvisation in the truest sense in that the band gets no time to prepare. It's called "Stew Art," and fans inside the venue text in musical themes which a moderator selects and puts up on a screen behind the stage. The band is told in their monitors what the theme is and then has to embody it in a split second. It's like a warrior being handed a different weapon just in time to fight an expertly-trained foe. In 2014, this quarter wasn't a high point because the selections weren't particularly inspiring. Many of us were brainstorming to think of ideas which would be original, clever and give the band plenty to elaborate on.
The final quarter is Choose Your Own Adventure. We all used to love those books when we were kids, right? In this case three song selections are posted on the screen and fans start texting in their vote for which one the band should play. Not only is it fun to vote, it's thrilling to see the percentages of the votes instantly tabulated before your eyes. Sometimes one will take the lead and another will pull from behind to get the win. This is another set which can go in any direction based on the mood of the audience members.
UM Bowl started out in Chicago for the first several years. Last year it moved to the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, NY. I've been watching the webcasts since 2012 and knew that attending this event was definitely on my bucket list. Just our luck, they had the brilliant vision of holding it this year at the Brooklyn Bowl in Las Vegas.
Do you know the four-dimensional space station at the end of Interstellar where they have everything they need to live happily ever after? How about the room at the end of Brewster's Millions that Richard Pryor deems worthy of dying in? What about the Swiss Family Robinson tree house? If you put all those feelings together and processed them into the aesthetic of venue 3.0, you'd have the Brooklyn Bowl in Vegas. It's the kind of place where even the most discerning critic can't help but think: I couldn't have dreamed this place up even if I tried. It's big, it's flashy, it's Vegas, but it's full of soul. The attention to detail is staggering. From the biggest disco ball you've ever seen upon entry, to the escalators, to the impeccable bathrooms with thoughtful attendants, to the wonderland of a main concert hall, the perfection is downright laughable.
The best thing of all about the Bowl is being able to reserve bowling lanes in a private, elevated area which provides a direct view to the stage. Not only that but you've got a leather couch, an extremely friendly server and a delicious menu of southern cuisine at your beck and call. Each lane has a large screen at the end showing video footage from the stage. The sound in this place could make an audiophile weep. The clarity is almost like wearing headphones. It's always loud enough but never too much. The servers are not only attentive but they are cool people who love music. We were hugging them by the end of each show.
Launching into the Raw Stews, the band went from 0-60 in 1 second flat. I don't know any other group that can do that. They were already soaring through the stratosphere without needing to launch. As each Stew presented itself, the themes were strikingly familiar as I racked my brain to remember what songs they had been hatched from. I think one of the misconceptions with Umphrey's is that they are too "pedal to the metal." In reality they have their dynamics wired and know when to exhibit restraint. A few of the songs were carried by rich vocals from the extremely talented Brendan Bayliss and didn't seem contrived in the least. These were impactful lyrical statements.
There may be four quarters but each is only about 50 minutes long which lends to pacing oneself with copious musical digestion. Adding to the overall grandiosity of the event, the band put together a series of video shorts which were shown during the set breaks. Using a parody of the movie Swingers, keyboardist Joel Cummins played the John Favreau role of the loser who couldn't seem to contain his eagerness to leave desperate voice mails. Unlike the source material, it was hilarious. Two years ago, Joel played Forrest Gump in a series of shorts and has proven himself to be an able actor. When he's not blowing our minds with his otherworldly color palettes, lighting coordinator Jefferson Waful is also very sharp in directing, producing and shooting these bits. Going the extra mile with things like this show us how much the band cares and how committed they are to entertaining those who love them.
"Helter Skelter" lit the fuse to ignite the All Request Quarter. Talk about keeping the energy electrified. This night was a full band affair but Jake Cinninger has to be commended for throwing down one of the greatest rock guitar performances of all time. I'm serious. The guy was practically levitating. He pulled more rabbits out of his hat than Penn and Teller do in a year. He had the dexterity of a one-man Cirque du Soleil. Per the audience's selection, the band did a "New Original" - "In the Black" - a heavy, complex tune which showed serious potential. The quarter closed in thunderous fashion with Rush's "YYZ" absolutely crushing everything in its path. Drummer Kris Myers continually makes you shake your head in disbelief. He sounds like he's working hard enough back there to split an atom but comes off looking as cool as James Bond at a Monte Carlo casino.
Where some bands might have trouble maintaining the momentum, Umphrey's somehow managed to up the ante. The third quarter was the one everyone was talking about afterwards. A pulsating beat grabbed us by the throat and we looked up on the screen to see that the first theme they were creating was: "3am dark, dirty dance club in Berlin." After all the thought I had put towards clever ideas for this quarter, it materialized as something beyond my scope of innovation. And here was the band fabricating that concept with all the panache of Zoolander and Hansel's walk-off.
Every theme for the rest of the set maintained this level of shear brilliance. We hung on each note as they seemed to effortlessly glide between alternate universes of groove. It was like watching a movie which swung from action-adventure to noir to sci fi, yet with a steady plot leaving no stone unturned. One of the themes in heavy discussion around the water cooler the next day was "Soaring Uplifting Jam Pt. 3." This was a soul-quenching continuation of something they had started at another UM Bowl several years before.
Set Four was like a prolonged ending of The Matrix or the banshee flying scene in Avatar. It was as satisfying as Michael Corleone killing Sollozzo and McCluskey in The Godfather. Opening with Bridgeless and closing with All in Time, everything in between would be forever ingrained in our memory banks of bliss. A highlight for me was seeing democracy in action as the popular "Pay the Snucka" gave up a big lead to be overtaken at the last second by "Den." This proved to be a crucial decision which altered the course of the quarter in the most thrilling way. There was no doubt this was a Jake kind of night as this was followed with his crunchy rocker "Hindsight" being carried out to its fullest fruition. Next he hopped on drums and flaunted his multi-instrumental chops on the obscure "Mamu."
Umphrey's always knows the right time to drop a cover song and this was it. The choices were "Baby You're a Rich Man" by The Beatles, "Where is My Mind?" by The Pixies and "That's All" by Genesis. I voted for the latter but "Where is My Mind?" would prevail. It proved fortuitous as this was a surreal moment where time seemed to bend inside itself like the cemetery scene in Easy Rider. Bayliss's vocals were utterly sublime with the reverb laid on thick. The whole room was whisked away in a state of serene unification. After the euphoria of "All in Time" and slinkiness of "Hangover," we all joined together in an even more profound sense as they unveiled "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down."
It felt like the 2015 version of The Last Waltz. Maybe even 2017. This was as now as now could be. This was a paradigm-shifting kind of night. A lot of us have been seeing copious volumes of music for a very long time and we've never seen anything remotely like this. This wasn't just a brilliant concept. It was savant-like execution from a band that had prepared its whole career for just such an occasion. It was the culminations of Inception, The Sting and The Usual Suspects all rolled into one glorious, disco ball-shimmering, Vegas-hued extravaganza. Sky-high expectations can be dangerous but oh how sweet it is to watch them shatter.
