In late 1997, with stockings all over South Bend, Indiana, hung by chimneys with care, members of two University of Notre Dame bands united their collective music degrees in a new group called Umphrey’s McGee (named after guitarist Brendan Bayliss’ cousin goes the story). With prog rock as a common touchstone, the group’s heavily improvised live performances — replete with complex rhythms and time signatures, ever-changing set lists and a willingness to let fans tape and trade their shows — entrenched them in the emerging jam band scene.

Following a move to Chicago, Umphrey’s McGee expanded their base with a live experience that the band members incessantly honed by studying tapes of their shows. By the time of their self-released first studio recording in 2002 (Local Band Does O.K.), Umphrey’s had issued three live albums and earned an invite to play the first Bonnaroo Music Festival. There they were at Bonnaroo, unsigned and on a bill with jam band legends Trey Anastasio of Phish, the Grateful Dead’s Phil Lesh and Bob Weir, Widespread Panic, Gov’t Mule and Moe, and guess whose CDs out-sold them all that weekend? Local band does O.K., indeed.

Things were moving quickly now, and over the next half-decade Umphrey’s McGee got signed by SCI Fidelity Records; Rolling Stone declared them to be the “odds-on favorites in the next-Phish sweepstakes”; they initiated a program that put soundboard recordings of each night’s show up for sale immediately, and another one that encouraged the viral spread of Umphrey’s by comping tickets to audience tapers who agree to post their recordings; and for fun, they had ’80s hipster Huey Lewis record a couple of songs with them.

With 2009’s Mantis, their fourth studio recording, Umphrey’s McGee continued a trend toward more concise song structures in the studio than they employ in their shows.

Provenance: South Bend, Indiana

Latest release: Mantis (2009)

© 2009 Nigel Music Media LLC. Used by permission.

<--- Back