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There are a lot of points and references lyrically. We didn't want it to course through the record too heavily, but we had to pay homage to one of our best friends [who had recently passed away]. It's obvious that it's going to come through the studio sessions because it happened right as we were going in. We were very much in the middle of dealing with it all at the time, so the album did come off serious in that sense.
-Jake Cinninger
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Photo by Sam Friedman :: Jam in the Dam :: 2006
According to Cinninger, the fact that he didn't listen to Phish was even better.
Brendan Bayliss by Brett Saul |
"Everyone seems to be influenced by Phish in the jam band scene because they were the kings. But to bring another world that really didn't apply to Phish, in the drumming, seemed to be important to our sound. Of course there are elements of Phish in our music, but it gets us that much further away from their particular sound. To really make or break a band, you have to get away from your influences and then come up with your own DNA or chemistry."
The success of Cinninger and Umphrey's McGee stems from a childhood that involved music. "I was definitely into searching out everything, as early as five or six years old, since I could look into record bins. It started there. Now, 3,000 records and 2,000 CDs later, it's my library. The bigger the record collection you have, the better musician you are."
Another tip for parents who want their sons to grow up to be guitar players? Get them a drum kit instead of a pacifier. Cinninger took nine years of rudimentary drums and jazz drumming before he even picked up the guitar.
Jake Cinninger by Brett Saul |
"I was a drummer since I was three. That was my first real, gut impulse instrument. As a child, I used to keep time to records. My parents had a great record collection, and I used to drag the drum set out to the living room and keep time to records. So right there it automatically taught me how to hold solid time at like four and five years old" says Jake. "Because I was playing along to these records, you can tell when you are slipping out of time. It was kind of like my metronome. Also, I was imagining playing with these rock bands through the stereo and dropping the needle, and all that good stuff. That kind of establishes that ictuses (definition - stress on syllables), that clock in your body, that mental clock. Once you have that, then it becomes automatic - it's in you. You don't have to think about the time. So it's best to worry about that internal clock before melody or anything. It really gets down to the simplicities of music, which is rhythm. Once you have that first, then everything can follow."
Besides an early appreciation of music, the guys in Umphrey's McGee built a grassroots fan base by playing often.
Umph Crowd by Brett Saul |
"We really appreciate our fan base, they're so loyal. They come out and spend the time and spend the money and fly everywhere to come see us and hop on a leg of a tour, wherever it may be in the nation. I mean that's pretty much the secret to our success, the hardcore fans."
Either coast has cities full of transplants from the Midwest, which works well for UM.
"They might have been in the Midwest for their college and high school years, and they might have grown up with us. Now they are off in the big city doing their own thing, and when we come around, they seem to come out of the woodwork in all corners of America" says Jake.
The hallmark of a band is when people care enough about them to give music to their friends, as is the case with UM.
"They believe in the music enough to tell everyone else around them to check us out, and that's another secret to the success. There's no way that we alone could have done all that networking. It really takes the fans, the true believers in what we do, to spread the word and to convince people to go and check us out when we come to town. It's a slow, steady process, but it works. It's the long way around, but it's the most gratifying way of being a professional musician; slowly creating a fan base rather then out of the gates, like 'Oh, you're Fall Out Boy. You go from not even really playing any club gigs, to selling out two nights at the United Center.' It's kind of funny how it works."
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