Joel Cummins And Andy Farag Talk Umphrey’s McGee With ‘Inside Out With Turner & Seth’

The latest installment of the Inside Out With Turner & Seth podcast features a chat with two members of Umphrey’s McGee, keyboardist Joel Cummins and percussionist Andy Farag. Joel and Andy talked with hosts Rob Turner and Seth Weiner about the origins of the band, their collaboration with Gene Ween, UM’s new album and more.

Rob and Seth give an intro and then the talk with the UM members backstage at the Chastain Park Amphitheater begins around the 12-minute mark. Cummins explains why Umphrey’s is “done with the mashups” and hints at a few ideas they were exploring for this weekend’s Halloween Weekend shows in St. Paul. The pair then detailed their recording sessions from November 2016 that yielded the forthcoming it’s not us. The band laid down the tracks for the LP in Chicago and Farag mentioned Bayliss is the only member of UM who still lives in The Windy City.

“We lived and breathed Umphrey’s music [during the week in Chicago],” Cummins said about the sessions at IV Studios with co-producers Manny Sanchez and Greg Magers. The pair revealed they both contributed songs to the LP and that the sounds on it’s not us range from acoustic guitars to heavier stuff to complex arrangements to super-hooky songs and more. “It’s the typical melting pot of stylistic music that you’d expect from most Umphrey’s albums.”

The discussion continued with talk of how intently Umphreaks listen to the band’s music including the advent of UM’s Headphones & Snowcones program. Andy and Joel then share the origin story of how they both became members of Umphrey’s McGee. Farag met the late founding Umphrey’s drummer Mike Mirro in high school, while Cummins revealed he convinced Mike to choose Notre Dame over the University Of Colorado so his band could have a great drummer. The pair also discussed the early days and what the addition of Jake Cinninger brought to the band. Joel said Jake “changed everything” for UM. The keyboardist also told the sad story of Mirro deciding to leave the group and how it almost led to the end of Umphrey’s McGee.

Joel and Andy spent some time talking about the changing demographics of the fanbase and how they’ve started hearing from the children of their sports heroes such as Jim McMahon’s son. The pair then mentioned how UM chooses young acts to open for them these days and how they are just returning the favor to groups like moe. and tDB that did the same for Umphrey’s.

Around the 1:23:00 mark Rob starts a discussion of the Godboner set Umphrey’s played with Aaron “Gene Ween” Freeman at the 2015 Summer Camp Music Festival. Cummins explained how UM manager Vince Iwinski told the band Gener was interested in performing with the group. Joel talked about how the sextet had many considerations to figure out before accepting the assignment. The keyboardist revealed they reached out to the other members of Ween and would only do it if they said yes. Deaner & Co. did tell UM to go for it and when the band was still debating about it, Iwinski informed them if they didn’t do the set with Gener moe. would do it.

Joel went on to discuss how the setlist came together and told his side of the collaboration. The portion of the podcast about the Gene Ween/Umphrey’s collaboration is must-hear for UM and Ween fans including the story of Gener addressing the elephant in the room by discussing an article I wrote in 2012 in which I quoted Freeman as writing he didn’t want Ween to turn into “Umphries McGee (sic) bullshit.”

The focus of the interview moved on to Andy Farag and his influences. Rob Turner and Seth Weiner ended the episode with talk of music news, future installments and played a game of which jam-related publication wrote which article.

Listen to Inside Out With Turner & Seth’s Episode 45: https://soundcloud.com/insideoutwtns/joel-and-andy