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Friday, March 29, 2024
Joel Cummins

Joel Cummins, keyboardist for Umphrey’s McGee since their inception in 1997, is very excited that the band has chosen to play their 2000th landmark live show at the Orpheum Theater.

Joel Cummins discusses Umphrey’s McGee’s history

From their humble beginnings as students at Notre Dame University in South Bend, Indiana, Umphrey’s McGee has built up an ardent fan base thanks to their remarkable musicianship, ability to change genres on a dime and unparalleled work ethic, playing more than 100 tour shows a year since 2001.

I got a chance to speak to Joel Cummins, keyboardist for the band, about how Umphrey’s McGee got to where they are today, as the group are scheduled to play their 2,000th career performance as the second of a pair of sold-out shows at the Orpheum Theater here in Madison.

Though the band sold out two nights at the 2,000-capacity Orpheum, the band hasn’t always played to massive crowds in Madison.

“The first show we did in Madison was at a place called the Mango Grill,” Cummins said. “It probably closed within a year or two of when we actually played there. But I’ll never forget, the front of house console there was installed into like an old Pac-Man video game. So Kevin [Browning, the band’s former front of house and sound engineer] looked like he was just screwing around, throwing quarters into a machine all night.”

Early in the band’s career, they learned that for success to come, they would need to hit the road hard. Beyond that, not only did they need to go to places not typically at the top of one’s mind, but they had to keep going.

“I think one of the things that we learned early on was that there are no shortcuts,” Cummins said. “The first time that you make the effort to go all the way out to Salt Lake City, Utah. Well, you made the effort once but that means you need to go back again.”

By the time the band got to the 21st century, things began looking up, but then a curveball was thrown in the mix.

“There was certainly a point in probably 2001 or 2002 that I thought, ‘OK, yeah, this is going great,’” Cummins said. “Everybody is getting along, our numbers are going in the right direction in a lot of the newer markets that we’re playing and then you know Mike [Mirro, the original drummer of the band] decided to leave the band and that kind of all took us by surprise.”

The band would quickly bounce back (replacing Mirro with Kris Myers), but that didn’t prevent them from seeing an off night or two.

“And you know, that was a little bit of a confidence breaker and all throughout, and even until about 2007 or 2008 where we would have a show here or there where we would end up playing to about 200 or 250 people,” Cummins said. “It would always feel like we would have these two steps forward, one step back sort of thing going on.”

When a band has logged as many miles on the road as Umphrey’s McGee has, they are bound to experience some unbelievable meals, such as their now-annual trip to Matsuhisa, a sushi restaurant owned by the owner of the Belly Up in Aspen, Colorado. But along the way, there have been some interesting dining experiences.

One place that sticks out to Cummins is a Mexican restaurant about 20 minutes from the border in Van Horn, Texas, called Chuy’s. While the food was nothing to write home about, the ambience made it one of the most memorable places they’ve been to on the road. With Van Horn being one of the only places to stop between Austin and the West Coast, the band found good company in previous restaurant patrons.

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“The funniest thing about this is that they had this huge mural of Jesus looking over the restaurant and then there’s John Madden in his cruiser there,” Cummins said. “We’re like, ‘God, this is so random, we’re in this crappy little town in Texas and they’ve got this John Madden mural over here.’”

With the advent of websites like Yelp and TripAdvisor, the band no longer needs to rely on their former method of finding a place to eat.

“We used to show up at a venue,” Cummins said. “Someone would ask ‘where are we going to eat?’ and Ryan [Stasik, the bassist] used to say, ‘I’m just going to go up to the fattest dude around. He knows where to eat.’”

When Umphrey’s played Madison for the first time in 1999, they opened the show with “Bob,” a song off the band’s debut Greatest Hits Volume III, a cleverly titled album. While some of the more devoted fans frequently yell out or request the song, don’t expect to hear it in Madison.

“Yeah, we’ve retired that one,” Cummins said. “We’ve had a little fun teasing it here and there, but yeah, it’s not a good song and when you’ve got 180 different choices in the catalog that you could do, we tend to try and go with those. For the 40 or 50 people for whom ‘Bob’ might be enjoyable, there are 1,900 other people who are going to be looking at us like, ‘What the fuck is this?’”

For those who are disappointed they won’t be hearing “Bob” this weekend, or any time in the near future, Cummins provided some better insight into why they it will be staying on the shelf.

“Let’s just be honest, if it were a better song, we would still be playing it,” Cummins said. “There are plenty of songs that we’re still occasionally playing that we wrote in 1998. So I think we’ve got that time period covered.”

For a band on the road as much as Umphrey’s McGee is, one might think they may not really need to practice. However, the band actually has a set of practice gear backstage where they can work through things after they soundcheck.

“We have practice gear that we set up backstage so that way our rehearsal is not just restricted to soundcheck time, which has been really valuable,” Cummins said. “That’s something we actually saw String Cheese [Incident] do when we did the Big Summer Classic tour in 2005 and it kind of blew our minds.”

While the two bands toured together in 2005, Umphrey’s found out just who The String Cheese Incident were when both bands were booked on the same night during their second ever trip to Madison when they played the Angelic Brewing Company in 2000.

“We probably had 50 or 60 people paying and we’re thinking, ‘Where is everybody?’” Cummins said. “And they were like, ‘Oh yeah, there’s actually a big show at this place called River’s Edge tonight. We were really surprised that you wanted to play here this night, there’s this band called String Cheese Incident [that] is playing for like thousands of people up there.’”

When it comes to gearing up for a tour and a show with such an extensive catalog of both originals and covers (which range from AC/DC to ZZ Top with some Daft Punk, Tool and even Snoop Dogg thrown in for good measure), the band has a set routine.

“When we get back together, we’ll just try to play for a few hours,” Cummins said. “Get back in tune with each other’s musical tendencies and address each show day by day and our process is just trying to pick songs the day of the show and looking back and making sure we’re not repeating too many things.”

With these shows being numbers 35 and 36 in Madison (and their first since February 2013), the sold-out crowds at the Orpheum are eagerly anticipating the return of Umphrey’s McGee, whose history here is so extensive that they were given a key to the city.

“We’re stoked to be doing our 2,000th show back in Madison,” Cummins said. “Obviously a place with so much history for us.”

Umphrey’s McGee will be playing the Orpheum Theater Nov. 7 and 8 at 7:30 p.m. with Dopapod opening on Nov. 7 and The Revivalists opening Nov. 8.

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