By MaoMew Human
Photo Manipulated by Birdman Fancy Sauce
Umphrey’s McGee appears to be addicted to spur-of-the-moment album releases, announcing the recording and upcoming release of a second “secret” album. The Seattle Session, as the disc is to be called, was recorded in Robert Lang Recording Studios in Shoreline, Washington, when the band was in town last month. When we found out about the project, we immediately flew out to meet with Brendan Bayliss, Joel Cummins, Andy Farag and Butch Vig, producer on the disc, to discuss the work just hours after they had completed recording. The band was preparing their bus to leave town after an extended and successful West Coast tour.
Apparently the album came together by happenstance, an incidental meeting-of-the-minds when Butch Vig happened was visiting The Moore Theatre at the exact right moment. Jake Cinninger had shown up to practice preshow in frayed jeans, flannel overshirt and soundchecking mash-up cover “Come As Your Kids”. “He wanted to be in character,” explained Joel Cummins. “You’re at an epicenter of music when you’re in Seattle. As if there are intersecting Ley Lines of sound here. Jake was hoping to tap into that, and I guess he did!” Butch Vig (infamous drummer for Garbage, producer of Nirvana’s Nevermind, the Smashing Pumpkins Gish) who was in the building talking with various members of Live Nation management about upcoming shows, overheard the mash-up.
“When I heard the notes of Come As You Are, intermingling with the lyrics from MGMT, I was somewhat enthralled. It had been years since I gave a shit about Come As You Are considering pop radio had pretty much destroyed that rebellion anthem in my mind. With the fresh take given by Umphrey’s, the song had regained some of its context, and both songs come together in such a chilling way…”
Butch went out onto the floor and watched the rest of the sound check before approaching Brendan to discuss how much he liked the band. Bayliss told him how they had just recorded at Abbey Road in London, the site of inception for The Beatles opus of the same name. Butch came up with an idea – another infamous recording studio, another all day rompous of recording, if the band was up for it. One thing lead to another and soon after the show, the whole team was attempting to break into the location at three in the morning.
“I had placed a call to the Robert Lang Studio team, but it had to be close to midnight when I phoned – no one picked up. I thought ‘fuck it, we have 12 hours to get this done, I know Bobby and the crew fairly well…I’ll explain myself in the morning,” Butch explained.
A rotation was established by the crew to look out for authorities, one band mate at a time near the back door. A relay system was established for the gear, heavy guitars and pedal setups that had just been broken down aftershow, reestablished within the mansion walls of Robert Lang’s. “It was Kris, with the crowbar, at the back door, who was finally able to get us into the sacred space,” stated Andy, sounding as though he was taking a stab at solving the murder in a Clue game. “This is a place so well loved by our drumming peers, it could not be ignored. When I got into the studio, I went up to Butch and was like ‘Show me the room’.” He was referring to the infamous ambient drum room crafted of marble and stone, a place of legend. “Dave Ghrol of the Foo Fighters absolutely murdered the entire first Foo album in this studio. Me and Kris were salivating to get recording.”
Once inside, there was no time to waste, the band had to be on its way mere hours to avoid the detection of Robert Lang and his infamous studio spystaff, who generally arrive at five in the morning to start cooking breakfast. Umphrey’s hadn’t a tracklist or anything in mind before coming into the studio. The crew immediately dispersed, analyzing what concepts would work best while simultaneously getting the boards and panels, drums and microphones set up. The band couldn’t decide on a name, which, after much arguing they opted to figure out post-recording. “I wanted it to be The Washington Session, considering we figured it’d be better to go bigger than just a metropolis and instead span the entire state boundary with our ‘session’. Technically we were in Shoreline, though all of old Seattle is buried beneath the studio, literally. Whatever. Eventually consistency won out. We’re actually considering retroactively renaming our previous albums – The Bottom Half becomes The Chicago Session: The Bottom Half. In fact, almost all of the albums are now part of the ‘Chicago Session’ series, and will henceforth be referred to as such.” stated Joel.
“We knew we were going with a ‘grunge’ motif,” he continued. “The London Session had been much more cross-board, from sing-songy-acoustic to rock and back again. This one was going to be a bit more focused. We were in the studio, had already recorded a grunge-version of Cut the Cable, a moody acoustic-but-angry version of Eat with lyrics, both of which continue our tradition of releasing a song six or seven times on different albums while maintaining a huge catalog of unrecorded original music you’ll never hear studio versions of. With all this music to choose from, we needed an idea of where to go.” Butch wanted the Come As You Are/MGMT mashup on the disc and assured the band he could clear the copyright issues, but what else would make sense?
The album itself shakes out to a hodgepodge of covers and originals, all done with angst at the core of each tune. Many of the grunge cover songs are brought into the band’s progjam style, and the vice versa done for the original tunes. A completely retooled version of The Crooked One makes an appearance, sans harmonies. A cover of Candlebox’s Far Behind sung by Joel, with a mini-jimmy-stewart in the middle, is one of the highlights of the disc. There’s some stuff that didn’t make the cut either. A cover of Bush’s Glycerine sung by Stasik, where he switches the lyrics to Vasoline like you probably used to back in high school, was vetoed for a lengthy cover of Soundgarden’s Spoonman.
“Many accuse our lyrical content of being somewhat dark as is, so we just really tapped into that and pushed it while avoiding the metal. Grunge is a combination of and yet still obvious progression of both classic rock and 80s-metal. Thank god it was the end of the tour, I really strained my voice screaming the ultra-grunge-shoegazey version of Loose Ends, which maybe draws more from The Smashing Pumpkins then Mudhoney. What can I say, I’m a midwesterner at heart,” laughed Brendan.
Leaving Robert Lang Studios in handcuffs was truly the Pièce de résistance, an act of senseless rebellion that would make any old grunge haunts of the area proud. Robert even dropped all charges and allowed the band to release the disc after he heard the finished project. When we reached out to him for comment on the disc, his office sent us a brief letter which stated: “Look, we don’t condone breaking and entering, many of our studio spies are still traumatized by finding Farag asleep on the breakfast bar when they came in that morning. What we found in the studio, however, was just fantastic. Hot damn do we love tributes to amazing grunge and classic recording studios. We figured it’d be an equal crime not to release it.”
We’d have to agree.
Tracklisting
- “This is a Call” (Foo Fighters)
- Loose Ends
- Red Room Grunge
- Cut The Cable
- Eat w/ Lyrics (Acoustic)
- Far Behind (Candlebox)
- The Crooked One
- Spoonman (Soundgarden)
- Final Word
- Come As Your Kids (Nirvana/MGMT)