Umphrey's McGee and North Mississippi Allstars at Bowrey Ballroom
By: David Schultz

For almost a decade, Umphrey's McGee has cultivated a grass roots following borne from favorable word-of-mouth about the strength of their live shows. The band's seemingly endless tour brought them to New York's Irving Plaza for a pair of weekend performances. Overlapping with Umphrey's, the North Mississippi Allstars, led by guitar wizard Luther Dickinson, took over the lower east side's Bowery Ballroom for a two night run of their own. Far from being the difference between north and south, the two shows were further distinguished by the competency of the bands involved: where the Allstars have comfortably found their sound and work hard at excelling at their blues-based southern sound, Umphrey's attempts to be a jack of all trades, mastering quite few.

Umphrey's exudes an overly earnest attitude on stage. However, the sincerity doesn't originate from their appreciation of the fans nor their joy for the music they're playing; rather Umphrey's radiates a natural genuineness over how great they imagine themselves to be. If they finessed this, honing the irony inherent with such an attitude, they could easily become the jamband version of KISS. Unfortunately, the irony appears completely inadvertent. Nattily dressed in collared shirts and jeans, Umphrey's displays a confident demeanor on stage, all while indulging themselves with every song. Their young and rabid fan base, which has expertly mastered the backwards baseball hat look, does not seem to mind and make no effort to conceal their uninhibited joy at being at an Umphrey's show. Compared to some fans reaction to the band's rendition of "The Bottom Half," lottery winners seem subdued.

Umphrey's love of the synthesized sounds of the eighties comes through in their music in an offbeat manner. Where the Killers distill the best out of that genre, Umphrey's gravitates towards the worst. The band takes their leads from their two guitarists Jake Cinninger and Brendan Bayliss with keyboardist Andy Cummins contributing heavily towards their groove. Drummer Kris Myers adeptly and admirably gives a sturdy backbone to this incredibly schizophrenic band, which will go from heavy prog-rock to electronica to heavy metal to easy-going guitar melodies, sometimes all during the same song. On one hand they should be applauded for bringing different elements to their music, but a lot of the different genres they mix together don’t blend well together and come across as forced. Umphrey's succeeds most when they stay with the laid-back guitar-heavy sound that mark their best songs. This night, the group hit their stride best when they focused on loose guitar based rock like their second set opener "All In Time." When they veer into techno-jumbles like "Robot World" or grind out heavy metal 80's metal like "Nopener," they cross the line between experimental and antagonistic. In other hands, Umphrey' cover of "Wild Side," could be campy fun but they tackled the tune with a curious sincerity that removed all guilty pleasure to be obtained from the Crue "classic." Similarly misplaced, their flirtation with reggae yielded unto them the same rewards as Al Capone's vault.

That all being said, Umphrey's fans eat their live shows up, savoring each solo and song like they were being served crack covered corn flakes. The shame of the matter is that Umphrey's McGee is an incredibly tight band that exuberantly encourages each other while demonstrating a solid familiarity with their long time band mates. Oftentimes, Bayliss and Cinninger will get in each other's face adding a little confrontational energy to the mix. Unlike Phish, a band that pushed each other in unfamiliar directions, stretching and expanding their skills, Umphrey's lead each other down familiar roads and into comfortable territory, reveling in their grandeur all the while.

Umphrey's indulge themselves onstage, offering fare that borders on the ridiculous. Launching the show on a humorous note, the band hit the stage to the strains of the legendary Vince DiCola’s training montage music from Rocky IV, running the joke thin when they let the song play too long. Completely beating the horse dead, they repeated the stunt for the second set. Another first set misfire involved the introduction of Ugochi, a Chicago-area female singer, as if her appearance would inspire the same awe as an Aretha Franklin appearance to sing lead on the Bill Withers tune "Ain't No Sunshine." Umphrey's seemed flat throughout the smoky, torch song and the selection, which sounded outside of her natural range, seemed a poor match for Ugochi as well

Riding that fine line between clever and stupid: the encore drifted into Spinal Tap territory. 80's icon Huey Lewis joined the band for the second time in as many nights for a cover of The Band's "The Weight." The unlikely combination of Lewis and Umphrey's was not without precedent, the two having collaborated at the 2005 Jammy Awards ceremony this past April. Although joining together on the Band classic just months ago, Lewis appeared to have forgotten the words and he made no effort to conceal his cribbing of lyrics, holding them out in front of him while he sang. Backing the square hipster, Umphrey's seemed content and in the right groove, graciously allowing Lewis space for a couple harmonica solos. Embarrassingly, Lewis conducted an impromptu huddle with Cinninger, Bayliss and bassist Ryan Stasik, where Lewis seemed to teach the Umphrey's boys how to play a blues progression on his harmonica. The sight of Lewis, a better musician than his reputation would lead you to believe, instructing a relatively established band on the basics of the blues scored high on the unintentional comedy scale. To Umphrey's credit, they picked up on the tune quickly enough, ably backing Lewis through a blues tune they were obviously unfamiliar with.

With the crowd progressing towards the door and the house lights lit, Umphrey's felt the need to return to the stage for a second encore, despite the absence of the prodding that should normally accompany such an act. Conveying undeserved hubris, the band blasted the annoying strains of the Notre Dame fight song through the loudspeakers before concluding the evening with an extended version of "Hurt Bird Bath."

In contrast, the North Mississippi Allstars' Friday night performance at the Bowery Ballroom, also the second of two, showed a band confidently finding their sound. Possessing ten times the talent and a tenth of the ego as Umphrey's McGee, bespectacled guitarist Luther Dickinson lent his considerable guitar skills to the Allstars 21st century brand of old-style southern blues. The Allstars, comprised of Luther, his brother and drummer Cody and professional wrestling sized bassist Chris Chew, impressively moved from New Orleans-style zydeco to swamp rock to gospel-tinged blues. Although Luther Dickinson remains the band's draw, each of the Allstars is given time fronting the band. Cody came from behind the drums to lead the band on the electric washboard masterpiece "Psychedelic Sex Machine," and made the most bizarre of instruments seem revolutionary. Playfully waving and winking to the crowd, Chew brings a contagious sense of fun to the show and his vocals on the night's "Turn On Your Lovelight" themed encore bordered on the exhortations of a Southern preacher. Despite bouncing between genres like their Notre Dame jamband brethren, the Allstars exhibited more cohesiveness and a more defined sense of purpose.

The NMA excel when Luther leads the band. From the first riffs of the opening medley of "Shimmy She Wobble" and "Station Blues," through their set closing medley of R.L. Burnside's "Po Black Maddie" and "Skinny Woman," the trio raises their game when Luther lays down tight but free-flowing guitar solos over Cody's whip crack drumming and Chew's laid-back, funky bass. Their Burnside medley, already the highlight of any NMA show, must be dearer to them since Burnside's passing and should become their "Free Bird."

After seeing the Allstars live, you can't help but think that this exceptional trio will get even better with time. The same cannot be said for Umphrey's McGee, who have been around for years and seem quite satisfied with the level of their performance. Without the willingness to adapt or hone their sound into something coherent, Umphrey's chances of rising above the grass-roots level of success they've achieved seem extraordinarily unlikely. As for the Allstars, like Luther sings on "Station Blues," they should be "sitting on top of the world."

Labels: North Mississippi Allstars, Umphrey's McGee