protip: get two hotel rooms so when you set off the fire alarm doing dabs in one of them, you can go to the other one, then when you set off the fire alarm doing dabs in that one, you can go back to the first one
9/26/15 is probably my favorite, super excited to retell that one
this was pretty sweet, wish they would do shit like this more often because it ain’t bad when they do
Set 1:Intro[1] > Hangover > Wife Soup > The Triple Wide[2], Slacker > Dear Lord > Slacker, Rocker Part 2 > YYZ > Hangover
Set 2:Nothing Too Fancy > Higgins > Get In The Van > Nothing Too Fancy, Andy’s Last Beer > Muscle Shoals Nitty Gritty > Andy’s Last Beer, JaJunk > London Calling > JaJunk
Encore:Wizard Burial Ground > Made to Measure > Wizard Burial Ground
[1] during his closing jam, Heatbox was replaced by Umphrey’s before seguing into Hangover
[2] with Rhiannon (Fleetwood Mac) teases
I only saw the first set of this show. First 3 night run after tripping night 1 and getting wasted night 2, and I went with my dad who was my ride back to Chicago the next day so I took the easy exit route instead of trying to figure out how to get from Minneapolis to the suburbs late at night. I did listen to the full show this time to see what I missed, which is probably like my 3rd time listening to that set.
The coolest thing about this show is the seamless transition from Heatbox into UM. This might be the only time I’ve ever seen them do that? The first track of this show is Heatbox’s last song Lodi Dodi (Slick Rick) with Joel, and the rest of UM comes up and joins one by one and replaces Heatbox’s loops. This is going to make me look up Heatbox because I haven’t thought about him in like 10 years but he was a big staple of the MN music scene at the time and a uniquely talented performer.
The first half of the first set is fire. Hangover with a type 2 jam, Wife Soup with a creepy jam instead of choir ending, fun 3x. The rest is the set is fine too but that’s the highlight.
Set 2 has great song selection but not a whole lot of improvisational substance. The most unique jam is the jazzy ALB jam before Muscle Shoals. Not much else to say about it. WBG > MtM > WBG is actually a sick segment and it would take me nearly 2 years to finally catch my first WBG.
So yeah, not too much to say about this one musically or personally.
Next: UMBowl I
Threw on this first set this morning. Appreciate the uniqueness of the heatbox transition. First 3 songs are all really strong. Almost sounds like Meeting in the Aisle teases in wife soup jam. I Would’ve been v happy with that over the standard outro. 3x is great too.
Joel sounds so much more engaged during improv than nowadays imo
Set 1:Front Porch[1], Hurt Bird Bath > Bron-Y-Aur Stomp[2] > Hurt Bird Bath > The Weight Around[3], Interstate Love Song > Divisions
Set 2:Stew Art Event
Set 3:Wife Soup[4], Muff II: The Revenge, All Things Ninja, Red Room Disco[3], Muffburger Sandwich, Der Bluten Kat[5] > Girlfriend is Better[6] → Der Bluten Kat[7]
Set 4:All In Time[8] → Africa > Techno Jam > “Brendan & Jake switch rigs”, 1348[9] > Funk Jam → 1348, Comfortably Numb
Encore:Land Of Wappy
Footnotes:
[1] “Jimmy Stewart” with lyrics; Brendan, Jake, and Joel lost power
[2] debut, Led Zeppelin
[3] debut, original
[4] “dub version”
[5] “funk version”
[6] debut, Talking Heads
[7] with Girlfriend is Better teases
[8] unfinished
[9] with improv
**Show Notes:**first quarter was composed of attendee votes, “All Request”; with Brendan and Jake on acoustics (Jake on electric for The Weight Around)
second quarter was a Stew Art event, with live fan suggestions
third quarter was composed of attendee votes, “All Request”
fourth quarter was in “choose your own adventure” style, with attendees voting for the next “adventure” live (Nothing Too Fancy, All In Time, or industrial jam; into Africa, Booth Love, or metal jam; into Hangover with Booty Wax, techno jam, or The Linear; into Gulf Stream, bluegrass jam, or Brendan & Jake switch rigs; Miss Tinkle’s Overture, Can’t Ya See, or 1348 with improv; into Tortoise jam, dub jam, or funk jam; finish All In Time, Conduit, or Comfortably Numb)
last Interstate Love Song 2002-04-25 (1,065 shows)
last Muff II: The Revenge 2002-08-28 (1,011 shows)
last Muffburger Sandwich 2005-04-28 (624 shows)
It took me several weeks to slog through this one 10-15 minutes at a time. There’s some really interesting stuff and some duds, as to be expected in the inaugural UMBowl.
The personal story is short for this one because I don’t remember very much and nothing much notable happened. I got a ticket through my college friend who introduced me to UM, otherwise I probably wouldn’t even have known this show was happening let alone had access. I probably took 1 hit of acid, making it 3 for 6 tripping at shows so far.
Okay, deep breath. Set 1 is standard great acoustic UM. My 3rd run and my 3rd HBB. The Weight Around is the first time played and I had the most thoughts about that for this set. Mostly how it’s interesting that this song was “old” when I started seeing UM, but I saw pretty much its entire rise in the live sets from its obscure UMBowl bustout placement to being something they play at least once or twice a year. This version is the same as the album version, but a few plays later they added an 8 bar ending where Jake repeats part of his solo. Interstate Love Song sounds great acoustic, so does Divisions.
S2 set was super fun at the time but kinda forgettable for the most part. Tool / Jackson Five (Sober / I Want You Back) has a ton of potential. Reggae Titties & Beer is the same groove as Ragamuffin (with two foots on de ground), which popped up again in the UMBowl III S2 set. A lot of the mashup ideas are dumb but I do think it’s funny that half of Numbers, Colors and Shapes were number-related mashups and the other half arguably didn’t fit the category at all.
Set 3 was great! I’m not sure who asked for a Dub Wife Soup but it’s fine as an alternate version of an original song. Muff II is genuinely a good song that they could play more. ATN is the typical ATN but I haven’t listened to that song in a few years so I really enjoyed it. Red Room Disco is interesting because it’s an alternate style of a song they had never played the original of. They debuted the original Red Room a decade later in 2020 which I was also in attendance for, so I’ve seen every and all Red Rooms. Original is better. This was the first time I noticed that the beginning of Muffburger Sandwich is the ending of Muff II. Not the worst old school UM song ever.
Funk DBK, I actually liked a lot more than I expected to. It’s kind of just an arbitrary “take a classic song and change the style” but the deconstruction of DBK highlights the brilliance of the parts of the song itself. I loved how they played the mathy part before the “35 lighters.” Girlfriend is Better is VERY fast, much faster than the Talking Heads original. Kris just maintained the tempo from the Mozart part of DBK. Maybe he wasn’t very familiar with the song. Turbo Girlfriend Is Better sounds pretty good though. Then there’s a really cool moment in Bayliss’ DBK solo where he starts playing Girlfriend is Better and Joel responds with the WAH WAH WAH WAH, WAH WAH WAH WAH.
Set 4 is pretty interesting too. They needed time for the voting for the second song so they ended up playing All in Time through to the half tempo part, and segued into Africa from there. What happened with Jake’s Africa solo? That might be the worst thing I’ve ever heard him play. It’s not like he just played a whole note and then corrected himself, he continued playing for several bars in the extremely wrong scale. Brendan & Jake switch rigs is short and not that substantive but it has so much potential to have been good, the mental mirage of trying to separate each of their tones from their phrasing and riffs and figure out who is playing which part. The other thing that stood out is that this 1348 improv (my first that wasn’t a standard encore) includes the sections from the album version before and after the jams, where now it just goes straight from the lyrics into improv into the ending riff.
I could comment on the voting choices and selections but I’m ready to be done with this post
If Wappy counts, then Wappy, 1348 and HBB are now tied for my most seen songs at 3 plays over 3 “runs.” Gulf Stream would join them for awhile after my next show.
Next: Summercamp 2010
Set 1:Rocker Part 2, Walletsworth, Turn & Dub → The Linear[1] > Hajimemashite > Plunger, Gulf Stream, Lisztomania
Set 2:40’s Theme, Ocean Billy > #5, In The Kitchen[2] > Girlfriend is Better > Booth Love → Glory > Ocean Billy
Encore:Cemetery Walk II
Footnotes:
[1] with Can’t You Hear Me Knocking (The Rolling Stones) teases
[2] with Much Obliged jam; unfinished
**Show Notes:**Sunshine Stage
posted this too early accidentally, i’ll edit it in instead of deleting it because deleted posts are sketch
Can you not edit posts a month and a half later? Anyway breaking my silence 
Summercamp 2010 was my first festival and there’s a good story somewhere in there but I forgot most of it and nothing stands out specifically as something worthwhile to try to retell here so I won’t bother. For the story of why it took me so long to post the reviews for this show, I listened to each Scamp 2010 show several times over the past 2 months because whenever I’d think about writing about them then I’d realize it had been a few weeks since I listened so I was stuck in a feedback loop of listening to this weekend. And I’m ready to move on with my life from 2010 so I’m just gonna write
I walked in during Turn & Dub so I missed the Rocker 2 and Walletsworth. Listened to them and Rocker 2 has a standard-ish jam. Turn & Dub → The Linear[1] > Hajimemashite > Plunger is an incredible segment that I’ve listened to many times. Jake develops the Turn & Dub jam through a few key changes as they gradually transition into The Linear, and the phrasing in the melodies he plays in the last few minutes just sounds really good every time I hear it. Burned into my brain. Linear jam is built on a rhythmic pattern by the whole band which develops in several directions, turns into a dual guitar shred fest for a minute or two, then bounces back to the rhythm. Best Linear Ever until the next few that they played. Haji is well placed after 2 well-jammed tunes and before a stewed Plunger. Then Plunger has another worthwhile bounceback jam in the middle, so 3 solid improv sections in a 4 song segment. Gulf Stream was my 3rd making it tied for my most seen song, and Lisztomania is a great fit for Bayliss as a quick contemporary (at the time) cover.
Somehow I had never heard 40s Theme before so I really enjoyed seeing it fresh and the 90s rap references, and the Bayliss solo smokes. Ocean Billy feels like one of the main Summercamp songs to me, and this version didn’t have a jam but I didn’t mind for my 7th show. I was also hearing #5 for the first time and I became a big fan, even before they ever jammed on it. Kitchen has the Aggie Kitchen stew (Dream Team), which I didn’t know at the time, so I danced to funky space techno. It’s probably the least interesting version of that stew though. Girlfriend is Better is FTP at the correct tempo (UMBowl version is higher tempo) and has the best jam of the set. Late second set Booth Love is always questionable but this one works, and Joel lays down a mellow gangster line at the end as the jam dissolves into Glory. Not a lot of improv in this set but Kitchen and Girlfriend deliver. Cemetery Walk II encore has a cool typical jam for a few minutes. I miss when they used to play CWII the night before playing CWI.
Finally broke the seal so I’ll hopefully do night 2 next, and the day set is super short so that won’t take long at all
This was also my first time hearing #5. Shit was tight.
A few years later that set would underwhelm me with standard OB first half > standard #5 but at the time it was so powerful
I really miss being easily impressed by this band.
2010 has some serious highlights. Looking forward to some more chronic ( 
) show reviews!
Set 1:Phil’s Farm, Syncopated Strangers, Tribute to the Spinal Shaft, Conduit, All In Time, Cemetery Walk[1], Sledgehammer[1]
Set 2:The Triple Wide[2], Preamble > Mantis > Hangover[3] > Mantis[4], Women Wine and Song[1], Don’t Stop 'til You Get Enough[1], Nothing Too Fancy[4]
Encore:Mulche’s Odyssey[4 ]
Footnotes:
[1] with Mad Dog’s Filthy Little Secret horns
[2] with Mantis teases
[3] with Michael “Mad Dog” Mavridoglou conducting
[4] with fireworks
**Show Notes:**Sunshine Stage
last Sledgehammer 2004-12-31 (665 shows)
with Chelsea Dagger (The Fratellis) jam before Don’t Stop 'til You Get Enough
I’ve been listening to a ton of shows that I’ve been to lately, just not in chronic order. I think once I develop a good workflow/loop for writing these then I’ll start cranking them out more consistently. I’ve listened to this show at least 5 times over the past two months because I forgot how a particular jam sounded and wanted to hear it again before writing. This one was pretty memorable for me, being the saturday night Scamp main show and my first of the sort. I was absolutely on LSD.
Phil’s Farm is a warm-up improv jam. There’s a mid tempo rocking A section and then Jake (plus possibly others) call out different keys and styles for a new section, then they bounce back to the A section. Nothing raw stewage worthy but they’re all on point communication wise. Synco has a jam which is notable, the jam is decent but they really nail the transition to the 2nd half of the song. They’re jamming in the same tempo a half step below the yacht rock part so right on cue, the entire band slides up half a step and starts playing Synco part 2. Tribute jam is probably the best of the show. Bayliss locks into a melody right away and Jake picks up on it immediately, and they use it as an A section while they modulate in the B sections. It’s melancholy, very Bayliss. Conduit is standard but well-placed at the time, possibly the first time it was played for a big crowd.
All In Time is a good standalone version. Very economical jam that doesn’t stray from the song but hits just right in its place. Cemetery Walk is I think the first version with horns, since this was year 2 of Mantis and they were starting to get into the B-sides for horn parts (they already did Made to Measure, 1348, and Turn n Dub). I don’t get why people go so crazy over Sledgehammer but it’s a good cover.
Set 2 is an epic memory for me even though it’s very 2010 and isn’t particularly exceptional compared to other sUMmercamp sets. It’s basically a half-set centered around Mantis. Starts with Imperial Death March into 3x and the 3x jam has heavy Mantis/Preamble teases from both guitars. Mantis slams into Hangover - I remember the lights suddenly going a steady purple when Hangover hit, in contrast to the dynamic lights of Mantis. Mad Dog comes out like at my first show 12/30/09 to conduct. They go through a bunch of different ideas, nothing particularly amazing though the soaring uplifting part is probably the best. After the last verse of Hangover they don’t do the fast ending, they drop straight from the verse into the 2nd half of Mantis, which is accompanied by fireworks. I forgot about the fireworks honestly - i saw a few shows with fireworks early on including 7/1/11 with the off site fireworks but it’s been so long since then.
WWS is WWS, Michael Jackson cover felt groundbreaking at the time. The set ends with my first Nothing too Fancy, a standalone version with more fireworks.
Between one of those songs the Blackhawks won a playoff game and the band plays a quick Chelsea Dagger. My roommate at the time was a huuuuuge Hawks guy and it was pretty trippy getting pulled out from fantasy land into something from mainstream culture.
The best meta aspect of this show is after Syncopated Strangers when Joel says “How’s everybody doing? It is nice to be at summercamp.” It’s always made me laugh. It’s like if you prompted chatGPT to create something Joel would say in the middle of a show at summercamp and gave it no additional context.
After the show I took more L and stayed up til sunrise with somebody I knew and somebody I didn’t know. For an hour or so somebody sat outside of a tent and cried for “GUNTHER!!!” and “MOM!!!” I was pretty unsettled. Later I surmised that he was probably in a k hole and that made the memory less scary. The crazy thing as I remember this moment in 2026 is that “Karl” was from like 08 or 09 which felt like ancient history in 2010 since that was before I started going to festivals, but it was only a year or two after that.
Finally done with that one, whew
Next: short summercamp day set, then North Coast Music Festival (which was announced at the end of this show, 5/29/10)
One Set:JaJunk, Much Obliged → Partyin’ Peeps, The Fussy Dutchman, We’re Going to War[1], Seven Bridges Road[2], Bridgeless > August > Bridgeless
Footnotes:
[1] with Mike Racky on steel pedal guitar
[2] debut in full, The Eagles
**Show Notes:**Sunshine Stage
last Seven Bridges Road 2004-10-09 (699 shows)
This one and the next one should be quick and easy, and I’ve listened to this one 5 times this summer. I wasn’t on any drugs, I probably smoked at some point before the set. I stayed up until sunrise on L the night before and by that point it’s 7 AM and the day set is at like 1 PM. I was pretty tired at this show, it was my first daytime set, I was hot as fuck, and I wasn’t really able to lock into this set. There’s not much there but there are a few notable moments.
I walked in at the ending of JaJunk so I didn’t catch the jam live, but it’s pretty good, just a 5-6 minute shredding warmup. Much Obliged is the best substantial improv and it does build to a pretty nice peak. Much Obliged had some great versions in 2010 after they rang in 2009 with it.
First Peeps, I raged the peak, another Fussy (I saw so many early on) and then some Mike Racky. Nothing really to say about We’re Going To War, it’s chill, I saw it like 7 times. Seven Bridges Road is an only time played in full and it’s an interesting cover for them because so much of it is vocal harmony. UM’s vocal harmonies in the Kris era were underrated.
Bridgeless > August > Bridgeless is rushed, actually this is the only version of August I can think of that doesn’t have the intro. It goes from the Bridgeless jam straight into the fill into the first verse. This was my first August and I remember I really did not get August for a long time! I kept catching it mid-set and it brought my energy level down. Eventually I came to love it but it took awhile for that one to catch for me.
Wow this one was really that easy, it helps that it’s a 75 minute set and there is little improv. The next one will probably be quick too but I have to actually listen to it first
Set 1:Conduit > 1348, Wappy Sprayberry > Booth Love[1] > Miss Tinkle’s Overture, Fuck You[2], Turn & Dub > Mulche’s Odyssey
Encore:Divisions
Footnotes:
[1] with Kidd A rapping
[2] debut, Cee Lo Green
This was so much fun to revisit. Festival set (again on L) with a bunch of my Chicago friends. It was my 10th show and I saw no new UM originals, but everything I saw was something I was into at the time.
Standard Conduit (they jammed it for the first time a few months later for at the NYE run) but I really liked the song after the Summercamp version. Then a standard 1348 which didn’t bother me because I had only seen standard 1348’s up to this point, excepting the UMBowl version.
Wappy is good. It’s not groundbreaking like the one from Reno the following month, it stays close to the sound of the composition, but it’s an efficient jam that gets where it needs to go with little time waste. It starts with a somewhat common Stasik bass line for the era, and settles into their vi vii I thing that they always do. Listening to it this time also made me realize that this is still pretty early into Wappy’s life though it felt like an “old” song since it existed before I heard of UM. In 2010 they had stopped doing an entire repeat of the intro before the 2nd verse but they would still do ~2 minutes of Wappy key change buildup after the jam before hitting the heavy riff. Now they just play the heavy riff for 2 minutes.
The post-Booth Love Proverbial hip-hop stew is fucking incredible. First Bayliss announces “we’d like to bring out our very good friend Kidd A” who I never heard of again in the 16 years since. I’m not astute enough in hip-hop to say that Kidd A’s performance was bad, but so much of it is funny and out of place. Chanting “hip hop music hip hop music, real hip hop music” (UM is a multi genre band but I wouldn’t consider them a hip hop band) and yelling his own name “Kidd A! Kidd A!” He makes a dig at “all that bullshit they playin on the radio” which is sooooo true. Really funny vibe shift listening to this show front to back. This was the first time I heard Proverbial and that song/jam will always make me think of this moment.
Tinkles again is a short festival version but I realized that I’ve listened to this one 100 times 15 years ago (it was my first Tinkles after the 3/12/10 Masoka Tanga one and I had already listened to that one 100 times by this show) so listening to it was like unlocking a forgotten memory. Decent, efficient Tinkles, well-placed.
Fuck You is actually a really good cover. Well placed at an electronic/hip-hop festival, and well performed all-around. The Cee-Lo Green single debuted on August 19th, 2010 so this was just two weeks later.
T&D contains the single coolest moment of the show in the breakdown after the 1st jam before the 2nd verse. Normally it starts with just Bayliss and then Jake joins in, but in this version instead of dropping out Jake continues playing sixteenth notes and it provides a perfect counterpoint to Bayliss’ part. It feels like Jake exploded out of the jam and kept going with the key change. I’ve never heard another T&D or T&R that does this.
Nothing really to say about Mulche’s and Divisions other than they were well-placed IMO. I like how Kris starts the Divisions between verse breakdown part in 4/4 instead of the usual 6/8. This was a set for casuals but I was still somewhat of a casual and I loved it. The song selection was just right for me.
Random thing that made me laugh which I’ll write here since otherwise I’ll forget when I don’t listen to this set again for 15 years: After Fuck You, Bayliss apologizes “in advance” for the swearing, and Joel corrects it to “reverse advance.”
Leaving the show we ended up on the street outside the festival standing next to a U-haul truck where they were selling balloons from the back of the truck and giving away free cans of Pringles (the shittiest kind) from the front as cover. A cop rolled up and their organization quickly legitimized to just giving away the Pringles. When we were driving away from the festival we saw several more U-haul trucks driving in the other direction towards. This is my favorite “nitrous mafia” memory
Next: The Cleveland show that the bort hated but I fucking loved and still do
EDIT: This is my first Wappy > Booth Love but far from my only one