The original band was Brendan Bayliss, Joel Cummins, Mike Mirro, and Ryan Stasik.
Andy Farag joined later in Fall 1998 after Greatest Hits, Volume III was released.
Then you had Jake Cinninger join in September 2000.
Kris Myers replaced Mirro in January 2003.
1.0 - Winter 1998 to Fall 1998?
2.0 - Fall 1998 to Fall 2000?
3.0 - Fall 2000 to Winter 2003?
4.0 - Winter 2003 to Winter 2020?
5.0 - Now?
This is me just taking a Hail Mary first stab attempt at figuring out just WTF.0 we are in.
What say you Bort? Do the Drive Inn shows count as a new era? What era are the Boondock shows in? Were my early eras off?
With Phish, you have 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0, with 1.0 having a smaller of two extended hiatuses being the first inflection point and the second hiatus being the second era change. Whether the return of Phish signifies 4.0 has yet to be seen, which leads us to the Biscuits…
With the Biscuits, you have 1.0 and 2.0, with the drummer lineup change at the end of 2005 signifying the inflection point. They played a show from the Phillie’s park during quarantine and have had a few lineup shifts (like kicking of Brownie for a bit as the Triscuits, Barber not being able to play guitar and doing the Mega Biscuits as a result) that the fan based never really labeled as era shifts.
Honestly I would say either 2.0 or 3.0. The Mirro/Myers eras count as 1.0 and 2.0 for me. I can also count 1.0 as pre-jake, 2.0 as the Mirro era, and 3.0 as the Myers era.
I don’t think the pandemic is ushering in a new .0 tbh. I agree about the pre/post-waful to an extent but I wouldn’t count the quarantine. They’re still the same band they were before the pandemic. Nothing felt different about the drive in streams.
If anything they went into a new .0 when waful joined but not after he left. That’s mostly because my interest in the light show has dwindled significantly since Waful joined the band so the impact of him leaving was minimal to me. I felt they took a major step up with Waful in a production stand point but don’t think it changed them enough as a band to call it a new era.
Yea, I almost went with the Mantis release over Waful but ultimately the move from Budney to Waful was a marked change in their live show and level of production. Switching from Waful to Ben was just a change in personnel/lighting style, but not as much as seismic shift in the UM experience.
I’m here taking dabs wondering if STS9 is in 2.0 with Alana and then thinking if bass or drummer change means 1.0 to 2.0 for Umphrey’s, STS9, and the Biscuits, then is there some kind of correlation with tier since Phish eras changed by time off and they are a Tier 1 band while the others I mentioned were Tier 3 at best. But then I started thinking about moe. and how they went on hiatus but no one ever talks about moe’s 1.0 versus 2.0 and Waful left during their hiatus so now I have no clue what to think.
Phish is the only band that people refer to their eras based off of time. Even tGD had all their eras marked off by their keyboardists. STS9 is their bassist, UM/Bisco is their drummer, Yonder is pre-Jeff/post-Jeff, and so on.
1.0-pre Jake
1.1-pre Kris
2.0-pre waful
2.0.1-pre Mitchell
2.0.2-post “caressor”
2.1-post waful
3.0-post pandemic
3.0.1-the VFJ buys a song era (07.2020-present )
4.0 Sultan crowd funds $100K to get the band to change their name to The Raptors