Umphrey's McGee Hits L.A. With Talking Heads Cover, Badass "Bridgeless" Sandwich [Photos/Videos]

It’s been two decades since Brendan Bayliss, Ryan Stasik, Joel Cummins and Mike Mirro left their respective bands at the University of Notre Dame to form Umphrey’s McGee. Some twenty years later and 2,200 miles west of South Bend, Indiana, this progressive rock outfit—now featuring Kris Myers on drums, Andy Farag on percussion and guitarist Jake Cinninger—brought its devoted following to the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles on Saturday. And, in supporting its new album it’s not us, Umphrey’s showed that 20 years on, the band is as strong as ever.

In typically subtle cheeky fashion, the band opened the show with “Dark Brush”, the highly metallic final track on the 2018 LP, and closed the entire performance with an encore of the upbeat, pseudo-electro “The Silent Type”, the first song on it’s not us. In between, they pulled from an extensive catalog comprised of songs that are just as likely to have worked their way into the rotation from live recordings and compilations as they are to have originated from studio albums. The first set included two parts of “Bridgeless” which first appeared on 2009’s Mantis but had been a part of its live performances for a half-decade by then. In between those segments came “Example 1”, from the live album One Fat Sucka; “Rocker Part 2”, which appears on live albums Hall of Fame Class of 2010 (2011) and The London Session album recorded at Abbey Road (2015); and “Draconian”, which didn’t appear on an official Umphrey’s release until last year’s The Wilma live release.

The second set showed plenty of love to 2011’s Death by Stereo (“The Floor”, “Booth Love”) and 2004’s Anchor Drops (“JaJunk”) as well as another nod to the Hall of Fame live releases (“Wappy Sprayberry”). The band also took the opportunity to throw a cover into the mix with just their second-ever take on Talking Heads‘ “Once In A Lifetime”.

Below, you can see two galleries of photos from the performance via photographers Zack Blum and Brandon Weil, and watch a selection of fan-shot videos via YouTube user Paul Giza:

“Wappy Sprayberry” > “The Floor”