Bayliss is carrying the weight around, man. He's been schooling up Scotty on the material, covering down lead guitar, and maintains lead vocal.

I'm so impressed with his dedication to the band. Bayliss is a true band leader. He's the linchpin.

As long as UM tours I will support their live act. I got posters on the wall and I'm grateful for their music everyday. \mm/

"Over the past few months, we’ve been supporting our brother Jake as he navigates a necessary leave of absence. Today, Jake informed us that he has made the incredibly difficult decision to begin a new chapter in his life and step away from Umphrey’s McGee."

Sad to hear, but wishing Jake the best.

Hi all, I drew the poster for Umphrey's show in Peoria last night - I wanted to share the process of how I drew it, if you're interested. Here's the ink drawing and the final poster. You can check out speed-drawing video on my YouTube channel showing how I take it from sketch to final.

I think this is the 6th Umphrey's poster I've designed so far - love working with these guys!

https://youtu.be/Vlr10ErkU8M

In light of all the negativity lately concerning our favorite band, I wanted to share this. My best friend sadly passed away too young in 2019. The love of his life was his baby Haji girl, a beautiful Australian shepherd that we picked up together, of course named after one of his favorite songs. Recently we put out this incredible bench in his memory with the unmistakeable quote.

“I didn’t know things were supposed to be this way, no one ever told me this before. It’s all right was all I heard, this will blow away.”

The bench is placed at our local state park where Johnny would often take Haji for walks and provides an awesome space for friends to visit and talk memories.

In 2020 at the first home state Detroit show after his passing, I reached out to Joel with his story and they played Haji for him (in the middle of Mantis nonetheless). A therapeutic moment for our friend group that we will never forget.

Now that is Umph Love.

LONG LIVE UMPHREYS MCGEE

Is putting on a clinic on how to be a bandleader in 2026. Dude deserves so much respect from so many aspects of leading the outfit he does. I’m extremely excited to hear the next studio album.

Not gonna lie, I got choked up watching this. Long live Umphrey's Mcgee. Also, thanks Shine Pidgeon for the great video.

Hi all, this is my seventh poster I drew for Umphrey's McGee. This one was for their Salt Shed show last weekend. We thought it would be fun to draw the band as bugs.

If you didn't get a poster and would like one, I have a few signed Foil Artist Proofs available. I don't have pics yet because the printer forgot to print mine, but I will have them very soon.

Ever since I began tedious desk jobs following college graduation in 2010, one of the things that would help get me through the day is queuing up the prior night’s Phish (through LivePhish app) or Umphrey’s (through Nugs) show the next morning. It made the morning commute and clearing the morning email inbox slog much more pleasant, regardless of how noteworthy the show the night before ended up being. I’d always be able to find a highlight or jam that I liked, notating that it’d be worth coming back to revisit in the future.

When realizing that “the Robot World from last month” was not the most practical way of keeping up with personally noteworthy highlights, I began organizing a spreadsheet so it was quickly easy to reference memorable jams, segues, or segments of a show that I may want to revisit in the future (note: I’m fully aware both Nugs and LivePhish have playlist functions, but I find both on the clunkier side, especially for larger lists). Sure, in the era of Spotify, almost any other song in the world is available at my fingertips on those mornings where there wasn’t a new show to listen to, but my OCD-ness on keeping good records shone through, and I pushed ahead.

And then, COVID shuts the world down. The future of live music, at the time, was a huge unknown. With nothing but time and no new shows for the foreseeable future, I made a decision that it was time to kick this project up a notch: I was going to go through all of the shows that I didn’t have crib-notes or notable jams listed for, and track what I thought the highlight(s) of those shows were.

Thus, my UM listening project was born. “Notable versions” of UM jams isn’t as widespread on the Internet compared to, Phish, for example, so while music is incredibly subjective and everyone’s tastes differ vastly (one of the things that makes UM so great, with the variation of musical ground they cover on a given night there’s something for everyone), I thought this might work out as a bit of a ‘primer’ of sorts. But this is all only one man’s opinion so there is undoubtedly countless tracks and jams that I missed entirely, or just didn’t connect as much on first listen.

I was very fortunate that during Covid, I was able to work remotely from home in a non-customer-service-oriented job. Otherwise, I don’t think this project would’ve ever gotten off the ground. Why begin at 2010, especially with so many iconic and fan favorite shows taking place during the 00’s? Just an arbitrary starting point, honestly. Mantis had just been released the year prior, so by 2010 they had a catalog full enough so that if I were listening to consecutive shows, I knew the setlists would deviate enough that I wouldn’t get quickly burned out. Plus, it paints a nearly-full picture of their touring record since the turn of the decade. Aside from a few festival sets, all full two-set shows are documented on Nugs (sans one 2017 show).

Without further ado, here is my personal “Best Of” sheet, along with Nugs playlist links, nearly in full. You can find the year-by-year song breakdowns in the tabs at the bottom of the spreadsheet. You can also double-click any of the song totals in the 'Totals' tab, and it'll pop up the date that each song on the list was played. As I said earlier, I’m sure there are tons of goodies I missed noting, most likely because I was nose-deep in a work project and didn’t jot it down, or ran out to lunch with Nugs still playing, rather than snubbing your favorite version of Red Tape altogether.

Below are the links to the music, broken down by calendar year (Nugs subscription required). A few quick notes:

• as far as song counts on the spreadsheet goes, a “sandwich” was only counted once (Ex: Ocean Billy > Day Nurse > Ocean Billy would only count OB as once, rather than two times).

• VIP sets (when UM used to post) were listened to and considered, but didn’t always have an entry on my spreadsheet.

• the two short December 2010 sets, 12/10 and 12/11, were not included. Not published on nugs, but an audience recording can be found on archive.org.

• 6/2/11 was not found on Nugs when I cross-referenced my playlist; this show seems to have been recently removed. An audience recording can be found via archive.org

• 2/2/12 (cover set) and 2/4/12 (Super Bowl village set) are not available on Nugs, but can be found on archive.org via audience recording.

• 7/7/17 was never published to Nugs, but can be found on archive.org via audience recording.

• Regrettably, 10/3/10 & 8/24/12 are the only two shows since 2010 that do not appear on either Nugs or Archive.org. I am not sure if either exists at UM HQ, but aside from the setlists, there is no further record of either. Would love to get my hands on either to fully complete the project, but doesn’t seem like that will happen.

• The 9/2/2020 and 9/3/2020 Wrapped in the Round ‘shows’ are not on Nugs, though the epic Front Porch can be found on the most recent Hall of Fame release.

I hope you enjoy listening as much as I’ve enjoyed putting this together over the last several years. Thanks for reading, thanks for listening, and thanks of course to UM for soundtracking such a huge chunk of my life, up to, and including, the up-all-night session with my two month-old daughter just last night.

Google Docs Spreadsheet Link

Links to playlists (as far as I’m aware, I can only link for mobile only and not browser, sorry)

2010:

2011:

2012:

2013:

2014:

2015:

2016:

2017:

2018:

2019:

2020:

2021:

2022:

2023:

It's not worth C&P'ing the spreadsheet direct into the post, not to mention the formatting nightmare, but here are some quick findings:

• Ringo narrow edges Resolution as the song that has appeared the most on my list, with 41 versions since 2010. Wappy edges In the Kitchen for the bronze medal.

• Much Obliged is my most highlighted song in 2010, with 6 appearances. 6 other tunes tied for 2nd with 4 versions each.

• 2011 was the year of All in Time and Red Tape, showing up the most on the list 8 and 7 times, respectively.

• Bright Lights and Resolution lead the way in 2012, appearing 6 times each.

• In the Kitchen, The Triple Wide, and Resolution share the gold medal in 2013, with all 3 making 5 appearances.

• Wappy makes a monster 7 appearances in 2014, with In the Kitchen right behind it, with 6 noted versions.

• Some new blood in 2015, with JaJunk and Higgins leading the way, appearing 5 times a piece.

• Utopian Fir stands alone in 2016, with 7 noted versions. Resolution is right behind it, with 6.

• Conduit and Ringo share 2017 honors, with 4 versions each.

• The spoils are shared in 2018, with Bad Friday, Plunger, Higgins, and JaJunk all making 4 appearances.

• Attachments was the hero in the last pre-covid full touring year (2019), with 5 appearances.

• 2020 was a truncated year, with Ocean Billy, Mantis, Plunger, Ringo, and Resolution each appearing twice.

• Tinkles led the way in a shortened 2021 with 4 versions; Night Nurse and The Crooked One were right behind it with 3 versions each.

• And so far more than half way into 2022, Ringo is out to the early lead with 5 highlighted versions already, with 2x2 and Mantis not far behind.

My thoughts are a jumble right now and have a lot of Big Sincere Feelings, but I deal with big emotions with humor, so here we are.

tl:dr - Bayliss & Jakeless were fucking dope tonight, put your doubts aside and don't hesitate to go see them.

I've seen Umphreys 90+ times over the past 20 years and tonight they sounded fantastic.

Was there a little motor cross missing here and there? Sure. But you could tell they've been reworking jams, trying different setups and flow, and they absolutely nailed the jam segments. I was locked in from start to finish even without my favorite former member on the stage.

I happened to be at a show in Cincy a few years back where Jake didn't play due to a family issue or illness or whatever and it was a total bummer. The band wasn't totally prepared for his absence and the very heavy Bayliss setlist was full of effort but I left feeling underwhelmed.

Tonight was completely different. They played really well off of each other and you could tell they were having fun doing it. Bayliss played out of his mind, carrying a majority of the load but Joel and Stasik were both featured often. The mix was great, and the new additions to the light rig totally hit the mark for me.

I was very apprehensive about UM5 on this tour and moving forward, but tonight reinvigorated my love of this band.

Not to mention moe. put on one hell of a show also.

Sincerely,

PhilthyG