In an interview with Revolutions Live back in May 2002, Umphrey’s McGee noted that several musicians were dying while they were on tour, and there was only one thing they could do in response: play one of the late artist’s songs.
RL: So, do you guys take into consideration where you are playing, as far as what songs you play?
Ryan: Yeah, when we were in L.A. we were like, “We’ve gotta do Guns-N-Roses (from Indiana) meets Motley Crue (from L.A.).” We did “Dr. Feelgood” into “Paradise City.”
Jake: L.A.’s the kind of town where you don’t want to play a lot of happier, hippier kind of stuff. You save that for San Francisco.
Ryan: But, if someone passes away or its someone’s birthday…
Jake: So, if you die, we will cover one of your songs.
Ryan: Well, we were in Seattle when they found Layne Staley, even though he had been dead for two weeks, so we played some Alice in Chains.
Brendan: And we gave out mad love to “Left Eye” Lopes, George Harrison, Waylon Jennings.
Ryan: Yeah, who’s next? We had a lot of people die on our last tour.
Brendan: People die though. If we had stayed home, they would have died too.
Joel: That’s true.
While Brendan is right, the artists certainly would have died had they stayed home – it is a bit eerie how the geography worked out as UM rolled into town for timely tributes to Nate Dogg (Los Angeles), Layne Staley (Seattle) and Owsley Stanley (San Francisco).
We’ve thrown together all the musical tributes for this week’s B List, complete with streaming audio embeds. For the later shows you can head over to umlive.net to purchase individual tracks for download – and for you musicians out there, maybe watch your step when UM comes next to your town.
1) George Harrison: Various
Download Here: 11/30/2001 – House of Blues – Chicago, IL
When George Harrison passed UM didn’t perform any one song in a musical tribute, but rather snippets of a number of appropriate passages. First they tagged the end of Roulette with the outro of The Beatles’ You Never Give Me Your Money and its appropriate lyrics, “1-2-3-4-5-6-7, all good children go to heaven.” At the end of the first set, Hurt Bird Bath had the end of another Harrison penned Beatles tune added on, this one the more well known Something.
Brendan worked the phrase “All Things Must Pass” twice into the lyrics of Hajimemashite, what would come to be a standard lyric in later years. And finally, Umphrey’s tackled the Beatles instrumental Flying, one of the few compositions credited to the entire band.
Roulette > You Never Give Me Your Money
[audio:https://glidemag.wpengine.com/hiddentrack/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/harrison1.mp3]
Hurt Bird Bath > Something
[audio:https://glidemag.wpengine.com/hiddentrack/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/harrison2.mp3]
Hajimemashite
[audio:https://glidemag.wpengine.com/hiddentrack/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/harrison3.mp3]
Flying
[audio:https://glidemag.wpengine.com/hiddentrack/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/harrison4.mp3]
2) Waylon Jennings: Good ‘ol Boys
2/17/2002 – 8×10 Club – Baltimore, MD
The first of several 2002 tributes came in the form of the song best known as the theme to the television program The Dukes of Hazard. Jennings not only penned the theme song but also filled the role of The Balladeer for the show. UM put Good Ol’ Boys in regular rotation starting in mid-2001 and the song has continued to be brought out ever since, despite the occasional year(s)-long gap between plays.
[audio:https://glidemag.wpengine.com/hiddentrack/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/waylon.mp3]3) Layne Staley: Got Me Wrong
Download Here: 4/21/2002 – Tractor Tavern – Seattle, WA
The lead singer of Alice in Chains actually died on April 5 but wasn’t found in his Seattle home until April 19. Umphrey’s happened to be in Seattle making this tribute especially poignant. The band had been playing the song fairly regularly to that point but would only play it twice more that year before shelving it for good.
[audio:https://glidemag.wpengine.com/hiddentrack/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/layne.mp3]4) Lisa Lopes: Waterfalls
Download Here: 4/26/2002 – The Barrymore – Madison, WI
Just five days later back in the Midwest at the Barrymore, UM was honoring Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes of the R&B group TLC, who died the previous day. The song dates back to the early Notre Dame years of the band, more often than not appearing in a jam during Front Porch. It was soon dropped after this version making it into only one more 2002 Front Porch. It was dropped into Front Porch last year on September 9 during the first encore at the Brooklyn Bowl in New York City.
[audio:https://glidemag.wpengine.com/hiddentrack/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/lefteye.mp3]PAGE TWO = John Entwistle, Rick James and More
