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For Joel Cummins, keyboardist and vocalist for innovative jam band Umphrey’s McGee, the name Moog is about more than synthesizers. “There’s a group of really special people associated with Moog instruments and the Foundation. I have a blast every time I’m around them, and there’s a reason for that,” said Cummins.
Cummins credits the 2004 documentary film Moog with solidifying his desire to make the legendary music pioneer’s instruments a part of his repertoire. The film “really blew me away,” he said, “and I immediately reached out to the Moog family and they actually knew of our band at that point. Since then, it’s been a crucial element to our sound.”
Studio Production with Moog
Cummins is classically trained on piano and notes that although he was entrenched in the synthesizer-rich sounds of the ‘80s, “it was the Moog that hit me over the head and I realized it was a special and unique instrument.”
Now, the MiniMoog Voyager, paired with Moogerfooger delay pedals “to warm up the sound,” are part of the Umphrey’s McGee musical toolbox, allowing Cummins to create rich, deep, multidimensional sounds in the studio while enticing and engaging the crowd at the band’s live shows. He appreciates that the instruments are so well-crafted, “with so much care toward every component. They are the most versatile sounding and valuable live instruments I’ve ever seen,” he said.
In the studio, Cummins explained, the Moog serves a number of purposes. “Sometimes, I’m creating a bedrock,” he said, like on “Miami Virtue,” the opening track of the band’s latest album, Death By Stereo, on which the Moog is prominently featured. Occasionally, Cummins said, it’s just a matter of “doubling things up or playing something in unison and just altering the wave a little bit to thicken up the sound. There might also be multiple parts achieving different things. On “Miami Virtue,” I used a thick square wave for the main melody, and there’s also a really staccato plucked sound in the chorus that could easily be mistaken for an analog instrument—it kind of sounds like a robotic staccato violin,” Cummins explained.
The Live Performance
That sound is created differently on stage. Cummins stays on the main square wave on his Voyager and Brendan Bayliss, guitarist and vocalist for Umphrey’s McGee, picks up that plucked, staccato sound on the guitar. “We’re trying to cover all the parts we’ve created in the studio and trying to figure out which parts are the most essential. There are a lot of things that happen in the studio that don’t necessarily get created true to form live,” Cummins said. “But that’s okay. They can do different things.”
The great thing about using Moog instruments on stage is the crowd reaction, Cummins told The Tuned Inn. “It’s this wonderfully dynamic thing,” he said. Although surrounded by a number of instruments on stage, “when I step over to the Voyager, I can feel the swell and the excitement of the crowd—they dig it.”
Umphrey’s McGee, a mainstay on the summer festival circuit with a rabid and devoted fan base, first performed Moogfest in 2008 at New York City’s Hammerstein Ballroom. “Now,” Cummins said, “to see it evolve as it has into such a great event in Asheville, where a lot of the Moog family is based, is so awesome. It’s such a cool celebration of the marriage of music and technology. It really comes to life when you get these artists together who use the Moog sound to help create what their music and their bands are about.”
Moogfest 2011—‘Anything Could Happen’
Cummins admits that his band is known for their guitar-centric sound and enjoys the opportunity to switch it up a bit by aiming the performance at people who get excited about Moog sounds. He calls it a huge honor to be able to help close out Moogfest 2011 on Sunday night. While he wouldn’t divulge any secrets about the performance, the possibilities on Halloween Eve are endless.
Some of Cummins Umphrey’s McGee bandmates are also talented keyboard players, he said, and fans can speculate about any number of opportunities for special guests and collaboration. “There’s a possibility for pretty much anything to happen on that night,” he said with a laugh.
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