Bluesfest picks: Umphrey's McGee

Probably best described as a jam band, Umphrey's McGee are one of those festival bands you'll  be able to check out with almost no background knowledge. Rooted in progressive rock instrumentals, Umphrey's McGee take cues from many styles, and you're just as likely to hear heavy metal as you are southern rock, with hints of jam forefathers like Phish, The Grateful Dead and Dave Matthews Band creeping through every now and again. If you enjoyed Bela Fleck  and the Flecktones at Bluesfest in 2007, chances are you'll like these guys. Not so much because the guitar-driven jams of Umphrey's have much in common sonically with the jazzy banjo/bass/horns/drums jams of the Flecktones, but the free-flowing this-is-too-good-to-be-improvised style shares a lot in spirit.

The tracks below, from a free CD sampler that the band is offering ahead of their Bluesfest performances, show two very different sides to the band. Read on for info on downloading the sampler before checking them out live.

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Umphrey’s McGee is known for their innovative approach to distributing music and building community. Constantly recording their spectacular live performances, the band makes these available online through many of their website bases. They have sold over 1 million tracks on their live archive site www.umlive.net. While the free podcast program hosted through Itunes has 20,000 subscribers, with over 2 millions downloads. They have even created an interactive fan experience where audience members “conduct” the band’s improvisations live in concert, through mobile phone technology.

Umphrey’s McGee offers a FREE 2010 CD sampler including live recordings and tracks from their recent release Mantis. So if you want to hear some of what this band has to offer before catching one of their mind blowing live sets at Bluesfest, hit up: http://bit.ly/UM2010samplermp3