This year, Merlefest celebrated its 22nd year of music and art in the unbelievable heat of Wilkesboro, NC.  The festival boasted accommodations for young and old alike, mixing a variety of bluegrass knowns and unknowns with local art, food, and family activities. Smoking was not permitted during ...view article

Get it while it’s hot people!  Yep, Umphrey’s McGee is as fiery as ever, and was hot as blazes in the ragin’ cajun and cool as a cucumber House of Blues in New Orleans.  After a wild day and a half of Bourbon Street seafood, cover band, stripper and overdosed slushy shenanigans (I’m talking ...view article

As the sun dropped behind the thick timberland's of the northwestern mitten, Umphrey’s McGee came out as cool as the air.  Kris Myers and Joel Cummins were facing a double-header of music that evening, as they had just wrapped up another amazing set with their other project, Digital Tape Machine, ...view article

We rose some time after dawn in a small bed and breakfast lodge in Sacramento and I was still suffering a bit of barrel fever from all the whiskey I'd drowned myself in the night before.  We had traveled East from San Francisco through the night to get a jump on the day.  We'd be riding plum through ...view article

If the trip and surrounding circumstances of seeing Umphrey's McGee Wednesday in Seattle were hectic and confused, the exact opposite could be said about the day of the show in the University of Oregon college town of Eugene. Very few obvious Umphreaks were seen around the sleepy town and even until ...view article

There is little comparison to the excitement of the thumping house beats, the funky rumble of a low bass line shaking the building and the infectious sonic articulation of synthesizers that can be found at a rave.  Imagine that being topped off with soaring guitar licks and the interplay of four ...view article

Autumn came late this year to San Diego, "America's Finest City." But the damp, chilly sea air belied the rising temperature inside the Gaslamp District's House of Blues, where Grace Potter and the Nocturnals (GPN) heated things up with their scorching stew of roots-inspired rock that included liberal ...view article

In the previous volume of the Umphrey's McGee Colorado Chronicles, I mentioned that Umphrey's made it possible for me to spend almost my entire day in Denver with them.  I didn't get to hang out backstage and shoot the breeze while drinking Colorado micro brews and smoking Denver nuggets, or take ...view article