“Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right.” -Grateful Dead, Scarlet Begonias
A Tuesday in Hermosa Beach, CA at an intimate venue called Saint Rocke, a small handful of people were shown the light. A rather large crowd for a Tuesday, I’d imagine, gathered there to hear the latest offering from Umphrey’s McGee, “Similar Skin”. As promised, the keyboardist, Joel Cummins was in attendance and introduced the album to the crowd shortly after 8pm. An enthusiastic group sat and listened patently to the full disc of music, knowing full well that Cummins has promised to play a few tunes with “special guests”. And that they did.
Shortly after 9pm, Cummins took the stage and sat down at the piano to tickle the ivories for everyone. Then he invited up to the stage his guests…Jason Hann, percussionist for String Cheese Incident, and Marcus Rezak, guitarist from Digital Tape Machine, to play a few more, including Umphrey’s song “Booth Love” off their last album, Death By Stereo. At that point, they thanked everyone for coming and exited stage left. At this point, most thought it was over…they would be wrong.
Fast forward an hour or so later, after much socializing and crowd mingling, two new figures appeared in support. Jesus Coomes (bass player for Lettuce) and Tyler Coomes (producer). Would there be more jamming? The question was asked and answered as a drum kit began to appear on stage. This would be the moment that everyone would be talking about. A chance to see 4 players from 4 different great jambands take the stage together for an impromptu and totally relaxed jam session. An Digital Umphrey w/ Lettuce and String Cheese. Not a bad late night snack!
The 25 or so folks who hung around were blown away! I’m glad I was one of them.
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