UM 3.0

Are We Prepared For What Comes Next?

Last week our community was ROCKED and not in the usual way. Kris Myers, the drummer for Umphrey’s McGee since 2003, announced he is leaving the band. After 22 years of playing behind the kit for hundreds of shows, Myers is moving on and Scotty Zwang is taking over. If you haven’t heard of Zwang, he’s the former Dopapod and Ghost Light drummer (also from Sunsquabi) that played with Umphrey’s as one of their substitute drummers when Myers was out for surgery in 2023.

I was at the Mishawaka shows where he shared duties. Those were decent gigs that fill me with optimism for the future. Umphrey’s is greater than the sum of the parts and they still have the heart of the band, Brendan Bayliss, at the helm. While some may argue Jake Cinninger is harder to replace, Bayliss proved in 2017 that he is more than capable of still leading the band musically when Cinninger missed four shows on the winter tour that year due to illness.

There have been several shows throughout the career of Umphrey’s where they were missing a member, such as when Joel Cummins’s dad passed or when Ryan Stasik missed a Camp Bisco set for the birth of one of his daughters. These shows produced some very unique improv like that 2x2 from Flagstaff 2010 with Cinninger on keys. If you haven’t heard that one and have Nugs, check it out here.

The point of jams like that 2x2 is Umphrey’s is a band full of very talented musicians and they are capable of stepping up when members miss shows. No one is missing the Windjammer shows tonight though, it’s the dawn of a new era. This is officially 3.0.