I saw Umphrey’s McGee with opening act The Marcus King Band at Wings Stadium in Kalamazoo MI Saturday night.

This was the second night of a two night stand in Kalamazoo. I did not attend the Friday night show, but they did completely different set lists on both nights with no repeats which is pretty amazing to me.

First up was the Marcus King Band. I really liked these guys. King looks pretty young. He plays guitar and sings. His music definitely has an Allman Brothers / Gov’t Mule vibe to some of it although he branches out quite a bit in different directions. His voice sounds like…..well, kind of like what a male Janis Joplin would sound like. It was all very retro sounding, and could have fit right in around 1968-ish pretty easily, but was very good. He had a large band with horns, and keys, all of whom were very good musicians. The Umphrey’s keyboard player came out and performed the final song with them which was cool. This is definitely a band to keep my eye on and I would love the chance to see them again in a smaller venue.

Umphry’s came on about 9:15PM doing two sets with a half hour intermission. The show went until 12:30AM and was a blast as usual. As always the band’s set was all over the place, and they did a good chunck prog oriented material to my ears. The band are touring behind their new album “It’s Not Us”, but surprisingly they only did two tracks from it, neither of them really highlights of the album IMO. They only did one track from my favorite album “Mantis” too which was a little disappointing, but not that big a deal. As always Umphry’s does a cover in each set. This time around they did “Power Of Soul” from Jimi Hendrix during the first set. Not really one of my favorite Hendrix tracks, and it only half worked for me. For the 2nd set they pulled out a killer version of David Bowie’s “Fame” which was funky and cool. In fact they seemed to bring the funk quite a bit during this show, with some reggae thrown in as well. There was very little if any metal to be found in this show. They seemed to have upped their light show a bit, especially during the 2nd half, although there were no near blinding moments like they usually have. For the encore they went way back to the beginning with a song they used to perform at Bell’s Brewery here in Kalamazoo back when they were playing to a dozen people on a weeknight 20 years ago. Overall I am not sure that it was the best Umphry’s show I have seen, but it was certainly another strong one. Here is the set list:

SET I:
NIPPLE TRIX
BRIDGELESS
HALF DELAYED
RINGO
ROCKER
POWER OF SOUL
PUPPET STRING
NOTHING TOO FANCY

SET II

ALL IN TIME
WHISTLE KIDS
JA-JUNK
PUPPET STRING (REPRISE)
UTOPIAN FIR
FAME
UTOPIAN FIR (REPRISE)
THE TRIPLE WIDE
JA-JUNK (REPRISE)

ENCORE:

FRONT PORCH