Umphrey's McGee: "The Floor"

The Evolution of Cemetery Walk

We started creating the song back in the summer of 2006.  Sitting at home at my piano, I fleshed out some chords and melodies and put them down to my trusty Tascam 4 track (old school, I know).  Initially, I was thinking that we needed something darker for our musical palette.  Funnily enough, most of that vibe was realized in the parts of the song you don’t currently hear!  But shortly after starting the process, I took the tape up to Jake’s Boondock Studio in rural Michigan, out behind the house he grew up in.  Jake and I have gotten together numerous times over the years and have come up with a pretty good formula to realize songs.  We’ll typically work on the arrangements of the songs, then he’ll play live drums while I play the keyboard part.  Being the multi-instrumentalist that he is, Jake will then overdub bass and guitar to the sections after the 1^st live pass on keys and drums is done.  We’ve worked on pieces such as 13 Days, Words, Higgins, Cemetery Walk and the yet-to-be-heard Mantis using this technique.  

One of the crucial alterations we made once we convened at Jake’s was rewriting the piano phrase (and now guitar line) under the vocal “and I called for you” in 7/8 as opposed to 4/4.  I told him that I liked the voicing and melody, but didn’t like the meter.  This was Jake’s idea and it was a great one, it gave the piece a bit more of a lively feel.  Jake also added the chorus progression at this point, as well as some beautiful and haunting guitar work that you have yet to hear on the non-radio edit version of Cemetery Walk.  We practiced the form through a few times and then after some false starts, got the version we wanted to tape.  So we had a basic track and were ready to present it to the band. 

Fast forward to January of 2007, when pre-production for Mantis began at IV Labs in Chicago.  We had a dry erase board with markers in hand and started a very organic process of arranging the songs, with everyone in the band there and contributing.  We’ve often found that we can capture the more “macro” ideas and flow by writing them down.  The more detail-oriented stuff is then a bit easier to focus on once its not a sort of Simon Says memory game.  But the only way to really see how sections work together and how the transitions serve the song is by actually playing them and executing them well.  That’s tough to do when you’re simultaneously trying to remember what comes next, thus the brilliance of the dry erase board.

Also keep in mind that as of January 2007, we were only dealing with the instrumental sections, Brendan had yet to put down the vocal melodies and lyrics.  So at this point, we ditched what I had written as the verse structure and added what you now hear under “I’ve got a secret but its longer than a paragraph…”  In the interest of keeping things interesting, we took the 7/8 phrase and made it into a half-time 4/4 feel about half-way through the piece.  Funnily enough, it seemed to work in this spot.  You never know what’s going to happen once a piece of music starts to evolve and take on a life of its own.  Jake’s chorus progression (under “Time won’t change you….”) was in place, and we put his guitar solo between the two times the chorus happens, another rather unconventional move.  But it seemed to serve the song, and that’s what we’ve always been interested in first and foremost.  One of the things I’ve always enjoyed about creating an Umphrey’s McGee song together is that we try to achieve interesting results by not adhering to the standard pop song format or expectations.  With Cemetery Walk, I think we’ve achieved another unique arrangement.

Finally, at some point in early 2007, Brendan took the song home and created the vocal sections you now hear.  What would a song be without memorable melodies and lyrics that provide key moments and hooks?  Without a doubt, Brendan’s work tied all of the disparate sections of the piece together.  There are countless additions and layers that I haven’t described, but that was also part of the fun of creating this album: as we gave ourselves lots of time to work with, we could add layers and ideas as they came up.  I added the final vocal on the track, which happens only once during the last chorus, in August of 2008 (per Manny’s suggestion!).  And in a nutshell, that is how Cemetery Walk came to be.  As Kevin has mentioned in the previous blog, there are some essential parts of the tune that you haven’t heard, and that’s almost as exciting to me as what you have already heard.  Happy listening….hope you enjoy the tune as much as we do.