Music

Inside Umphrey’s McGee’s Abbey Road Session: ‘It’s Like Going to Church’

Get the story behind their new album and watch them record their cover of "I Want You (She's So Heavy)"

February 17, 2015

Jake Cinninger — Umphrey's McGee recorded their new album in 12 hours at London's Abbey Road Studios.

At 11 a.m. on Wednesday, June 18th, 2014, the six members of the Chicago-based band Umphrey’s McGee – singer-guitarist Brendan Bayliss, guitarist Jake Cinninger, bassist Ryan Stasik, keyboard player Joel Cummins, drummer Kris Myers and percussionist Andy Farag – walked into Abbey Road Studios in London and went to Studio Two, the cavernous room where the Beatles were in residence from 1962 until 1970. The first thing Bayliss did upon entering that iconic space was ask one of the resident engineers, “Can you point me to ‘The Corner’?”

“He walked me over there,” Bayliss remembers – a tight, regular spot in Studio Two where the Beatles typically congregated day after day, shoulder to shoulder, shaping songs and arrangements on the way to history. “I couldn’t believe they were just crammed there,” Bayliss says, “doing 75 takes in a row ’til they got it.”

“The first thing I did,” Cinninger says, “was clap my hands.” He makes the sound of the beat at the start of “You Know My Name (Look Up My Number),” the B side of “Let It Be.” “I heard that ambient tone. Yup, that’s Abbey Road. I wanted to witness it for my own ears, that time delay in the room.”

His band got to use it. Twelve hours after their arrival, shortly before midnight, Umphrey’s McGee left Abbey Road with a new album of their own. The London Session, to be released on April 7th by the band’s label, Nothing Too Fancy Music, features nine of the group’s original songs cut live in Studio Two – a mix of new originals, rearranged album tracks and previously unrecorded live-show hits, all done in a handful of takes, some in just one.

And there is a cover: “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” from the Beatles’ Abbey Road, a periodic feature of Umphrey’s shows recorded that night in a single take in the final hour. “We initially bagged the idea,” Bayliss admits. “We’re going to start a Beatles song and the engineers there will be like, ‘Really, you’re going to do this?'” But, Bayliss adds, “If we don’t play it wrong, it crushes. And we nailed it.”