Umphrey's McGee will carve out new terrain in musical interactivity with their fans at the first "UMBowl," an unprecedented 4-quarter evening-long concert on Saturday, April 24th, at Lincoln Hall in the group's hometown of Chicago.Umphrey's, which has long forged a close bond with its national fan base through technological innovation, will explore fresh frontiers in the five-hour event, styled to emulate a football game with four "quarters" of unique musical performances that will actually be generated by audience input. Half the night's music will be determined by text messaging on "gameday" itself.
The first quarter (Q1) will be an acoustic set entirely chosen by attendees; ticket holders will receive ballots and cast votes on the songs to be performed.
Q2 will be a wholly improvised performance driven by bi-directional texting, sifted and delivered by "offensive coordinator" (and longtime Umphrey's sound caresser) Kevin Browning to the band, which will then use the audience input to construct their jams.
Q3 will be an all-request segment, with songs again determined by pre-balloting from the audience members. Fans will be able to vote not just on song selection but actually how those songs are arranged and varied from their original form.
In Q4, the live audience will actually act as the group's quarterback, "calling audibles" to direct the course of a free-flowing set via text messages sent to Browning in response to choices projected on an in-house screen.
