From Jam Band Roots To DIY Marketing: Umphrey's McGee's Ryan Stasik On Building A Loyal Fanbase

Come for the bass lines, stay for the blueprint of a modern creative business. We sit with Umphrey’s McGee bassist Ryan Stasik to trace how a college-born jam band built a 27-year career on improvisation, fan collaboration, and unapologetic DIY marketing. If you’ve ever wondered how to grow without giving up control, this conversation shows the moves: own your masters, design experiences your audience can shape, and make your visual identity tell the same story your music does.

Ryan walks us through Blueprints, the new album constructed from years of recorded improvisations that fans helped curate into “Legos.” Those ideas were arranged into finished songs in an intimate Chicago session, preserving the edge between precision and chaos the band is known for. We dig into why imperfections matter, how recording has shifted from group rooms to home rigs, and the subtle craft of keeping long-form compositions engaging without sanding off their human touch.

We also zoom out to the ecosystem: artwork drawn from real pedalboards, a merch arm that reflects the sound, and a live archive on nugs.net that rewards deep listening. Ryan talks candidly about staying together as a six-piece—honesty, timing, and “yes, and”—and how to balance fan connection with artistic integrity so the setlist doesn’t turn into favors. Along the way, we celebrate Charleston’s collaborative scene, swap favorite venues from Red Rocks to the Windjammer, and map upcoming dates from Atlanta to Chicago and beyond.

If you care about creative control, community-driven growth, and music that breathes, this one’s for you. Subscribe, share with a friend who loves live music, and leave a review with your favorite insight—we’ll shout out the best ones next week.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Guest Introduction
• 1:14 Why A Musician On A Marketing Show
• 3:58 DIY Strategy And Owning The Brand
• 8:16 Songwriting, Genre-Blending, And Imperfection
• 11:42 Recording Then And Now
• 13:48 Blueprints: Fan-Led Jams To Finished Songs
• 18:16 Visual Identity, Merch, And Team
• 19:57 Charleston’s Music Community
• 23:15 Side Projects, Teaching, And Pandemic Pivots
• 26:17 Longevity: Communication, Trust, And “Yes, And”
• 30:00 Fan Connection Without Losing Integrity
• 32:37 Favorite Venues And Milestone Shows
• 35:00 Upcoming Dates And Where To Find The Music
• 38:00 Gratitude And Closing

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome to the Charleston Marketing Podcast, brought to you by the Charleston AMA and broadcasting from our friends at Charleston Media Solutions Studios. Thanks to our awesome sponsors at CMS, we get to chat with the cool folks making waves in Charleston. From business and art to hospitality and tech. These movers and shakers choose to call the low country home. They live here, work here, and make a difference here. So what's their story? Let's find out together.

SPEAKER_02: 0:27

Hello and welcome to the Charleston Marketing Podcast, powered by the Charleston American Marketing Association. We are recording live in the Charleston Media Solutions studio. Big supporters of CAMA. We need to send a big thank you to our podcast sponsor, SCRA. Let's not forget the talented Jerry Feels Good with the beats at the front and end of the show. Thanks to all of our supporters. What's up, my friends? Stephanie Barrow here, founder of Stephanie Barrow Consulting, a digital marketing strategy agency based here in Charleston, and uh one of your Cama Pass presidents. I am joined by my friend and fellow board member. Tom, say what's up.

SPEAKER_05: 1:01

Hey, how are you? Tom Kepler, chooseobsidian.com, Obsidian Coaching Comps and uh and and consulting.

SPEAKER_02: 1:09

That's a lot. That's a lot.

SPEAKER_05: 1:11

I do a lot.

SPEAKER_02: 1:12

Now, are you going to introduce our friend?

SPEAKER_05: 1:14

Yes. Uh everybody, this is Ryan Stasik from Umphries McGee. In case you're not familiar with Umfrees McGee, they are an excellent, excellent band. Uh Ryan, introduce yourself.

SPEAKER_03: 1:24

Well, my name is Ryan Stasik. Probably don't know me, but here I am. Let's have some fun. I love it. I love it.

SPEAKER_02: 1:30

I'm all about the music scene and especially the music scene here in Charleston, so we're really excited to have you here.

SPEAKER_03: 1:35

Nice, honored.

SPEAKER_02: 1:36

All right, so tell us a little bit about your band and how you got started.

SPEAKER_03: 1:40

Okay, my current band, Humphreys McGee, is uh 27 years old. So we started at the University of Notre Dame back in the 90s. Okay. And you know, we took a chance. Uh it was not my major. Uh, I don't think it was anybody's major, maybe our keyboard player. And when we moved to Chicago, since everybody's kind of from the Midwest, that's where we really cut our teeth and we said, hey, let's give this a shot. Um nobody got a real job, and we went for it, and this is our job.

SPEAKER_02: 2:10

So have you always been musically inclined, or is this like something that's in your blood?

SPEAKER_03: 2:14

Um, you know, I I started piano when I was five. Okay. My mom uh made me some sort of deal where she said if I could learn uh Fury Lease, she would buy a baby grand piano. I secretly think she wanted to buy that piece of furniture anyway. But uh it was awesome. I did learn it. I had a great teacher, I've had a many great piano teachers, and I still have that piano. My kids are learning on it. It's made all the trips uh everywhere I've lived uh and into our new home that we just moved into in March. Oh well, congrats on the new home. Yeah, so yeah, piano, moved on to guitar because it's hard to pick up girls with a with an upright piano. Takes a long time to wield that to the bar. So in high school I got into guitar and a lot of punk rock kind of stuff. Long story short, went to Notre Dame. I re I met Brendan Bayless, our our guitarist and keyboard or guitarist and singer, and he had a banjo and long hair. And I was like, dude, here's my Les Paul. I'll go buy a bass. That is fun, and that's kind of how it started.

SPEAKER_02: 3:15

That is awesome.

SPEAKER_05: 3:17

And so, you know, a lot of people might ask the question, why is the bassist from a band on a marketing podcast? That's a good question. I I think, you know, in in prepping for this, so much of music is marketing. You're building a community, you are uh, you know, uh getting the word out about the band and and building a following that sustains over time. Um you know, when I think about marketing, I think about so much of like not just who you're for, but what you leave out. And um I'm interested to hear from you who's Humphreys McGee for, and who's Humphreys McGee not a good fit for?

SPEAKER_03: 3:59

That is a great question. Um starting off with marketing and something unique to Umfries McGee. Uh when we first started, marketing actually was one of my majors. Excellent. At Notre Dame, Japanese.

SPEAKER_04: 4:14

Oh, wow. Yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_03: 4:15

Yeah, we'll we'll I'm sure we'll come back to that. Okay. But um, so Humphries started, and back in the 90s, it was still about getting a record deal, and that was kind of the way you thought you would climb to the top. And we weren't, you know, we were in this jam band culture, so we weren't writing a lot of pop hits. I don't know if we've ever written a hit to this day, but slowly we realized that being under the umbrella of a record label and kind of being at the bottom of a totem pole, we decided screw it, we're gonna do everything ourselves. So eventually, over this 27 years, we do our own record label. Or we do everything. We have a booking agent. But everything else is the band and the management and the people that we hire.

SPEAKER_02: 5:04

And do you write all of your own music?

SPEAKER_03: 5:06

Yes, we do. Okay. Yeah. So so the mar but the marketing part was was instead of paying people to do things for us, it's a lot more work, but it's much more rewarding for us to do it ourselves. And then we had to figure out how this works for us, how does it fit? And it started out in the early days of walking around with flyers and being like, hey, we're at the pub, you know, trying to make beer money. Here you go. And then finally, as technology and everything else, you know, we got a little more advanced with that as as as well. So in the beginning, it was for everybody. We were just trying to play music for who would listen to it. As we've aged and matured, I'd like to think that our music has become a little more honest or storytelling. You know, now that a lot of us are fathers. You know, we write about our relationships with our kids. Um, a lot of us are married, we write about those relationships. Some of us are divorced, we write a lot about those relationships. We know those make, you know, those make for some good songs. Um but who we're not for, which I've thought about, uh, we are not for someone who wants to come for a predictable uh three-minute song that they, you know, that's gonna be auto-tuned and perfect and precise. We're looking for someone who's excited for an adventure where the improv improvisation is gonna take them to places that we didn't expect, that they didn't expect, and a lot of left turns. And I think finding a point between precision and chaos is some of our favorite stuff. Like we love Frank Zappa, we love to take a hard left. But we love Bill Frizzell and Miles Davis. Nice. And we love Bluegrass, you know, we love uh Dub Reggae and Bill Laswell, and and um I think having six guys that come from insanely different backgrounds musically, having the respect to listen to each other has allowed us to keep the sanity of saying we can almost touch on every genre of music. Right. Maybe all in one show.

SPEAKER_02: 7:09

So when you're sitting down and make a new album, because then it's all of your blending these different styles of music and different creativity, like what is your process like?

SPEAKER_03: 7:17

Well, that process has significantly changed over decades. In the beginning, you're just writing because you don't have anything. So all the material is gonna make it. Um for us, we've the last record we put out, blueprints, is very unique. We'll probably touch that on that um in a little bit. But we've we've made records before where in the early years you're like, we gotta prove ourselves. Right. Look at my chops, look what we can do. Let's be an odd meter, let's make it weird just to be weird. The intention was a lot uh it was just different when we were younger. And then we during other studio records, we're like, this one's gonna tell a story, it's gonna be more singer-songwriter oriented. And then and then we've done others where we made a whole mashup record where for Halloween, kind of what DJs do, we were doing as a live band, we were taking songs, including our original songs, and mashing them up by tempo, by key. It took a long, it's a lot longer than it than it sounds. But we put a whole record out called Zonky, which you can find on all streaming services. It's kind of the water cooler talk for all ages because a lot of, you know, Fleetwood Mac, Michael Jackson, Beastie Boys, Rage Against the Machine, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin. You get a you get a lot of bands that people are familiar with. Right. And uh you listen to, and and it's you know, it's something we're pretty proud of. It was a one-off, you know. I don't see us ever making a record like that again. Um we have a record mantis, which was like our Prague rock record. We're like, we're gonna be like Genesis and giant gentle giants.

SPEAKER_02: 8:54

So you go into the studio springing out all the great.

SPEAKER_03: 8:56

But you know, our mindset, what we're listening to, you know, that totally influence influences you. Um, even the recording process, going in and playing in a room together and allowing the mistakes to stay is something I don't think a lot of bands, especially pop bands, if you fix everything in post now, uh, really do. And I love listening to old records where you hear the room and you hear the mistakes, yeah, and they stay, and you're like, no, that was real. It sounds human. And I and not to say that things don't sound human now, but with AI and with auto-tune and with fixing everything on the computer afterwards, or even writing songs without ever playing anything, uh, it's hard not to sound, you know, perfect. So there's a lot of intent going in behind maybe a track, maybe an album, depending on the situation.

SPEAKER_02: 9:43

Sure. Now, where are you doing most of your recording?

SPEAKER_03: 9:46

So COVID was very interesting um because everything was shut down. Right. So I uh I actually recorded all of my parts for five records during COVID. It sounds weird, but it was one of my favorite times of my life was COVID. I was locked down with my kids just surfing and writing records all day. But I do mine at home. Uh, we record a lot in Chicago, we record in Nashville, we have recorded all over the country when we can. But back then when we were doing this, everything was we'd get everybody in the room and really try to get drums. Yeah. Drums is always first. And then by the amount of drum takes we were taking, I usually got my bass parts done. So drums and bass were always first. But that has kind of changed now that people can record from home and and and and make it sound good.

SPEAKER_02: 10:29

I'm just imagining you and your crew like in Berry Hill, Tennessee, like at a recording studio, just jamming out and then going out for beers after and coming back and jamming out some more.

SPEAKER_03: 10:39

So again, that over 27 years that's changed a lot too. Well, our second record, we camped out at our friend's barn for two weeks. I didn't shower for two weeks, slept under the sound room board, and we recorded from the minute we woke up to the to the minute we went to bed. So, but we were we in our 20s. It was just a different experience, you know. We like it to be a little bougier now. Nice bed, yeah, nice meal.

SPEAKER_05: 11:05

Ryan, I I I want to talk about the new album. Sure. I've been listening to it on repeat all week. Um you talked about a lot about the grassroots nature of Humphreys McGee and how it started and and how you you got your start. It sounds like the way this album was put together is very grassroots, and I'd love to hear the the origin story of this album.

SPEAKER_03: 11:29

Yeah, this album is called Blueprints, just came out maybe a month or two ago. Yeah. Fairly new. Um so for this concept, we I have to go, I have to go back a little further. Um, Umfries McGee has been putting on a yearly event called Umble, which is, you know, we're we're kind of sports fanatics. Okay. So this is a a very unique, uh, very fan-focused experience. I don't even call it a concert, I call it an experience, where fans are really involved in what we do. Whether it's real-time voting on what we're going to improvise, for example, there's four quarters like a Super Bowl. A first quarter could be called an S2. And fans would text in on a giant on the screen behind us at the theater, Jamaican sunrise. And we would look at each other and we would start improvising what that would sound like. And then somebody else would text in. And this is real, like the fans that are at the experience are doing this. So they're controlling us, and we're making the music for them. A second set could be the fans voted, if they had tickets, on what their favorite movies were or movie scenes. And then when the movie scene came on, we would improvise a movie score to it. So it's a lot of improvisational work, it's a crazy amount of brain work for us, but it's super rewarding and fun to have this interaction with fans live to be able to dictate and almost control what the experience is going to be. So, from all of those improvisations, we've been recording our music for 20 plus years. Our fans went back and voted on some of their favorite melodies or jams, and they sent them to us. And then we call these Legos. So we took these Legos and got, you know, little knights of the round table meeting and said, Hey, how do we construct these into songs? And good songs, hopefully. But in the jam band world, um, these songs, or even in the progressive rock world, tend to go from twelve to like twenty-five minutes. Yeah, they're long. Yeah, so lots of parts, lots of things. And the key to that for us is how do we make that interesting? Yeah. How do we keep people's attention and make the composition have um taste, you know, especially as a bass player? Sometimes very simple parts can go a long way. Excuse me, with the amount of you know, two-lead guitars and a synthesizer player. There's a lot a lot of notes. Sure. So so these these songs basically were Legos that they voted on that we constructed together, and then we performed these live um at the Metro, the third floor of the metro. There's a a secret room up top that we turned into. We sold tickets for a hundred people to come. Metro Club in Chicago. Yeah, but above above the venue. Like Guns N Roses used to do some of their recording back in the I think for Use Your Illusion one and two in this room, which was really cool because that's one of my favorite bands ever to be in that room and be like, whoa, accelent slash and Duff were in here. So we recorded those, and then our sound man, big shout out to Chris Erickson and and Greg Majors, um, making this um live sound sound sonically, you know, you you enjoyed it. I hope. Oh yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 14:38

It's a sonic masterpiece, in my opinion. I've been I and we were talking just before the show. I've been listening to it as background music. Yeah. And that is not the thing to do with your band.

SPEAKER_03: 14:51

That would that would also fall under the category of who we're not for. Yeah, because I I feel like it's um there's a lot going on, which also allows you to go back and listen again, yeah, you know, for other parts. Um, and then when we released this, our goal was to put it, you know, the tracks as Legos, as they were voted on and as they were constructed together so people could actually hear. And if they want to like nerd out and deep dive, yeah, they can go to our Nuggs, uh, our Nugs.net app and listen to the show from 2004 where Brendan came up with the melody for unevolved or or however it happened. And um, furthermore, we as a band and our management decided on the artwork, the how we're gonna release it, how um I think Brendan's uh niece did the actual blueprint drawings.

SPEAKER_02: 15:38

I was gonna ask you because the art on your website is killer.

SPEAKER_03: 15:40

Yeah, uh she she took out we took gave her pictures of our actual pedals on our pedal board. Um for the bass nerds out there. One of my pedals is the Osiris filter, which is uh Phil Lesh's moon base or mission base from the 70s, where he actually has all these onboard filters. Um we they made an offboard pedal and and one of them you can see it on uh on the vinyl, you can really see it, or even I think on the CD, it's it's in it's in the artwork. But we used our pedals and and did the graphics and everything to kind of you know complete the theme of the Legos and the and and everything moving along and how how it all came together. Pretty proud of it. You know, that's great. I don't usually listen to our records once you made them. It's like it's like you go and you spend a nine months to a year making these things, and all of a sudden you just never listen to it yet. Give it a listen.

SPEAKER_05: 16:29

Don't listen to it as background music.

SPEAKER_02: 16:30

I was doing a deep dive on your you've done like a a lot of shows. How many shows?

SPEAKER_03: 16:35

Um in the Cal Ripkin area, like 3,000 shows. That's amazing. Only missed one.

SPEAKER_02: 16:40

And it's fun to see the imagery over the years. Some some some cool mustaches were were.

SPEAKER_03: 16:45

Oh, my personal uh, yeah, you know, I like to try it all. Yep, yeah. Nope. Nine inch blue mohawk, maybe a uh Salvador Dolly mustache, almost got it to the to the eyebrows one year. I can see that. Yeah, I've uh I've always been that person since I was five. My mom uh definitely pushed don't care what anybody else thinks, and would uh would buy me some weird stuff and I would rock it with confidence.

SPEAKER_02: 17:10

Now bet your daughters are rocking their lives with confidence.

SPEAKER_03: 17:12

Uh you know, I just want them to wear what they what they think is cool. Yeah. I'm not gonna force it on them. But yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 17:19

No, but your art, talk getting back to the marking aspect of things, your art is really well done. Who I mean, the salt, like you need to everyone needs to check out your website, first of all. But the rock and roll fingers and and and the and the sand and all the things, who's coming up with these concepts?

SPEAKER_03: 17:36

So a big shout out to our management, Vince Iwinski and Kevin Browning. They they've, you know, again, Umfreys has always done things a little differently in that grassroots area. We hired our friends. Um, I don't recommend to all businesses to hire your friends. You know, no, it's it's definitely worked out, and um, we're very close in that way where we communicate and there's a lot of moving parts. Like our management's involved, the band is heavily involved, the people who do our actual merch uh that's a different group. The people who run our posters is a different group, the people do the artwork for these uh announcements and uh and the website. There's probably too many to mention specifically here, but um, it's a good core group of people with and we throw all the ideas around to the band and and everybody's respectful of of our input and and and uh I'm glad you like the uh the the end results.

SPEAKER_02: 18:27

That's really, really fun. So you do a lot of Chicago shows, it looks like well that's where we cut our.

SPEAKER_03: 18:31

I mean, we know we're Notre Dame guys, um, but when it was like, hey, are we gonna get real jobs? Yeah, the Chicago, we all moved to Chicago in 2000. Some of the guys still live there. I lived there for 12 years until my wife and I were pregnant with Amelia, and then that's when we were like, we are hibernating in a high rise and it's cold. I think it's time to go to South Carolina.

SPEAKER_02: 18:51

So, what do you think about living in Charleston, being a musician?

SPEAKER_03: 18:53

I love it. I um I love everything about living in Charleston: the size of the town, the the food of the people, the beach, the weather, the airport. Um, but uh the music scene is is one of my favorite. Um starting Doom Flamingo was a band of all Charleston natives. Um just being, you know, living here for a while and not really having a lot of friends because I was a new dad, I'd just moved, I knew my family was here. There's a lot of time to go out and and and meet people. Umingo, I was able to go out and see, you know, the scene. And I love how um integrated and and um friendly it is from the hip-hop to gospel to jazz to funk to rock. Like everybody's so cool and encouraging. Yeah. You don't get a well, I don't care, I'll say it. You don't get a Boston vibe. No offense, no, no offense to the uh to the Massachusetts. I was there for 26 years, I know exactly what's going on. I mean you know what I mean. It's just it's it's uh it's it's very encouraging and friendly. And uh and um not that you know, again, not that people in Boston are mean, but it's it's just a different, it's just a different vibe.

SPEAKER_05: 19:59

Yeah. I went to the uh album release party for Mechanical River uh last week. I don't know if you've heard any of their stuff, but just it's just incredible. And and and cobbling together of people who have known each other and been in this music scene for 25, 26 years. It's just incredible. Um, and and the poorhouse seems to be the epicenter of all of it. Big shout out to the poor house. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 20:20

Have you done anything with So Far Sounds?

SPEAKER_03: 20:23

Uh I if I have, I apologize that I that I don't know.

SPEAKER_02: 20:26

No, it's it's um it's an organization here in Charleston that that brings about musicians to like secret locations about once a month. It's really cool. You should contact them.

SPEAKER_05: 20:35

Yeah, you don't you don't know the the location of the venue until the day of the event. Right.

SPEAKER_02: 20:40

You buy tickets and you don't even know who's gonna be performing.

SPEAKER_03: 20:43

Right. Now Doom Flamingo, unfortunately, I was on the road with with Umfries, did Sugarshack. Yeah. Is that very is that similar, or is that people come to a venue and they don't know who the band's gonna be? That too. That too.

SPEAKER_02: 20:53

They don't know the venue and they don't know the band. Oh, cool. It's really neat. I love the the the the music community.

SPEAKER_03: 20:58

I work with I like the marketing angle from that. Isn't it neat?

SPEAKER_02: 21:01

Yeah, and it's actually a worldwide thing. So if you're like say I'm traveling to New York, I could buy tickets for one of their events. It's a it's a worldwide thing, so you should check it out.

SPEAKER_03: 21:10

I will I will check that out.

unknown: 21:11

Yeah, it's cool.

SPEAKER_02: 21:12

I work with the North Charleston Pops, which is like the Pops Orchestra for North Charleston, and we're doing like an 80s and 90s night um coming up in March. Like I feel like you would be perfect for that. Fun. Yeah. It's so it's so fun.

SPEAKER_03: 21:24

I'll go on record saying this too, because it's it's between 80s and 90s. But if I had you know when somebody says you have to pick a decade of your favorite music, it's tough because I was born in 76. So the 90s is very influential to me. But I'm gonna I'm gonna lock in my final answer and say it's the 80s. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 21:42

Appetite for Destruction was a huge album for you, right? It was big influence.

SPEAKER_03: 21:46

That was the okay, so I grew up in Pittsburgh, my whole family. Bleed black and gold. I still bleed black and gold. If you cut me here, it'd be black and gold blood everywhere. But my dad got a job in '88 in Michigan. So we were like the only family to move six hours northwest. And those are formidable years, 12 to 18. I mean, that's middle school. I didn't know anybody. Um, it's kind of when I got into guitar because the mobile, you know, the upright piano was hard to move around. Still kept playing, taking piano lessons. Um, and then 18, and then it was time to go to college. So um living up in the Midwest was uh I didn't have any cousins and other people influencing what I was listening to musically. Um, and I'll never forget the first day I went into school. I still talked to him, he lives in Bali now, but my friend Sean Rowe, he's like, Hey, you're the new kid. And I was like, Yeah, and he's like, You're my friend. He gave me a Dragonlance uh like fantasy book, which I read. I still love the the Dungeons and Dragons stuff back when I was 12, and then he gave me an appetite for destruction cassette tape, and I was like, Whoa! And I listened to it, and it had like it just had danger in it, yeah, and that really resonated with me at that time. Yeah, because I didn't I didn't know anybody. It was a new place back in in uh Pittsburgh. I was influenced by what my parents listened to, and and in the car my mom always had on Sade or Luther Vandross, Holland Oates, um you know, like RB, just yeah, really good bass playing. I wasn't even a bass player yet. I didn't even know what I was listening to except back then. But then I when when you get to your teenage years and you're like, oh, I get to pick the stuff that my parents aren't aware of. Right, gravitate toward danger. Yeah, and like that's when the metal world entered for me. Hockey. Started playing hockey and listening to heavy metal. Yeah. Gosh, I can see you doing that.

SPEAKER_02: 23:36

With the mohawk and stuff that I saw online. That's amazing. So what's next for you guys? You're gonna just be a band forever?

SPEAKER_03: 23:43

Uh that's a good question. What maybe I'll come back in five years. I would love that for you. Uh, I don't know if we're gonna be a band forever. I'd like I'd like to be. There's there's no stopping right now. Yeah, you know. Um, I have my own, as far as marketing, this goes with marketing too. I started my own basic stasic line. Okay. So I have a website there, basicstasic.com. I sell, you know, merchandise hats, cool, jackets, uh, things like that. All the other bands I'm involved with, like teaching lessons, which is interesting too, how even marketing has evolved for a musician. Being able to have access to musicians. I think the pandemic reshaped a lot of that for a lot of people too. Because being isolated, especially in a lot of the bigger cities, um, obviously I didn't have an income. So I started teaching lessons, but then I realized that not a lot of people play bass. And people didn't really want to learn bass, they just wanted to talk about music or talk about bass. So I would say like 60% of my lessons were not even for bass, they were just uh tequila and conversation. Okay. We're doing this over Zoom. Yes. Yep. Yeah, Zoom, uh, I think Zoom was peaking in 2020. But you know, as marketing, you know, as a musician, how do you market yourself when you don't have a gig? Right. Or when you don't have a job. You know, you gotta create um fun ways to either make revenue and make it fun for people, make people talk about you, make people make your band stay relevant. Right, you know.

SPEAKER_02: 25:07

But you've been a basis for lots of bands over the years.

SPEAKER_03: 25:10

I have been in several projects. A lot of my projects took a hiatus in 2025, which was, I think, a good for everyone. Um, a lot of moving parts. Like I have a uh like kind of like a punk metal band called Death Kings, and we're getting back together in 2026. Awesome. We got a new drummer, great gigs, uh Doom Flamingo taking a break, but there's talk of uh getting back together in 2026 and doing some shows. Nice. And check out that band if you haven't. That's uh uh you know a little sexier side of the music that we make, you know. And Humphreys is obviously gonna keep uh trudging along. Right. Um, I also have another band called the Omega Moose, but that's all imp improvised music from the 80s. You got a lot going on. Yeah, yeah. That's a lot of people. You know, when when your brain like is all over the place, it's fun to jump into these type of projects and you know, just let out you've got the aggression and chaos and in the metal.

SPEAKER_02: 26:03

You got the sexier vibes with the I'm just envisioning you on sunset and the viper room, like wearing all black with your mohawk. Yeah, that was a time. It was a time. That was a time. The viper room was good times.

SPEAKER_05: 26:15

What's what's the key to staying together? You uh as a band, you've been together for what, 27 years? You've described it as a brotherhood in other interviews. Some, you know, plenty of people describe it as a marriage. How do you keep things fresh? How do you stay together?

SPEAKER_03: 26:31

Well, this is the therapy portion. Uh, I mean, it's gonna sound cliche, but the it's just comes down to the basics. Honesty and open communication. Yeah. And then, you know, being able to take a punch, especially with your brothers. Like, you can't have thick skin. You gotta be able to lay into each other. At least that's the way we roll. Um, when mistakes happen, be cool about it. You know, like even in the improv comedy world, like the yes and every night, 40% at least of our shows, three-hour shows, are completely improvised. Yeah. If you don't like what somebody else is doing, you can't be the jerk who like, I'm not gonna stop playing. Yeah, I mean, nobody wants to pay money to come see that. So you're always we've programmed ourselves to be open to no matter what happens, even if it's not what you thought or where it should go, be cool about that.

SPEAKER_05: 27:23

Very yes and about you. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 27:25

And over the years we've learned that you need to talk about it, but sometimes you shouldn't talk about it, like right after. Let a day pass, and then have a group listening and be like, what were you thinking here? Like, I don't know if this works. And I can get specific, like our keyboard, well, I mean, there's six, there's six band members up there. Yeah. Sometimes uh Joel, our keyboard, great keyboard player, can take a punch. Uh there's times where depending on what pedal you're playing, if I start playing an octave pedal or something that's lower or an envelope filter, sometimes we like, oh, I can do that too. And it it doesn't always work for the song. And then we can have a conversation about it. I'd be like, hey man, if I'm going on this low octave, you should do longer note stuff on the synth. Okay, that's a good idea. Yeah. Instead of being like, well, screw you, dude. Well, and then you get into stupid fights. Yeah, right. So we have we've we've really learned to be able to talk about it. Um don't let it, don't bury it down because then the Tom Petty comes out. You start getting mad about, I mean, someone starts brushing their teeth in the store bus and you're like, I hate you. You gotta avoid that stuff. And it's uh, you know, catching up with each other or or like I said, like walking away from things. Yeah, sometimes the best part of when you're on the road with six dudes or 12 dudes as we are, when we go back home to our families, yeah, I don't want to talk to any of them. Right. They don't want to talk to me, you know, to have that. And I'm sure after six days, my wife's like, go. Yeah, yeah. So there's that nice balance for even home life. Yeah, you know, so that's that's all part of being a musician on the road. But if you're not honest and if you don't like truly respect each other, I don't think it's ever really going to work, go going to work long because it it becomes kind of work. Sure. And if you're improvising, that music's never really gonna be pure. Yeah, right. You know, yeah, at least uh no, it's not it's just not gonna be pure at the level you're trying to present it to.

SPEAKER_05: 29:17

It seems like authenticity is intrinsic to the Humphreys McGee brand, right? And and so have you ever had a moment where you've had to call out a band member to say, it seems like you're making this for other people, not for not for yourself or not for us.

SPEAKER_03: 29:33

Oh, yes. I'm sure you could ask me any question and we've had all happen. Sure for everything. I think there's you know, it's interesting. I've thought about this back in the 90s, you know. Would it be cool to meet the guys you thought were rock stars? Like, or would that have ruined it? Probably ruined it for me. Probably ruined it, yeah. So we've we've thought about that a lot. We're not rock stars in any way. We're just like we're just jam jamming musicians, you know. But we've we've thought. That having a certain connectivity with our fans is the answer. Right. And is cool. Come come to the show where there's a bowling alley and do a raffle and we'll bowl with you and we'll hang out. Now, would I have liked to bowl with Trent Reznor in 99? Yeah. It probably would have been cool. You know? Maybe if I did it with Maynard, maybe you know, from Tool, maybe, maybe, maybe he would have been weird. Yeah. And then I wouldn't have liked it. So I don't know. There's these levels of like, should we be should you have connectivity? What's too much? So to your question, you know, some people are on Twitter and people are asking, oh, do this, do this, do this. And then it becomes, are you doing what you want to do and what the man wants to do? Or are you just saying, Oh, it's a guy's birthday, it's this guy, it's this guy. Now the whole set is favors. Yeah. And it's like, wait a second, where's the integrity of like I do this because I want to do it? So you have to have a balance. Right. And again, that just comes to being able to talk about it.

SPEAKER_02: 30:53

Really crazy super fan encounters over the years.

SPEAKER_03: 30:56

Oh, for sure. Sure. I think everybody has.

SPEAKER_02: 30:59

Yeah. I used to be in PR and I would some of the stuff that I would have to hear people deal with as musicians was off the charts. Do you want to share one of those stories?

SPEAKER_03: 31:08

I would love to hear one. Um crazy, like crazy fan stories.

SPEAKER_02: 31:12

Just like you know, obsessive wild people.

SPEAKER_03: 31:17

I mean, I can't go into the details of stuff. I mean, we've had stalkers that have there's been there's been uh you know, restraining orders and weird stuff like that. People parked out people's houses. Weird weird stuff. Um, at shows, you know, some naked people, you know, some beers thrown, breaking gear, you know, just normal rock and roll stuff. Okay.

SPEAKER_02: 31:38

That's not fun. So if I go to one of your concerts, I should expect to see, you know, some, you know.

SPEAKER_03: 31:43

I I wouldn't say that, you know, I I would promote nudity. I wouldn't I wouldn't care I wouldn't guarantee that. But what you know I don't know if you I don't know. I think it's pretty normal, but I mean 27 years, you know, a lot of stuff happens. That's that's so fun. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 31:57

No, what's your uh ideal venue to play here in Charleston? Is it Poor House?

SPEAKER_03: 32:00

In Charleston? I mean Poorhouse is is is um is family. It's great. But being out on the beach at the wind jammer, I love the wind jammer. Yeah, and then you know, 7 to 9:30, like yeah when you have kids. Yeah, I love that.

SPEAKER_05: 32:16

It's the inside state. I love karaoke. Oh yeah, let's do it. Yeah, I love it. Let's go too. Let's go.

SPEAKER_02: 32:21

I love the venue in North Charleston too. Um, outside like it was with all the land. What's what's my kind of think of it right now?

SPEAKER_04: 32:27

Firefly.

SPEAKER_02: 32:28

Firefly.

SPEAKER_03: 32:29

Firefly was cool. And you know, a big shout out to Charleston too, because a lot of, you know, when you would look on a map, it was like, okay, Charlotte, Atlanta, maybe Jacksonville. Like, but they're getting a lot of bigger acts that are pausing and coming to Charleston, which is I think really cool. When I left Chicago, the weirdest thing for me after spending 12 years in a huge US city and being a sports fan was you there's like six teams. So I always go to a pro sport game, and then every night of the week till four in the morning, I can find any genre of music and any concert and everything to go see. Right. And then when I came to Charleston, I was like, whoa, there's no professional sports team. No big shout out to Stingrays and River Dogs, big love for that. But like there's no on the pro circuit, and then music-wise, um, having you know on that level, like there is in New York or Chicago, was a little bit different because I didn't have kids yet, so I would go out a lot. I'd be like, Okay, look what's playing. There's punk rock band at the House of Blues. Oh, the Metro's having crazy DJ that no one's heard of.

SPEAKER_02: 33:28

And then my biggest complaint about Charleston. I love the music scene, but I feel like it's ticket advanced to ticket master way in advance. Like I can't walk into the Troubadour house, you know, or any of those places and spend 15 bucks on a ticket here, somebody whenever I want.

SPEAKER_03: 33:41

Yeah, but I don't think this city was built for that.

SPEAKER_02: 33:44

Well, if I win the lottery, um that's my number one goal is to have a place like that.

SPEAKER_05: 33:48

I'm rooting for you, Stephanie.

SPEAKER_02: 33:50

Thanks.

SPEAKER_03: 33:50

You bet.

SPEAKER_02: 33:51

My husband hears this complaint every week. I'm like, well, I just want to go here bad.

SPEAKER_03: 33:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 33:54

It's like everything's sold out. I'm like, well, I didn't think about it until right now.

SPEAKER_03: 33:58

You know, Chicago, Austin, Philly, New Orleans. If you could build the one thing here that could bring that vibe, I'm all for it. You know, but I just don't know if this city is that. Yeah, you know, it might not be nightmare.

SPEAKER_02: 34:14

Well, we would all be there, so that's what counts. Well, I'm very excited for you, and it's it's crazy that you've been having this career for this long. That's very, very impressive. You're the one percent. Uh am I?

SPEAKER_05: 34:25

All right, 47,000 live songs according to your website.

SPEAKER_03: 34:30

We do keep a lot of stats.

SPEAKER_05: 34:31

3,000. I love the stats. I'm a stat nerd. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 34:34

You did you collect baseball cards?

SPEAKER_05: 34:36

Yeah, I sure did. Yeah, yeah. So 3,000 shows almost. 47,000 live songs. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 34:43

Do you have a favorite? Uh so there's I mean, there's not there's moments that I I certainly remember. I mean, we played Fuji Rock in 2006 and playing to um, you know, like 20,000 Japanese people who can't speak English, but they're singing the words. That's amazing. Like that's that's kind of mind-blowing. Yeah. Um, we used to do Amsterdam every other year in the mid-2000s, which was just traveling to Europe, you know, during those shows. But here in the United States, Red Rocks is it never gets old. Yeah, going there and looking up, and it's just um, that's the number one venue on my bucket list. Oh, yeah, you you need to go.

SPEAKER_02: 35:19

Yeah, I've done Hollywood Bowl and all of those, but um, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 35:22

I mean, we did C BGBs. No, C BGB's, wow. Sorry. I saw there's something. There was some somebody sent me a meme or something. It was like, stop wearing C BGB's t-shirts. Tell your parents to stop wearing it too. I didn't realize people were still wearing it, but I was like, Am I allowed to wear it if I played it? Yeah, yeah. I think absolutely you've got precious rules.

SPEAKER_02: 35:42

I was so bummed when that venue closed up.

SPEAKER_03: 35:44

Yeah, yeah. Everything, you know, it happened. Chicago had a lot of legendary venues turnover. The double door was a lot of great bands were there. Just part of life, I guess.

SPEAKER_02: 35:55

Yep. Yeah. Okay. Wow. Oh, C BGB's, that was awesome. So well, I'm very excited for you. Now, where can people hear you? You do you have any gigs coming up anytime soon?

SPEAKER_03: 36:06

Um, I have two gigs in 2025 in Indianapolis. Okay. We're gonna be there, and then that wraps it up. We're gonna take a nice break until New Year's. Um, I think you pulled up the artwork. We're doing two shows for New Year's in Atlanta at the Tabernacle. Oh, that's a great venue. And because of the way the calendar has fallen, we are gonna play the salt shed in cold Chicago. Indoors, of course. Um, on that Friday and Saturday. Fun. And then it begins. Our band always hits hard January through May. So ski seasons, uh, you know, luckily some of us ski. So we've got Aspen, Bozeman, uh, Colorado, Utah, um, the the Northeast. Um, and then I think yesterday we just announced that we're doing a gig in Mexico with like four other bands. Nice. Which is a four-day event. Fantastic. And it's it's all the bands, you know, Mega Moose, the Death Kings, all the side project bands. Oh, you're gonna be playing topics. Which is great, because you're in paradise, you're you know, all inclusive, everybody's light, everybody's having a great time. Spectacular just get to make a ton of music with all a lot of your friends. That's great. Yeah, so that's fun. And and then after that, we'll see, you know. Not really, not really turning it up yet. Yeah, hopefully it's yeah, yeah. Usually, usually we wait for it to warm up.

SPEAKER_02: 37:20

Yeah, you know that would make sense. Yeah, yeah. Well, we'll all be there.

SPEAKER_05: 37:23

Play something outdoors. Yeah, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_02: 37:25

Well, thank you so much for being here with us today. Thank you for asking. I'm going to be jamming out on the way home, which is very exciting. So, how can everybody hear, but you give your shout outs?

SPEAKER_03: 37:34

Um, so if you're looking for me, Ryan Stasick, it's just my name. Very easy to find. Um, Umfreeze.com. Uh on Umfrize.com, pretty much everything's there. There's a link to all the tour dates, the merchandise, upcoming events, um, Nuggs.net, where we record every live show. Okay. Um, some of them are live videos. I know we were just in Brooklyn for three nights, and all of those were posted uh or live video, live shot video as well. So uh, you know, ask chat GPT or Siri. I mean, we're we're really easy to find.

SPEAKER_04: 38:06

Just give you a quick Google. It's worth the Google.

SPEAKER_02: 38:09

Well, you made uh a new fan in Tom, so he's very excited.

SPEAKER_04: 38:12

Absolutely. I'm in. Welcome, welcome to the family. I I love it.

SPEAKER_02: 38:16

Awesome. All right, Charleston, thank you for being with us today. Tom, thank you. This was fun. Yes. We need to do this. Our first together.

SPEAKER_05: 38:22

Let's do it again. I love it. I love it.

SPEAKER_02: 38:24

We put on the books. So uh thank you for being here with us today. Of course, uh, thank you to Charleston Media Solutions for recording and SCRA for being our podcast sponsor, our official podcast sponsor. And uh, I guess we'll see you next time. Thanks for again.

SPEAKER_03: 38:38

Thank you. Thanks, Brian.

SPEAKER_02: 38:39

Bye, Charleston.

SPEAKER_04: 38:40

Bye.