Justin Powell, Karl Engelmann, Jake Cinninger, Steve “Krojo” Krojniewski
In the midst of Umphrey’s McGee’s first headlining summer tour, guitarist/vocalist Jake Cinninger finds time to return to his roots with Living Room from Ali Baba’s Tahini. ABT was the band the seasoned six-stringslinger was in at the time he joined the fledgling Chicago jamband in September 2000. The rest, as they say, is history, as Umphrey’s enters its second decade as one of the ‘new generation’ jam/improv/prog rockers. UM may have created their own genre onto themselves. And that word genre is the key here, as Ali Baba’s Tahini has created a dynamically eclectic album, five years in the making, with many sonic twists and turns, showing a range of genre influences from rockabilly to country to punk to a trip down melancholia way with Simon & Garfunkel. Jambands.com sits down with Cinninger on the day of a UM gig in Buffalo to discuss the project’s genesis, recording sessions, and meticulous mixing process, which produced a fine album that serves to disprove that old adage that you can’t go home again.
Indeed, you can, and Cinninger in his delightfully detailed, humorous, and open way, ponders the work in astute fashion while always appearing like a master craftsman toiling in his trade to get everything just exactly perfect. Well, he and his longtime ABT cohorts and new recruits have done that even while Cinninger prepares for fatherhood for the first time. “I’ve got a baby boy that’s due around August 18,” says Cinninger. “I’m the first one out of the whole organization to have one; so hopefully, it’ll be a domino theory. We’re going with Townes Jacob, which is after Townes Van Zandt. I think he’s the most amazing lyricist, and I always really liked that name and how it is spelled—Townes. And people don’t really use that a whole lot. It’s kind of a cool, unusual, old Southern name.”
RR: I am familiar with your work and interests, but I was surprised at the unexpected pleasures found on Living Room, a fantastic record on diverse levels.
JC: Thanks. (laughs) That’s why we took so long because we wanted to make sure all the music was in the right spots. We had so many songs, and I didn’t want to cram the disc full of stuff, but I wanted it to be versatile, and show off all the little dips and turns and melodies and dynamics that the record could go through. It kind of comes off like a Ween record in a way because it goes everywhere.
RR: I have that Ween comparison in my notes for the record. With any other artist, a band is often not able to show that many colors over the course of a record and get away with it. But you made it work.
JC: It was just basically over five years we had been working on the project, and it’s nice when you can work, and get away from a project for a while, and then go back to the drawing board. Throughout five years, I would slowly start adding things, maybe taking away, and doing rough mixes because I did everything ‘in house’. The only thing that was done outside was the mastering job. It was a project that I really took close to the heart, and worked at very slowly to make it sound like the way it does, which was multiple mixes, and finding the right mix. We did everything old school through analog gear, and mixing on a big analog desk, and did everything the old way. Nothing was Pro Toolsed-out or modern at all on the record, which is nice because we live in an era of nothing but Pro Toolsed-out music. (laughs)
RR: Tell me a little bit about where Living Room was recorded.
JC: I’ve got a great little studio in my hometown [Niles] in Michigan called Boon Dock Studios. It’s basically where I grew up. [The studio] is way out in the woods, it’s on a dead end road, and it’s great. Over the last twenty years, I’ve been building this place up, and getting it where it’s pretty much a professional recording studio.
RR: Describe the songwriting process you have with Karl Engelmann, and his importance in the collaborative nature of this project.
JC: Oh, yeah, Karl is the brainchild behind a lot of the music. He’ll come to me with a kind of folk ditty that is simply on acoustic guitar with chords and lyrics, and we tried to manifest it into a special recording session. A lot of it is just stripped-down thought like “How are we going to turn this simple song into something special?” as far as the way it is arranged, and the way it’s recorded.
The track “Living Room,” for example, we did a lot of that stuff live in one take. The vibe of the take was perfect. That’s what we wanted. It’s like going back to the old way of recording, and Karl is all about that. He puts the production in my hands, so he can manifest his role as the singer and a songwriter. I’ll come in and clean up some of the form, and do a little haircut to some of the songs, and get them at a certain time. Some of the songs are like two minutes. (laughs) We wanted to keep them short and quirky.
So Karl is really integral. He lives in Charleston, South Carolina, and we send stuff back and forth. He’ll say, “Oh, what do you think of this song? What do you think of that?” He is constantly writing. If I’m Frank Zappa, he’s Captain Beefheart. (laughter)
RR: What are some of the changes that have happened with your relationship?
JC: I think we started to get away from writing about food and stuff like that. (laughter) We’re a little more grown up, so the subject matter of the new record is a little more closer to home. I just love some of the topics that Karl sings about—the quirky lyricism.
RR: Not to mention the fact that you have other band members who have been with Ali Baba’s Tahini for a while, and some who are new.
JC: Yeah, Justin Powell on keyboards, and a touring bass player, Jeff Hinkle. When we tour or do studio stuff, we can play as a band and get that band vibe, instead of multi-tracking everything out one at a time. [Longtime drummer Steve “Krojo” Krojniewski rounds out the quintet.]
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