These podcasts have now been supplemented with a collection of Jimmy Stewarts performed in concerts throughout last year. This assemblage has even been issued on limited-issue CD's that have been distributed last month at the Bonnaroo Music Festival, as well as the band's online store. It's also available digitally via the iTunes Store and UMLive.net.

Jimmy Stewart 2007, the name of this special-release collection, takes those improv portions of songs and edits them down into their own tracks, 25 in all. They are logically labeled by the name of the song the Jimmy Stewart was spun off from, followed by the date and location of the performance. For example, "The Crooked One - 4.19.07 - Buffalo, NY." The tracks all run together, so sometimes the edit produces some smooth transitions, and sometimes it's abrupt.

They're almost all instrumental; some inconsequential vocals finally appears on the 18th track. For not having much to go on in advance, these tracks are nicely varied and sometimes go through several chord progression and tempo changes within the same Jimmy Stewart. Some of the cuts are more interesting than others, but none sound they're just meandering. The better ones to my ears include "E.T.I - 05.05.07 - Dallas, TX," "JaJunk - 7.19.07 - Detroit Lakes, MN," and "Higgins - 12.29.07 - Chicago, IL," which contains some nifty interlocking guitar work between Jake Cinninger and Brendan Bayliss.

All told, it has much the same feel as Frank Zappa's Shut Up And Play Your Guitar albums, expect instead of hearing one guy wank away on the guitar, you get to listen to the entire band create collectively. Maybe that's still not enough to warrant as many listens as a studio release like The Bottom Half CD we covered last year, but it might be far and above the most compelling listen of full-on improv from any rock band working today.