Today we look back to December 2001 and the String Cheese Incident’s first cover feature. To hear the SCI of 2012, today’s installment of our Relix Live Fridays series presents portions of the band’s performance at Electric Forest 2012

On New Year’s Eve, 2001, the close of a truly screwed-up year, if you happen to be one of the most fortunate beings on planet earth you’re in San Francisco, peeking out with String Cheese Incident. This night marks the end of SCI’s 19-city year-end schedule, which started in Toronto on October 23 and culminates here with three nights on stage and the final extravagant Superheroes Costume Ball. The season is a triumph for String Cheese, as they fill America’s best stadiums, arenas and theaters, packing them with fervent devotees – from student Meccas Syracuse and Amherst, to their much-anticipated Halloween performance at Madison Square Garden, to Chapel Hill and Athens, GA where they sell out weeks in advance. Asheville, Gainesville, Philadelphia – String Cheese charms the deep south and melts the rust belt. Fans arrive early, set up residence in the parking lots and hawk T-shirts and veggie burritos to get by. The overflow makes its temporary home wherever the band sets down. Traveling thousands of miles to be there is not uncommon. For this is more than entertainment. This is collective energy verging on the supernatural, or maybe it’s love.

Superheroes

SCI’s autumn conquest comes on the heels of a summer ripe with heady successes – growing legions of fans and the band’s most successful album release to date, Outside Inside, acclaimed for its improved vocals and sound quality. True, the disk was denigrated by some hardcores for slipping toward the mainstream and retail sales may have fallen short of aggressive management goals. But 50,000 copies is no small feat for a jamband that emerged from the grassroots of Colorado nine years ago and has rejected commercial management in favor of the homegrown variety.

In December, SCI goes multimedia with its DVD debut, Evolution, produced by award-winning filmmakers Rick Ringbakk and Joe Coleman. SCI’s self-celebratory Evolution features concert footage, parade shots and interviews from last year’s over-the-top New Year’s celebration in Portland Oregon. There are also band and crew interviews and film from Horning’s Hideout 2000. The DVD is a Cheesehead’s dream, and fits nicely alongside SciGear shirts, posters, patches, videos and jigsaw puzzles. Cheese, cheese, cheese – it’s better on everything.

And practically everyone can get a slice of the Cheese. The band actively invites fans to join them as grassroots representatives whose job is to spread the buzz – pasting up posters, handing out flyers, calling local radio stations and asking them to play String Cheese tunes. In return, the band provides encouragement and free concert tickets when they can. Nationwide, over 10,000 “Pirates,” as they call them, have joined the cause. “With grand vision and the support of their fans,” the band’s website proclaims, “The String Cheese Incident continues to achieve the inconceivable.”

So yeah, it’s more than just the music, which like the Grateful Dead, to whom they are often compared, has its roots firmly planted in American folk with a preference for improvisational live jamming over studio versions. There is something super-charged in the air when the band is around.

“The strongest thing they do is create that holy space,” says John Barlow, who as a lyrical contributor to the Grateful Dead, witnessed much of that band’s rise and demise, and is now collaborating with String Cheese. “It is a group endeavor that involves everybody – whether they are playing guitar or hula-hooping in the audience, it is collective. They and their fans provide another zone where that mysterious creature that I am so attached to can dwell . . . I haven’t seen that creature since the Grateful Dead dropped dead. It is like being in a religion where all the places to worship have been destroyed. Here is a new cathedral being erected, and I want to help build it.”

Whatever the band throws out, the crowd gives back even stronger. A String Cheese Incident “is more than just listening to good musicians,” explains Audrey Wintory, a Fort Collins, Colorado fan who has experienced over 70 incidents. “It’s being around family, feeling more positive energy than anywhere else, experiencing magic and hearing things done musically I never dreamed possible. There is no other feeling like being a part of several thousand fans all going crazy with energy and excitement. Sometimes the energy is so thick you can hardly breathe.”

All this from five down-home guys who are still marveling at how it all happened. True to the String Cheese vibe, in a recent interview with Relix they come across as humbled by the experience, appreciative of where they are and where they are heading, thankful for their small-town roots and the fans that have propelled them on the path.

A ski bums’ tale

Crested Butte, Colorado is a hard place to find on the map. The name in small red letters points out the nearby ski area, rather than the town itself. Green shading designates the expanse of national forest and wilderness immediately outside this 150-plus year old mining town nestled in the Elk Mountains. Colorado’s famous ski resort Aspen is a mere 45 miles away, but that is via a rugged jeep ride over 13,000-foot Pearl Pass – often only in summer. One road leads in and out of the “butte” in the winter.

Elk Avenue, the eight-block main drag, is lined with restaurants, bars and gift shops. Most residents opt to get around on old cruiser bikes that usually stay unlocked. Deep powder skiing in the winter and miles of Aspen-laced mountain bike trails in the summer have made Crested Butte a haven for a few thousands outdoor buffs seeking refuge from “the real world.” It seems an unlikely place from which a band would make the jump to national prominence, but this laidback atmosphere has everything to do with the original genesis of the String Cheese Incident.

The early history of String Cheese reads like a typical ski bum’s tale – doing whatever it takes, from restaurant work to carpentry to get time on the mountain. The band’s original four members seem drawn together by fate, as well as quality open-air recreation. Guitarist Billy Nershi spent 14 years honing his guitar skills in the bars of Telluride, Colorado before heading to Crested Butte for a change of scenery. In 1993, he fortuitously parked his blue school bus in front of the home of drummer Michael Travis. Bassist Keith Moseley, who at that time played bluegrass guitar with the Whiskey Crate Warriors, lived nearby, while fiddle and electric mandolin player Michael Kang – according to Moseley – “spent most of his time couch surfing around town.” Everyone interacted and played together to some degree and picked up odd gigs where they could be found. Moseley rode with his acoustic guitar on the Ski Town bus, entertaining skiers on their way back to town from the mountain. Kang and Nershi performed slope-side for skiers stranded in long lift lines.

“The catch was we were supposed to play on warm sunny days,” laughs Kang at his earliest gig, “which everybody who lives in Crested Butte knows, is only a couple times a winter. It was kind of a running joke that we were basically a couple of scammers. But we did our part and entertained people.”

Nershi and Kang soon landed an après ski gig at Casey’s Restaurant & Bar for $35 a night. Moseley joined them after he was convinced to switch to bass, even though the bar was unwilling to pay for another musician. “They got paid, and eventually I managed to get a free meal,” Moseley recalls laughing, “but many a musician has played for free food and been happy to get it.”

The Blue String Experience, as they were first called, finally came together as a whole in 1993 for “Local’s Night” at the Crested Butte Center for the Arts. “We heard Travis (who at that time didn’t have a drum kit, but played congas) was back in town,” recalls Nershi. “I had never met him, but the others had played with him. We went over to Travis’ house and practiced for about an hour. Then we went up and played four songs.”

“The response was really… almost overwhelming,” Moseley reminisces. “The crowd loved it. We had so much fun we decided to make the four-piece a reality. We learned more tunes and booked more gigs in Telluride and Crested Butte and started traveling a bit playing more ski towns. That was it; that was the beginning.”

The concept of an incident

The Blue String Experience soon segued into the Blue String Quartet, then the Cheesy Blue String Quartet. ( “We were kind of cheesy, so we tossed that on there,” says Moseley.) Eventually, the current moniker stuck and the band began plotting a touring course where the best skiing and mountain biking could be found. The music was initially more of a convenient excuse to go somewhere interesting – and get paid for it – but it built into something more. Their first big break was landing the opening slot at the 1994 Telluride Bluegrass Festival, situated in the town park and surrounded by 13,000-foot peaks.

“I remember playing the set and being overwhelmed looking at the mountains, the huge crowd and thinking ‘we pulled it off,’” Moseley recalls grinning. “There were probably 4,000 people there when we went on stage. We all had the same realization: ‘If we really gave this our all, we might be able to make a career of this.’ That was the moment when I knew we could do it. There were a lot of dark moments between then and now when I wasn’t so sure, but we persevered.”

Nershi recalls the band being “pretty green back then,” with Travis on his first drum kit and Moseley still learning the bass. Anyone listening to early Dead tapes will hear a striking similarity – a raw sound but also incredible potential. The touring experience and crowd reaction proved the band had chemistry; all they needed to do was hone their skills. “I think we have had that sense from the beginning and it was good for us,” explains Moseley of the band’s early lack of musicianship. “It kept us on our toes. Everybody worked hard at their instruments and songwriting. We still push each other. What keeps the band alive is continuously striving to improve.”

Their work ethic also includes long practice sessions almost daily while on the road. “We certainly push ourselves individually, and in the group situation too, pulling off wacky, big epic songs,” says keyboardist Kyle Hollingsworth who joined the band in 1996. “It is fun and it doesn’t have to be absolutely perfect. It’s more like ‘Let’s do something new and exciting.’ We have different nights. There are five guys so we go through a band member each night. On my night, I try to think of a cool jam to throw in a song or maybe we all bark like animals from a zoo or something.”

Fast forward a few years, several hundred gigs, five albums and numerous experimental jams later and the String Cheese Incident have mastered their instruments, but see no need to slow down anytime soon. If there is still any weak spot, it is in their vocals, which don’t always match up to the high-quality playing. Nershi has taken some private vocal lessons, while the band has occasionally invited a vocal instructor to rehearsal sessions, though this instruction is somewhat sporadic. Their last “lesson” was more than a year ago. Fans, however, seem unperturbed and continue to show up in increasing numbers. This has caused a rather fast jump into ever-larger venues. String Cheese has pushed themselves harder to fill the bigger spaces with high-energy vibrations. The question is, can they cope with the added pressures that come with playing before 30,000 people, rather than 3,000?

“We just need to put our egos aside and connect as five people who play music with our heart and soul,” Moseley explains. “It is hard not to feel some of the expectations of the larger crowds and to step up our game. It is something I think we will always wrestle with.”

And not everyone loves the Cheese. Like all bands, there is an outer limit to their fan base, and some people actually hate them, although “hate” seems unlikely for such a likeable bunch of guys. Their “problem” may revolve around the music, which for some lacks sophistication and any hint of an urban edge. Or it may revolve around the image of so-called “hippie jambands,” Phish and the Dead, included. The tie-dye wearing (or not) twirling masses grooving to every note of seemingly endless songs, leave some concertgoers cold, unable find the value in what is happening around them. The music doesn’t beckon to them, and neither does the crowd. Others find a freedom of expression that is not available at regular concerts – or in life in general for that matter.

String Cheese Inc.

For a neo-hippy band of former ski bums, String Cheese evinces a surprising corporate savvy. They maintain control of everything band-related by working through several companies formed expressly for the purpose of shaping the band’s – and their fans’ – destinies. Fans might see SCI’s carefree vibe, but keeping everything flowing smoothly, from ticket and album sales, to tour and travel booking and merchandise sales, requires as much business know-how as it takes to figure out a hot jam. In the early days, Moseley did most of the booking and the band just adapted to business situations as they presented themselves.

“The plan was always: ‘Let’s do this our way. Let’s not jump through the hoops that the record industry holds out for you… make videos or hits for the radio,’” explains Moseley. “It is more like what the Dead or Phish did. Just tour and keep as much control of the project as we can. We don’t want to work for ‘the man’ – whoever that is – who owns the record contract. From early on, it has been real important for us to maintain control of our careers.”

As the popularity of the band grew, the need for a management squad became apparent. Enter the corporate side of SCI. The band created management companies as the need arose and stocked them with people they knew and trusted. When travel demands increased – getting themselves and fans to Costa Rica, in particular – Madison House Travel was formed. SCI Fidelity Records was created to release their albums and the albums of other artists they admired (Billy & Liza, DJ Harry, Comotion and Keller Williams). SCI Ticketing (which just added King Crimson to its roster), SCI Gear, Madison House Publicity and Madison House Design complete the cast. The companies now number seven and support an ever-growing cast of extras – 33 in the Boulder offices and 25 on the road.

While adding a management team removed some of the pressure and allowed the band more freedom to concentrate on music, a new pressure arose: the burden of supporting a large extended family. “I’m not sure we imagined it would reach this point,” Moseley says. “I mean, we have all these people who work for us and help make it happen. It is a pretty big thing.”

“We spend a lot of money,” comments Carrie Lombardi of Madison House. “But part of why the band has gotten where they are is because they put everything back into it. None of the boys are pulling in the big incomes.”

String Cheese (or as self-styled Cognitive Dissident John Perry Barlow phrased it, “Grateful Dead 2.0” ) take a page from the GD book, but are aware of the pitfalls that await should the band’s growth exceed its control: having to play ever-larger arenas to generate the income necessary to support the organization. The key to SCI’s plan is a fairly conservative corporate model: diversify.

“We’re able to learn from past experiences, from people with similar models,” Lombardi continues. “The difference is that we’re developing other artists to avoid having to be dependent on one thing. We don’t want to create an incestuous organism, but create independent businesses that work. Right now, all the companies are very diverse, so we don’t think that the band feels a lot of pressure from us; I think they’re grateful that we’re here.”

It is this interdependence between the band and their off-shoots that allow the members more time to focus on the tunes. “It is pretty much about the music still,” concludes Nershi. “It is not something I want to sit up at night and think about, but we do like to kid ourselves it is still only about the music.”

The Cheese stands alone

“There are a lot of bands out there that recognize the importance of the band-audience connection, but none like the String Cheese Incident,” declares fan Daev Brown of Boulder, Colorado, the band’s current home base. “In many cases, bands are conscious of the exchange, but if the audience has the perception of being at ‘just a show’ then that connection is incomplete.” The vast majority of SCI fans possess a nearly religious belief in the pure exchange of energy between band and audience, Brown believes. “When a large audience and the band are in tune and consciously circulating the energy, that’s when it becomes more than a show.” For many, it is this interaction that sets String Cheese apart from other bands on the “jam scene.”

The band is willing to take chances, too, for example mixing funk, rock, jazz, bluegrass and Latin rhythms all within the same song. If the experiment fails, no harm done, the crowd is ready to pick them up for another try. This latitude encourages the band to push their hybrid sound further, rather than opt to play it safe every night. When it all goes right, the combined energy can pull down the house.

This experimental attitude corresponds with “where we are as people,” Moseley explains. “It is good to get pushed. You are either expanding as a person with knowledge and growth and exploration in trying new things, or you are contracting out of fear or anger or whatever. We have a crowd that encourages us to expand and grow. I feel really fortunate that my passion for playing music is so closely tied to the same lessons that I need to learn in my life, and that I get support in that.”

String Cheese supports that need in their fans as well, encouraging fans to get involved as part of an incident, and to make each event unique. At past Fall Festival shows, they decorated venues with hay bales, corn stalks and pumpkins to help set the mood. The band set up lasers at Red Rocks to heighten the intensity. Horning’s Hideout shows take things a step further. The band dresses in costumes while fans jump through flaming hoops and join in parades and other merriment that changes them from listeners to active, creative participants.

“Everyone out there has a spark of creative energy within them that is either fostered or dormant,” Kang says. “We will promote any opportunity we can to let people enjoy their own creativity.”
“Somebody once said to me, ‘The String Cheese Incident is the soundtrack to my life’ and I never forgot that,” recollects Moseley. “I really love that thought. . . Maybe we are the focal point that brings some of it together, but we are just the band that they go see. It is the community that is created around that – people coming together and sharing ideas and networking with each other, family and friends, doing their own art, whatever it might be. For us to be a catalyst, that is what I really get off on the most.”

Sometimes it gets scary

Outside the venue, the String Cheese soundtrack plays for the many fans who gather early and stay late. As the band grows, so does the scene surrounding them, forcing the band to keep a closer eye on the proceedings. They are all too aware of the pitfalls the Dead encountered with their traveling menagerie, i.e., hard drug use, venue destruction and a reputation that attracted police knowing they could make some busts. String Cheese remains hesitant to exert control over the scene, but feels a gentle nudge in the right direction can’t hurt. Their goal is to encourage an ambiance of creativity, peace and safety. This works for now, but as venue size increases, so will the challenges and that initial nudge may need to become a push. Though String Cheese currently keeps a discrete distance, even now their growing popularity requires a bit more intervention than anyone could have foreseen.

“I don’t think any of us really could have imagined it would grow to something like this,” says Moseley. “The cool part is we have had our hands in it from the beginning, growing the scene, tailoring and controlling the elements we do like, keeping the drug thing in check and running off the nitrous vendors and scalpers. We want people there who have something positive to contribute.”
“What we have going right now is very positive,” concurs Hollingsworth. “Sometimes it can get a little scary depending on what kind of drug use is going on. The positive part is that it is like a caravan or a traveling circus where you can go and sell your wares and get into shows. That was one of my favorite things about going to Dead shows. I want to encourage it.”

Core fans, many of whom are second generation Deadheads who’ve heard of their parents’ encounters on the Dead scene, help keep a handle on the scene’s growth. New faces may see the opportunity to make a buck, but a solid nucleus takes it upon themselves to curtail shady activities and even goes so far as to clean up each venue – inside and out – following a performance. Impressed promoters have been quick to welcome them back. The fans know they have found something in the String Cheese Incident worth protecting and are, as Barlow puts it, “thoughtlessly thoughtful,” in watching out for the band’s best interests. It is a reciprocal respect cherished by both the band and fans. As the band continues to grow, maintaining the current vibe will become increasingly difficult. But for now, the collective dynamic is alive and well.

A case in point is the May 2000 International Incident in Costa Rica. With 2,000 fans making the long journey, the band saw a chance to produce more than just a spectacle of sound and light in a tropical setting. So they arranged opportunities to learn about local issues threatening the rainforest. They contributed to a children’s rainforest preservation fund and donated a portion of their proceeds to a local school for a computer lab. Closer to home, String Cheese plays an annual benefit in Boulder, which in 2000 raised over $20,000 to buy food and clothing for Native American groups and families in need of assistance.

This year, String Cheese established Gouda Causes as their not-for-profit charitable arm. Still in its formative stages, Gouda Causes will probably funnel money into existing non-profit efforts in communities where the band plays. “This way,” Moseley explains. “we will have more of a direct impact on the causes we feel strongly about. It is somewhere we are hoping to exert some positive influence for years.”

Bringing the outside in

To reach fans when the fans can’t reach a live incident, SCI fills in with recorded albums, five to date. Yet their recording history has been less providential than their easygoing ascension on the stage.

For one thing, the band had been hesitant about working together in a studio. The solution in their first two studio albums was to have each musician record some of the music separately and later mix the sound. The resulting albums, Born on the Wrong Planet and ‘Round the Wheel can sound forced and uninspired.

Adding to the challenge was the complexity of each man just being himself. In creating new music, the band has always followed a democratic approach, with each band member doing his part to “cheesify” a song, as Hollingsworth calls it. With everything being so democratic, putting the final mixes on an album proved difficult. There were five directions to explore, five ways to wrap up a song.

Enter Los Lobos saxophonist Steve Berlin, the band’s first outside producer, who suggested the band record live all together in the studio, another first. Berlin sought to showcase the band’s abilities as songwriters, but also as quality musicians capable of finding that magical groove anytime.

Despite the initial hesitation to relinquish control, implicitly believing no one could possibly understand their music as clearly as they did, they went along with Berlin’s hunch and Outside Inside yielded the band’s strongest, most fluid album to date.

“When [Berlin] came in, he had all these ideas,” Hollingsworth explains. "Some worked and some didn’t, but I had a very open mind to it. Looking back, it was such a great idea. It made the music more spacious and roomier. We did the first take [for “Outside and Inside” ] and said, ‘Okay, let’s do it again; we can do a better version.’ Steve said, ‘No, that’s it. You can fire me right now,’ those were literally his words – ‘You can fire me right now, but I know that is the best feel that track is ever going to get.’ That version is the first song on the album from the first take on the very first day. Crazy. That was his thing – to go for the fresh sound, and it worked."
“They have a group dynamic that is virtually unmatched in my opinion,” Berlin says of working with String Cheese. “The way they interact and how closely they listen to each other, you could tell this was the best a band could be. They thought you had to change from the live thing in the [studio]. That is totally not the case here. A band that plays this good live should never change anything. There wasn’t a song on Outside Inside that wasn’t virtually completely live.”

Today, String Cheese Incident is on a trajectory to continue expanding their musical and social journey. The fertile exchange that transpires among band members is a reflection of their positive ideals and the equally blessed-out fans that follow them. It is also the result of calculated efforts on both sides of the stage to keep things flowing smoothly. The band is trying hard to take it slow, monitor the state of the scene and avoid burnout. The Dead, in comparison, were forced to “retire” due to exhaustion following nine non-stop years of touring, and were never able to fully recoup that level of desire again. As String Cheese prepares for their ninth year, the annual tour schedule has already been shaved down to 100 shows. Time off is spent in the mountains or exploring other musical avenues.

These elements are what make the String Cheese Incident more than just a band to its fans: They are a catalyst for pure musical release and fan feedback. Are they creating their own holy space, much as the Dead pioneered theirs? The potential is certainly there on any given night for creativity to flow and spiritual connections to be made. String Cheese is pushing their hybrid groove in new directions with spontaneous intensity. Maybe John Barlow said it best: “Same species, different creature.” Altogether different.