Photos by Larry Hulst

The omnipresent question surrounding String Cheese Incident’s three day homecoming stint at Red Rocks July 23 – 25 was “Will the band continue to perform intermittently or will SCI eventually regroup to tour regularly again?” This question still remains unanswered, but thousands of blissful fans were more than willing to lay aside the issue and soak up the music and festive ambiance that the band has provided for the better part of two decades.

“We’re super-psyched to be here!” said keyboardist Kyle Hollingsworth to the sold-out crowd July 23, before launching into the Talking Heads “This Must Be the Place.” Hollingsworth’s’ wholesale theft of Friday’s otherwise tentative performance redeemed the evening’s karmic malaise. While every member of SCI is a talent in their own right, Hollingsworth seems incapable of a listless performance and his hyperkinetic virtuosity gave purpose to an otherwise uncertain show.

Friday’s set list did contain highlights: guitarist Bill Nershi’s jaunty "Song in My Head, the Hollingsworth-led deep-space funk jam connecting the first verse of “‘Round the Wheel” to “This Must be the Place” and electric mandolin/violin player Michael Kang’s joyous “Shine.”

Saturday night’s show began with two motorized paragliders descending from the sky in graceful circles, one of them appearing to come dangerously close to slamming on the rocks sealing the amphitheatre off from the rest of the world.

“We’ll see if we can pick up where we left off. Last night was kind of crazy,” Kang said, before the band broke into “Restless Wind,” a reference to the prior evening’s high winds which filled the amphitheatre with dust and almost ripped the giant screens bordering each side of the stage from their moorings.

It was obvious that SCI had emptied their collective psyche of the previous evening’s reservations and the band rewarding the grooving crowd with two old-school sets that featured Nershi’s “Johnny Cash,” bassist Keith Mosely’s “How Mountain Girls Can Love,” Kang’s “Rollover” and a nearly 20 minute trip to “Texas.”

It is fitting that SCI’s last performance of the run occurred on a Sunday evening as the band, along with more than a little encouragement from its fans, managed to turn Red Rocks into a house of worship.

The show opened with a few words from longtime band-supporter and friend Jack Mento, who spoke for a few minutes on the “nameless power of love” that links the band with its fans.

“We are a force to be reckoned with!” he said, echoing his words spoken three years earlier before SCI’s “farewell show” in August, 2007.

After Nershi thanked Mento for “helping us on our journey,” the band tore into a percolating “Come as You Are,” propelled by drummer Michael Travis and percussionist Jason Hamm’s bubbling polyrhythms. So empathetic and fluid is Travis and Hamm’s combined drumming that there is no question they have reached their collective Gestalt, a preternatural mind-link allowing them to form one four-armed Id.

The spiritual linchpin of the was evening was uncovered early in the first set during the elegiac “Little Hands” with Kang and Nershi trading verses and singing to each other as much as they were to the audience. Kang squeezed every ounce of emotion from his violin in a long plaintive solo, expressing joy, sadness, nostalgia and uncertainty.

SCI wrapped up a long second set with “Land’s End” sandwiched around the surprise of the evening, Kansas’ “Carry on Wayward Son.” Though rough around the edges, the boys breathed life into the FM mainstay before dropping back into “Land’s End.”