Stretching Out With the String Cheese Incident
by Michael Parrish
It is safe to say there is no other band out there quite like Colorado's String Cheese Incident. The quintet's instrumental lineup features Michael Kang's electric (and occasionally acoustic) mandolin and violin, Keith Moseley's electric bass, Bill Nershi's unapologetically acoustic guitar, Kyle Hollingsworth's various keyboards, and Michael Travis' world of hand percussion and traditional drums. Their music is an eclectic crazy quilt that includes bluegrass, jazz, rock 'n' roll, high-life, calypso, and reggae, all woven together by long, open-ended, but atypically purposeful improvisational passages. In their six years together, SCI has gone from playing for lift tickets in Colorado ski towns to headlining shows nationwide in increasingly larger venues, and collaborating with folks like Phil Lesh and Darol Anger. Along the way, they have amassed a legion of fans as dedicated and adventurous as those that follow the Grateful Dead and their offshoots and Phish.
The afternoon before the first of two sold out shows at Chicago's Vic Theater over Thanksgiving weekend, Keith Moseley, Bill Nershi, and Michael Kang (with a brief cameo appearance by Kyle Hollingsworth) sat down to talk about the past, present, and future of their band.
Like their friends Leftover Salmon, the members of String Cheese Incident came together as much through their love of skiing as their love of music. The first nucleus of the band was Nershi and Moseley, who were both playing primarily in bluegrass bands. "Keith was living in Crested Butte and I was living in Telluride," said Nershi. "We were playing in different bluegrass bands. I came up on the weekends a few times and sat in with Rye Straw Whiskey Creek Warriors."
"The band really formed when Billy moved to Crested Butte for the winter. Then all the members were in one place," Moseley explained.
"I moved to Crested Butte to have one last ski bumming year," Nershi continued. "I met Mike [Kang] and he and I were playing music in the lift line at Crested Butte for ski passes, and the three of us played some happy hour gigs. We started playing with our friend [percussionist] Bruce Hayes, playing Grisman kind of newgrass/bluegrass stuff. Bruce couldn't make one of the gigs, and we heard that Michael Travis had come back to town, and he was playing hand drums at the time. So Travis filled in, and everybody came up and said 'That was so great!' We were going to do another gig at Telluride, and Bruce wanted to play it, and so did Travis, and Travis ended up winning that battle."
After their first gig in December 1993, the band continued as a four-piece for a couple of years. Their initial touring was a matter of convenience. As Michael Kang explained, "We just wanted to ski different places."
Moseley elaborated: "The first trips we took out were to different Colorado ski towns. Eventually we took a trip out to California, played in Moab (Utah) and Tahoe. In the beginning it was just supplemental income and the chance to travel around a bit."
Nershi said, "Our first little circuit was that we'd play in Crested Butte, we'd play in Telluride, and we'd play in Moab."
This is an excerpt. Read the full article in Dirty Linen #87 (Apr/May '00).
