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Indie Outing: Fiery Furnaces

Indie-Jam Connection: Brooklyn-based, Chicago-bred Fiery Furnaces officially consists of Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger. The siblings often recruit additional musicians to help flesh out their sound in the studio and on the road. For a stretch of shows in 2008, String Cheese Incident’s Kyle Hollingsworth played keyboards in the band. While String Cheese Incident and The Fiery Furnaces may seem a world apart on paper, both acts were managed by Madison House Inc at the time.

Notable Jam Moments: When String Cheese Incident went on hiatus in 2007, Hollingsworth explored a myriad of projects. In addition to leading his own band and collaboration with everyone from George Porter Jr. to Speech from Arrested Development, Hollingsworth toured as a member of Fiery Furnaces. The run of shows included stops in Wooster, OH, Chicago, Ann Arbor, MI, Cleveland, OH, Boston and Brooklyn.

Lot Talk: “I hooked up with them because I was purposely trying to reach outside of the jam world and see what else is out there, and it was great. In the indie rock scene, people are just sitting there smoking cigarettes and watching you play and it’s a very different type of music—it’s more performance and it’s less about improvisation.”