Features

The String Cheese Incident : Retying The Knot

Photo by Jay Blakesberg

Three years ago, The String Cheese Incident’s future seemed uncertain. After almost 15 years on the road together, personal conflicts and differing opinions about its musical direction had strained the band’s “group think” dynamic. “After String Cheese was really pushing the electronic music button, it kind of wigged me out a little bit,” says Nershi. “I wanted to get more into acoustic, country/folk and bluegrass.”

In 2006, Nershi announced that he would be leaving String Cheese after a final run of shows the following year. Though he told his bandmates to continue without him, the group never found a replacement. “I encouraged the band to find somebody else and threw out a few names because I didn’t want to be responsible for the band stopping,” Nershi says from his home in Nederland, Colo.

“I felt like it was going in a direction that was not what I imagined for the band and also, a lot of it was just needing to have a break,” he adds. “You can’t convince people to play less shows or things like that. Everything is a group process and group agreement. And the group mindset wasn’t where my mindset was, so I said that’s what I was gonna do: play some music with some other bands—and I did that.”

Other band members breathed a sigh of relief when the band went on hiatus, too, and all comment positively about how “refreshing” this time period was. “I feel like I am a 20 year old again with EOTO,” Travis says. “It’s a younger fan base, and a lot of these people don’t even like String Cheese. Jason and I feel like our personalities are really being put out there and we are attracting our core family.”

Kang agrees that varying musical interests took a toll on the band. “I think toward the end of our time together, some of us expressed an interest in exploring electronic music more and that would press up against other peoples’ desires to play acoustic music,” he says. “When String Cheese took up the majority of our time, people felt like they were not getting to do what they wanted.” He also notes that the musicians had different ideas of how much time the band should spend on the road: “People like Travis or Jason are hitting it harder [with EOTO’s heavy touring] than I have in years. I’m personally not in that space myself. I’ve always maintained interest in different things.”

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During the group’s hiatus, the six members of String Cheese drifted further apart stylistically. Travis and Hann performed over 150 shows per year as EOTO, while Moseley played in the WMD’s with Keller Williams, Nailhouse with Scott Law and the jam-roots supergroup The Contribution (along with Hann, Railroad Earth’s Tim Carbone and members of New Monsoon). True to his word, Nershi focused almost exclusively on Americana/bluegrass music with longtime friends such as Law and Drew Emmitt. He also continued to develop his Honkytonk Homeslice project, though the group slowed its pace after his wife/musical partner Jillian suffered a concussion in an accident making it difficult for her to travel.

Meanwhile, Hollingsworth formed a solo band, brewed and sold his own Hoppingsworth IPA beer and collaborated with such varied acts as indie rockers the Fiery Furnaces, rhythmic jamband The Motet and hip-hop pioneer Speech of Arrested Development. And though he occasionally worked with Particle, Everyone Orchestra, EOTO and Chris Berry, Kang focused most of his creative energy offstage. “I just had other stuff going on,” admits Kang, who launched the environmental activist group Our Future Now in 2007. “It took a lot of energy to start a non-profit, and I was very involved in organizing Rothbury [a Michigan festival focusing on music, art and environmentalism presented by Madison House and AEG]—putting together the crews and getting all the components together. It was a full-time job. I was really glad to take a break from [performing] because I’m not necessarily one of those people who want to be on the road all the time, and I really enjoy reconnecting with the outdoors.”

Personal commitments also took up an increasing amount of energy: Nershi and Moseley spent time with their families while Hollingsworth became a new father and, as of press time, Kang’s girlfriend is pregnant with his first child. “A musician’s life can get kind of one-dimensional when you’re really busy with music all the time,” Nershi says. “It’s a great dimension, but it’s also great to have more than one dimension.”

While the six musicians collaborated in almost every configuration possible during the break, the band didn’t consider a formal reunion until receiving an offer to play Rothbury in the summer of 2009. “After being away from it for a while, I started to miss playing with those guys and those levels of shows,” Nershi admits. “It seemed like the perfect place for us to do a show.” In addition to an extended three-hour performance at the festival, the group did a public sound check and a stealth club show in Denver. The events were an overwhelming success.

“Once we were hanging out, rehearsing, going for hikes and just really reconnecting as a family, it seemed obvious that we needed to keep moving forward with it,” Hollingsworth says.

“We sat down with the calendar and cherry-picked some of our favorite places to play—Red Rocks and Horning’s were at the top of the list,” Moseley says of the band’s 2010 summer events. “Then, prior to the shows, we did six or seven weeks of rehearsals. We were doing seven-hour days Monday through Thursday with Friday through Sunday off so some of us could play with other projects. It is familiar and comfortable without all the baggage.”

In total, the band rehearsed approximately 90 songs, including a new one by Hollingsworth (“The Way that It Goes”) and another by Nershi and Law (“Song in My Head”) as well as covers by artists ranging from MGMT to The Police to Kansas. “That feeling of growing, trying new things, but keeping in touch with our roots has been at the forefront of our practices,” Hann says. “It’s part of what lends itself to the diversity of the music in String Cheese Incident and what leads to some tension. Even though people are growing individually with their outside projects, it’s important to bring those influences to practice and grow as a group with everyone’s experience helping that process.”