Features

The String Cheese Incident: Gravity Games (Relix Revisited)

Prior to 2003 the Red Sox and Yankees had only met for one prior post-season series (and a playoff game in ‘78). Despite the historical rivalry (would say more deeply held on the part of the Sox and its fans due to a relative dearth of pennants- see Bucky Dent above, grumble grumble), the two teams have always competed in the same division which precluded any possibility of an ALCS match up until the advent of the Wild Card in the mid-90’s.

At the same moment that Major League Baseball altered its format, String Cheese Incident started to gain national favor in an alternate pastime through its own status as a Wild Card. The band’s atypical instrumentation and concomitant blend of genres felt novel and endearing, carrying a purity of intent (for instance when scheduling conflicts led Kang, Nershi and Moseley to seek a replacement for initial fourth member, mandolin player Bruce Hayes, it seemed logical to tap percussionist Travis because the band never thought to limit its efforts to any prescribed mode, opting for a more expansive, abstracted definition of its music).

Nershi recalls, “The funny thing about this band is the first shows that we played back on Western Slope- Crested Butte and Telluride we were like, ‘This is cool. We might be able to make a little money so we don’t have to get a real job or work as much at our other jobs.’ We loved playing music, we wanted a gig and we wanted to get together. But when we played…people just freaked out [Laughs] We were like, ‘What just happened there?’ And the fact that the crowd gave us so much back was our inspiration to work harder. I think what kept the band going for a long time was there were so many people digging the music. One of the best things about performing is you get so much love back and if you can keep generating it then you can keep the cycle going.”

However by the end of 2002 the band recognized that the nature of that reciprocal exchange had altered slightly. Kang explains, “We’ve been together ten years and played fourteen hundred shows or something like that and after a while you’ve got to mix it up, do different stuff and come up with new ways to recreate yourself. There was definitely a point last year when it started to feel a little stale and that is not something you want to feel as an artist especially with the kind of music we play that relies on switching it up and experimentation.”

“You get the point where you’ve been playing music together for a long time.” Nershi adds, “I know there are bands that have been playing for a lot longer than us and I’m guessing they went through a lot of this too. But as Mike says, we’ve played 1400 gigs or whatever and it’s not as easy to walk on stage and just be like, ‘This is the coolest shit that ever happened,’ because we do it all the time. There’s got to be something more than the excitement of. ‘Hey, we’re playing live in front of people.” Otherwise it’s going to stop happening for us and the people who come out.”

Meanwhile, the band’s infrastructure grew apace with its popularity (and at times seemed to nudge ahead). The organization expanded into a range of branded enterprises (including SCI Gear, SCI Fidelity Records and SCI Ticketing which is currently embroiled in a lawsuit with Ticketmaster). In addition the quintet carries a sizable road crew to realize its laudably exacting production standards (an emphasis on sonic clarity has long been a String Cheese hallmark- for instance while still performing predominantly in clubs, the band lugged its own sound system from gig to gig). While those businesses functioning under the SCI imprimatur are self-sufficient units, the totality of these concerns did carry some additional collective responsibility for the artists.

“That’s one of the things that makes the whole musical experience get a little heavier.” Nershi affirms. “When you realize that you’re not just somebody out on the road having a great time playing your instrument and gigging and touring around different cities. Instead it’s ‘Hey I’m the head of business with employees,’ and suddenly it’s not as carefree as it used to be.”

“There’s a lot of maintenance and we find ourselves having to talk about a lot of stuff we didn’t have to talk about before.” Kang continues, “It just requires time and sometimes it can eat up the creative zest because there’s stuff you have to deal with. We were at a point where we realized we need to try to focus on what is really important, which is the music and put all the other stuff in the periphery.”

Nershi is forthright in acknowledging that all of the aforementioned factors reached a culmination, “When we finally got to the point where the whole machine behind us was running itself and we had made it to a certain level of comfort, I think we got a little complacent with our situation for a while. We used to go out every night onstage and even if there were only thirty-five people out there we’d say, ‘Let’s go out and play our asses off because we’re busting our asses driving around on the bus. Let’s see how much we can get these people off.” And then we got to this point where it’s like, ‘Oh yeah, this is all working, we’re doing okay now’ and maybe we didn’t put as much oomph into it. Then we realized that we have to shake it up a little bit and make it exciting again.”

The path the band took to achieve this aim came through a few intense weeks in late winter 2003 that Moseley jokingly describes as “rock and roll boot camp.” It was here that a studio experience reinvigorated the String Cheese Incident and revitalized its live show.