About The String Cheese Incident
The String Cheese Incident is an American jam band from Crested Butte and Telluride, Colorado, formed in 1993. The band is composed of Michael Kang , Michael Travis , Bill Nershi , Kyle Hollingsworth , and Keith Moseley , and, since 2004, Jason Hann .
Their music has elements of bluegrass sounds, as well as rock, electronica, calypso, country, funk, jazz, Latin, progressive rock, reggae, and psychedelia. All members write original compositions and sing.
The original four members first played together in Crested Butte, Colorado in 1993, calling themselves the Blue String Cheese Band, because they considered themselves a bluegrass band who also played "cheesy covers". Soon after, they changed the name to the String Cheese Incident. In 1996 the members all quit their day jobs and moved to Boulder, Colorado, to focus on music. Around that time they decided that they wanted to add a keyboard player to the group, to expand their sound beyond string instruments, and invited Kyle Hollingsworth to join them.
After a few years of playing local ski resorts and private functions, the band formed the independent record label SCI Fidelity, on which they released their first album, Born on the Wrong Planet, an album split between originals and covers. The album featured melody-driven music with room for improvisation. Instrumentals and covers constituted half of the album. Many songs from the first album are still frequently played by the band, including "Black Clouds", "Land's End", "Texas", and "Jellyfish."
Less than a year later, SCI released a compilation of ten songs, including "Land's End", on their self-titled live album A String Cheese Incident, which chronicles a single concert from the Fox Theatre in Boulder, Colorado and adds pianist Hollingsworth to the ensemble . Despite spanning only one disc and containing only ten tracks, the album clocks in at 72 minutes even .
'Round the Wheel, released in 1998, refined the band's sound and displayed a marked increase in both musical and lyrical maturity, and added Paul McCandless as a guest player on soprano and tenor saxophone and Tony Furtado on banjo, but did not earn them quite the level of fame that they would achieve in the next millennium. From 1998 through 2001 SCI toured the country extensively and steadily, playing over 500 "Incidents" in hundreds of cities, including an appearance at Woodstock '99.
In 2001, with the help of guest producer and Los Lobos member Steve Berlin, they released their third studio effort, Outside Inside. This album marked a shift from the band's traditional bluegrass leanings to a more standard rock sound, thus making it the most accessible album to a mainstream audience to that point. The band did not completely abandon its bluegrass roots, however, sneaking in the short three-minute track "Up the Canyon" at the end of the disc, which has become one of many live favorites along with "Rollover", "Close Your Eyes", and others.
Map & Directions To Venue
