Metro Pulse/Music/String Cheese Incident

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String Cheese Incident does well by feelin' groovy

by Adrienne Martini

Certain realities must be acknowledged, no matter how you feel about the jam/groove band experience. Thanks to the Grateful Dead and the legions who loved them, there is a lot of money to be made from this community of tie-dye wearing listeners. And a vast, gaping void was created when the Dead, uh, died. For a while, it looked like Phish would be the new Dead for a new generation. But Trey Anastasio and co. are on a hiatus that is likely to be permanent and, suddenly, a dozen or so similarly-minded acts are making their play to be new cult heroes. Leading the charge is Boulder, Colorado's String Cheese Incident.

SCI formed in '93 in the tiny ski town of Crested Butte and has been developing a unique-within-the-form brand of jazz- and folk-tinged pop that leans heavily on world rhythms. Seven years later, Kyle Hollingsworth, Michael Kang, Keith Moseley, Michael Travis, and Bill Nershi are traveling the country staging "incidents" (as they like to call them) and have sold over 250,000 albums. What started as a small endeavor by some ski bums who wanted to make some music has become a jammin' machine that has made forays into our popular consciousness. Posters for the group's gigs even appeared in a recent episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and a review of the group's New York shows pricked up the ears of the Times' Ann Powers. And their fan base has grown since SCI left for a mini-tour two weeks ago.

"Even since the time we left on this tour," acoustic guitar player Nershi says, his voice low and relaxed, "I feel like it's changed. Things are escalating. One person might go to a show and tell three friends who show up at the next show, who tell three of their friends each so you can see how the whole thing grows in an exponential way. It's been great to watch the crowds grow and still have really good crowds who are a lot of fun, a good vibe—people that you can look at and feel like they really have it together. It's been great."

With large groups of people, of course, also come large amounts of cash. Despite the peace and love and good times aura that the music creates in some, others have noticed that SCI can bring in a heck of a lot of income and are quite savvy about how to make even more of it. Westword, an independent weekly in SCI's home state, ran a story about the band's approach to commerce, which includes a record label (SCI Fidelity), a ticketing service—which is the only outlet for SCI tickets—and a travel agency so that fans can customize their incidents. In addition to these divisions, String Cheese also carries its own management and merchandising sections.

"String Cheese [is] brand think," said Jeff Pertzborn, booking agent for Dead-imitators Dark Star Orchestra, in Westworda. "With Nike, it's not just shoes—it's Nike clothes and other things. With String Cheese, it's not just recordings—it's the shows, the T-shirts, the web site, and taping. What they've developed is sort of a working wheel system where all things—CDs, tickets, travel, publicity—come back to String Cheese Incident. And why not think of a band as an organization and a commodity and plan all that?"

That article, it would appear, did not go over all that well in the String Cheese camp.

"Oh god, that one," Nershi groans. "I think it shouldn't be that much of a concern for people what we do in the business world. I think that it downplays the music a little bit to focus on the business. I'm very happy with our business organization and our management but in general, I'd choose to skirt the subject, other than just broad statements.

"We do the music and our management and people in the home office do the business," he explains patiently, as if talking to a stubborn child. "We're involved on all of the major decisions but all of the details are taken care of by the management so we can focus on practicing and playing and keeping up for performance."

It's odd, though, that a style of music that sprung from a sub-culture more concerned with the energy and morality of an event than its ability to make money should now be carving a path for other musicians to follow on the economic front. But it's probably a natural progression, especially when viewed through a Woodstock filter. Sure, that first music festival was all about stopping the war and hearing some groovy music, but the last one was more about profit margins and marketing. Welcome to the 21st century.

Still, SCI's heart seems to be with its fans, even though their motive for such might be a bit ill-defined.

"I just always like to thank our fans for putting so much energy into our music and our shows, because without them putting the energy into the shows, they wouldn't be the same," Nershi says. "We're not the kind of band that you can just sit back and listen to and we're going to have a great show. We need help from our fans to get the energy going and we really feel like we can count on them."