For over 33 years, jam band fans have been getting cheesy with the string cheese incident! Known for their eclectic and diverse styles, the group forged their roots in bluegrass and jam, rolled into funk, swerved into reggae, decorated with transcendent electronic styles, twirled around Latin, added the rhythmic vibes of traditional African music, dancing you to all over the world, and then dipped back in to jazz… sometimes all in the same song! Known for their immersive shows that always include a special spectacle “incident!” They are coming to Providence for the very first time on October 29 at the Beautiful Providence Performing Arts Center!
I had the honor of chatting with Bill Nershi, founder and lead guitarist of SCI, as we discussed the excitement building around this upcoming show. And of course, like the avid skier he is, he was enjoying his backyard with anticipation of fresh powder in the not-too-distant future.
Bill Nershi: We did get a little snow in the mountains [of Colorado], finally, and hoping for more of that, so I can have a ski season this year. That’s the ultimate for me: skiing and playing music, you know that’s what I live for.
Allie Boyer (Motif): It’s absolutely beautiful that you’ve been able to combine both of your passions and make it a long-standing career.
BN: Yeah, things have worked out; I’m very thankful.
Creating one of the most eclectic, influential, long-running bands to ever receive a lifetime of free lift tickets, then spending decades creating immersive events with Synesthesia and wonder, is a pretty solid example of things working out. It started with serenading skiers in the left lines. Discussing Bill’s life and experiencing how humble he is, created an atmosphere of organic comfort for our conversation. I felt like I was talking to an old buddy, not the lead singer of a band that has played Red Rocks approaching sixty times and who sold it out on countless occasions!
The Just Keep Spinning Tour included my favorite “incident:” the #spintoredrocks hula-hoop contest! Having over fifteen hula-hooping flow performers dancing on the stage to their famous song “Round the Wheel,” celebrating the monumental influence the band has had on the flow movement in the jam scene. Starting in the early 1990s. SCI first started implementing “incidents” with hula hoops
AB: So my next question is about, obviously, hula hoops. When did you discover and start using hula hoops as a crowd engagement?
BN: It was like we met these folks; I think they were actually out in Telluride. And they came to the show, and they were all really into hula hooping; I remember that they brought hula hoops with them… Maybe the first show that I really remember it being strong was probably in 1995, and these gals came out with their Hulu hoops, and they had an extra one for other people.
We were playing in the Mountain Sun, which was a restaurant we used to play, kind of; they have a window area, and we would set up there and play. And I remember looking out the window and watching all these gals hula-hooping while we played our show. Then they started coming to a lot of shows they had extra Hulu hoops, the band started hula hooping, and it was really a big thing for a few years there. I remember going to High Sierra Music Festival and playing a set by the swimming pool where… we all hula hooped, and then everybody took their clothes off and jumped in the pool.
AB: How fun! Oh, that’s great!
BN: We used to be a little wilder.
AB: You should be, in your younger years, so was that before you guys were just playing the restaurant scene when they started Hulu hooping? That was before you guys did big shows?
BN: Know, little bars, clubs, you know, and things like that, and you know, ‘95, so we played High Sierra, you know, we were just starting gigs, doing national touring at that point; our first tour circuit was Crested Butte, Moab, Telluride, and then we expanded out.
MB: Did you guys try any other crowd engagement before the Hulu hoops, or was that kind of what kicked it all off?
AB: The incidents?
BN: Well, it was always incidents, you know. We were like, this is our name, what’s the meaning? What’s going on with it? We thought, well, each show is really a different incident, and each incident has different things that happen, and one is different than the other, like when we come out to Providence and the Providence Drum Troupe and hula hoops, you guys come out and play; you’re making it an incident that’s different than the rest!
Of the other ones, we’ve always been trying to keep things interesting for our fans and connect with our fans.
So we still do it, and it’s a great way for the audience and the band to really connect, and once you have that connection going the night can really take a different kind of trajectory… It really changes the energy, and helps us get to a higher place.
AB: Yeah, with the multisensory element too, like the movement and the sound and the visuals, you make a lot of core neuron connections, and then you’re also bonding because you’re all experiencing something together. After 30 years of collaborating, growing, and bonding as a band, what do you guys do now to foster new creativity and continue growing?
BN: Well, you know, we do different things to keep things fresh. After all these years, you gotta keep it fresher. We spent the last winter writing new songs, recording new songs, so we have new material that we’re excited to play.And we’re not just writing and recording these songs, but talking about them, doing different exercises in the rehearsal, like casting a song around and saying, okay, when it gets to you, change the melody line, and then when we all learn the melody, learn and play It together, then it’ll go to the next person, and he’ll make a new melody line, and then we’ll all learn that there’s different kind of things that we do in the studio, just little ways that we can play around with music and look at it from different angles. I really felt like we came out this spring and summer, feeling really good. Especially when you’re a jam band: “This is the best way to play the song, and we’re gonna play it this way every time,” which is more of a normal route for a lot of bands. I think, you know, we like to be able to shift and twist and turn in different places when we feel it.
AB: So you guys have been so influential on so many different music scenes and bands, and I know that you guys have played with a lot of your own personal heroes, but who is a newer band on the scene that you were inspired by?
BN: Well, it’s great to see a band like Goose doing well. They really know how to put it together to get a great sound. And I got to play with Molly Tuttle a little bit a couple of weekends ago, and just to see the level of the show that she puts on and her musical abilities. She is awesome, and you know, and it’s great because she’s got a message, and she’s real positive, love her. And I got to play with the mandolin player from Magoo – It was a band out here in Colorado – Courtlyn Bills. I got to play a show with him, a similar kind of show that I played with Billy Strings called the Bluegrass Generals, which is some of the guys from the infamous Stringdusters who also do bluegrass shows, and they pick up some of their musical friends, colleagues, etc and do a bluegrass show together. Courtlyn played in that, and it was great to play music with him. Great singer, great player, and Magoo’s doing really well.
So it’s great to see some of these bands that just have a lot of talent and are willing to put the time in and the work in and tour and succeed. A lot of really good bands don’t succeed. You know, it’s tough; it’s a tough world out there. You gotta just do what you do and hope people latch onto it.
As Bill described the joy SCI creates, i couldn’t help but wonder what his own proudest moment of his musical career was
BN: a proudest moment. I guess it was probably the first time I played Telluride Bluegrass Festival because I lived in Telluride for years. I guess I always looked at that stage and thought: Someday I’m going to be on that stage playing and win it; it’s going to finally happen. It was actually with my friend Liza Oxnard, who lived in Telluride, and we played as a duo for a few years. Then she joined the band called Zuba and played with them, which did really well for a long time, and then she settled down and had a family. I was a lot younger, probably mid-twenties when I played that show with her. And that was quite a sensation. It was it was probably like ‘93 or ‘94 And then, and then to go on and play Red Rocks, which is like the premier Colorado venue, as somebody that’s lived in Colorado for a long time, those shows were really special.
AB:I know you guys have sold out a bunch of times, but how many times total have you played Red Rocks?
BN: I think this year we will pass 60 shows at Red Rocks. And then the only people that’ve played more shows at Red Rocks is, of all people, Widespread Panic from Athens, Georgia. They have a big weekend at Red Rocks every year. For centuries. It was, long ago, a ceremonial place for Native Americans. Back in the last century, they would bring pianos up there by mule and cart to play concerts in that amphitheater. The sandstone walls project out into the crowd.
AN: So you guys had quite the fun time with your Morocco incident. Do you have any highlights you want to share from that?
BN: Oh, definitely. When Hind Ennaira played with us on the third night — she is a Moroccan musician who played the Guembri – it was very cool. It’s like a 3-string kind of almost bass-like instrument/gourd., and she played very traditional stuff on it, and they were great performers, and it was just so fun to be able to do a trip like that and be able to connect with the local musicians really made that feel complete for me.
AB: That is amazing experience. I watched a lot of footage and she just blows my mind.Any plans for her to come to the States and play with you guys?
BN: We haven’t really followed up on that. No, but it is a good idea.
AB: So now that you guys are on more of a robust touring schedule after a couple of years of a low-key touring schedule, you have indulged in side projects, keeping the creativity flowing. You just made an album with your wife and your daughter, which is fabulous. What do you see the future holding for both of your projects?
BN: Well, I don’t know. In the past, you know, we’ve been at some of the bigger shows, like Electric Forest and Huluween
And some of those, what we call side projects, perform. So maybe there’s some of that to come. Meanwhile, we’ll try to do a couple of tours a year and keep it going, as a juggling act. The family band has been a beautiful thing. We had so much fun making that album, and we feel like our shows in that arrangement are getting stronger and stronger. And it gives me a chance to play types of music that SCI doesn’t generally play – a little bit more of the Americana and the country bluegrass.
AB: That’s amazing. It must be the greatest feeling watching your child do something that you’re passionate about. And then succeeding, must be the best feeling in the world.
BN: Yes, definitely.
AB: So was there ever a string cheese incident?
As jam bands traditionally have usual names unfold just like the melodies of whimsy and magic, there’s been long-standing folklore and discussion amongst fans about how this infamous band got such a fun, unique, creative name that even professional baseball players are stumping their teammates and the internet with this folklore question?
As I asked the question that probably was asked a thousand times to Bill before about how this legendary folklore came to be….
AB: I’ve heard a couple different rumors. As a long-standing fan, I’ve heard over the years different whimsical tales circulating the origin story of your name’s sake: The name originated from an epic, chaotic food fight involving cheese after a skiing day; some of the other whispers amongst fans came from a cheesy nightmare that you had one night; there have also been tales of a cheese-like substance on Michael’s Kang mandolin.
As Bill chuckled at the whimsical, creative minds of the fans, when left to wonder, he pondered how much gouda info he wanted to give me.
BN: I forgot about that. I forgot about the tale of the mandolin getting cheesed up like that. That’s a good one. And then it was a nightmare that I had personally. And the first one was what food fight?
AB: An EPIC food fight.
BN: Yeah, do you know where it was? The rumors say it took place. Let’s see, that would be the real test of somebody’s knowledge: to know where that alleged food fight occurred that led to us creating the name. We were playing Blue Crest. There was Dignitas, a Mexican restaurant, and Blue Crest was where we played!
AN: How fun! So you guys got a little queso-ey
BN: We could have ended up with a Spanish name, you know!
Come experience “The Providence Indent” with String Cheese Thursday, October 29, 7pm, at the Providence Performing Arts Center and be prepared for wonderment and auditory delight as they take you on a journey through genres, forged by creativity and passion and a bond among friends that’s persevered across decades. Creating the ooey-gooey feeling, I’ve found a community and creative freedom!
Get tix by any of these methods: ppacri.org or https://ppac.evenue.net/event/P26/STRING, by phone: (401) 421-ARTS (2787), or in person at the Box Office window: 220 Weybosset Street, PVD, RI 02903. Hours: Monday – Friday, 10am to 5pm and Saturday, 10am to 2pm. Day of show, Box Office is open until 7:15 PM.
- by Allie Boyer, aka AllieLoop