By: David Schultz
Photo Credit C. Taylor Crothers via Madison House Publicity

Last summer String Cheese Incident helped organize the Jammy award winning Big Summer Classic, headlining a series of festival-like shows that featured Michael Franti and Spearhead, Umphrey's McGee, New Monsoon, Keller Williams, Xavier Rudd and the Yonder Mountain String Band. While savvy purveyors of the jamband scene were already familiar with String Cheese's touring partners, more casual fans, drawn by the Cheese, received gifts as glorious as Williams' one-man-band stage show and Franti's obsessive-compulsion for asking the crowd how they're feeling. As SCI's fans are well versed in the Grateful Dead, the Colorado sextet finds their roles reversed on their current summer tour with Bob Weir and Ratdog: getting a chance to play for Deadheads who can finally match the Cheese's music to their indelible name.

The sensibility of pairing Ratdog with String Cheese goes beyond the two bands' affinity for extended improvisational jams: String Cheese's traces its origins to the same Americana based music mined with great success by the Grateful Dead. Where the Dead mixed their bluegrass influences with folk, blues and psychedelia, String Cheese keeps their bluegrass heart front and center, often bringing in elements of calypso, Latin music and funk in the same manner the Talking Heads worked those same rhythms into their later work.



Anyone expecting straightforward rock and roll will be initially puzzled by String Cheese Incident's distinct style; probably spending a good third of the show wondering from where the band's plaudits derive. However, once SCI finds their groove, usually within the last third of their shows, they dispel all doubts. Their fusion of seemingly incompatible genres has slowly but steadily attracted a loyal following who thankfully leave the Cheesehead appellation to the Green Bay Packers. Their idiosyncratic sound results from the union of an unlikely group of musicians. Acoustic and lap steel guitarist Bill Nershi makes an unlikely frontman, possessing the skills but not the overblown charisma of your typical band leader. In the absence of a traditional lead guitarist, the versatile Michael Kang fills the role of the virtuoso, primarily playing mandolin and violin. Michael Travis and Jason Hann conjure up a variety of tribal beats and intricate rhythms, teaming up with bassist Keith Moseley to take over a sizable portion of some String Cheese shows. When Moseley's not keeping the beat, he pairs up with keyboardist Kyle Hollingsworth to take the Incident into decidedly Cheese-y directions.

More than just receiving equal billing, String Cheese shared opening duties with Ratdog, even though seniority might dictate that the descendants of the Grateful Dead serve as the headliner. Weir, Nershi and company came to New York City's venerable Radio City Music Hall recently for a pair of performances. A delightfully wonderful venue for jambands, Radio City's cavernous arena has an enormous stage and a breathtaking array of colorful lights installed throughout the hall. For the Thursday evening show, String Cheese began the evening with a lengthy two hour opening set, making great use of Radio City's more spectacular attributes: inviting a pair of artists to paint on stage while skillfully incorporating Radio City's lights within their own to create a trippy, psychedelic atmosphere.

String Cheese opened the Radio City run with some appropriate selections: a cover of Bob Dylan's New York-centric "Just Like Tom Thumb Blues," and the timeless jazz standard "Birdland." The middle portion of the set belonged to Hollingsworth's crunchy, techno-style keyboards and Moseley's pulsing bass, hitting high notes on "Water" and a "Mouna Bowa" which seamlessly (of course) segued into "Eye Know Why." In finishing off the show with "It Is What It Is" and a rollicking, delightfully hillbillyish "Can't Stop Now," Nershi and Kang, who generally plays mandolin and violin, joyously traded guitar riffs; Kang demonstrating a deft proficiency for laying down a catchy guitar riff.

The styles of the two bands meshed well, as did the musicians themselves. Over the course of their dates together, guest appearances were the norm, not the exception. While Thursday's show saw only one small bit of overlap - Michael Travis hurriedly running on stage to join Ratdog drummer Jay Lane on an instrumental segue between "Cassady" and a cover of "Dear Prudence" - Friday night's featured members of both bands popping up left and right during each other's sets. The inclusive spirit embodied on stage spread into the audience; possibly to the disconcertment of Radio City security who may not have been entirely prepared for the single-minded focus of overly-dedicated fans to get close to the stage. After being thwarted by ticket checkers at the aisle, many quickly figured out that they could simply climb over the seats and get as close as they liked. Some may bristle at the ingenious tactics employed by some of the jamband scene's more dedicated participants: muttering the dreaded epithet "hippie" under their breath; for most though, it's simply part of the fun of a show and the reason why a jamband show, even one in such venerated a hall at Radio City, will always remain an experience or as the String Cheese fans would say - an incident.

Labels: Bill Nershi, Bob Weir, Ratdog, String Cheese Incident