AJ: What can people expect at Bonnaroo?
KH: I’ll have all the home brew ingredients with me, discussing them and talking about the history of beer. We’ll talk about the ingredients of beer, and then we’ll do some tasting, which of course is the best part. We’ll do some tastes of Hoopla, which is just one of the brewers that one of the beers that the brewers have created and they’re going to bring some unique beers, some barrel-aged beers and some Belgian style beers as well.
AJ: And you’re also going to be putting on Kyle’s Brew Fest for the second year in a row benefiting Conscious Alliance, right?
KH: Yes, Kyle’s Brew Fest is coming around on July 23, and last year sold out. We’re going to be doing it at Boulder Beer this year, and I’ve got twice as many breweries involved, twice as much great beer as last year, and I’m threatening to actually brew a beer on stage during the concert. You get a Kyle Hollingsworth Band show, free beer, free food, a glass and access to a silent auction, with a lot of rock memorabilia. And that’s all for twenty-five bucks—what a great deal!
AJ: String Cheese performed at the original Bonnaroo, and now, ten years later, how have you seen the festival grow and change through the years?
KH: What I appreciate most about now is that it’s opened itself up to not just the jam scene. It’s become, in my opinion, a much more well rounded festival than it was the first year. Nothing against jambands, I’m in one! [Laughter.] But it’s nice to have Eminem and all the different styles of music around here.
AJ: Who are you most excited to see as a fan at this year’s festival?
KH: Man, I gotta go look at the website. Buffalo Springfield will be up there for sure. And my favorite thing is to go to all the smaller tents and discover new music—someone I’ve never heard of. Those people generally blow my mind the most. While walking around in either the late hours or the early afternoon hours, I stumble across a brand new artist, and that’s why I go.
AJ: What sort of practice sessions has String Cheese been doing in preparation for Bonnaroo and Electric Forest in July?
KH: [Laughter.] We are practice obsessed. We practice a lot. So we have a ninety minute set or something at Bonnaroo. So we’ve put in like three weeks—eight-hour days. I’m exaggerating. Like a week really—well, this week I did. The reason that that’s so long is because we don’t tour as much as we used to. So we spend a lot of that time, not only practicing but gathering and reaching that community, as family, as a band of brothers.
AJ: When I talked to you before the Horning’s Hideout festival last August, you said that you guys had been going on a lot of like hikes together—have you been doing some sort of bonding stuff like that as well?
KH: Yeah, it’s funny because [we did this] a lot rehearsing for the reunion shows. And then we had some shows here in Colorado but we couldn’t really do all that stuff because it was the middle of the winter. Now, at this point, we’re back into the summer festival season where it’s warmer outside—we can still go hiking, drink beer and all that stuff.
AJ: Do you have a favorite Bonnaroo memory from years past?
KH: It has to be when Steve Winwood sat in with us. In fact, one of my favorite memories was right before Bonnaroo, when he invited us to his house. We hung out at his house in Tennessee, which was incredible, practicing for Bonnaroo the next day. We were right before Widespread, so it had to be the first year. And then when he got onstage, we were super proud to have him next to me on the keyboards.
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