Photo by Brian Spady
Kyle Hollingsworth, keyboardist for The String Cheese Incident, presented his new Hoopla Pale Ale at the Bruru Experience in the Broo’ers Festival section of Centeroo on Saturday at Bonnaroo. Hollingsworth, an avid home brewer, crafted this beer with help from the folks at Boulder Beer Company in Colorado and calls this new brew “the perfect beer for watching live music.” Later on Saturday the String Cheese Incident performed at the Which Tent. This marked the fourth time that the band had played Bonnaroo, including the very first festival in 2002.
Here is an expanded version of the conversation with Hollingsworth, which originally ran in the Bonnaroo Beacon.
Amy Jacques: How is your new Hoopla Pale Ale different from your Hoppingsworth IPA—and was it a similar creation process for you?
Kyle Hollingsworth: The creation process was very similar. The brewers and I discussed a style of beer we wanted to make. With Hoppingsworth, I wanted a super hoppy ale. But with Hoopla, when I got together with the Boulder Beer people, I was looking for something that would be more of a festival drinking pale ale.
We have a new name for it. Instead of an IPA; it’s an FPA, which is a Festival Pale Ale. I was thinking, “Bonnaroo, a hot summer day in Tennessee, 110 degrees, 95 degrees, what do I want to drink?” I wouldn’t necessarily want to drink Hoppingsworth there; I wanted something lighter with a little bit of hop attitude. So Hoopla is a festival pale ale made to be enjoyed on hot summer days at festivals—a lightly hopped pale ale.
AJ: During one of our talks last year, you told me that you approached brewing and music in a similar way—sort of an improvisational way—by throwing a lot of things in the pot. Can you expand on that a little, and does this still hold true today with the creation of this beer?
KH: For me, the process of brewing and the process of creating live music both live in a spontaneous world where anything can happen. When you’re brewing a beer, at the last minute, you can throw in some premium style—you can make the beer great, or you can make the beer really bad, but it’s all about jumping in that moment. In the same way, I’m taking a solo and I’m just kind of going for it, and you never know how it’s going to turn out. It could be the best beer of your life or the worst—you’re taking that chance. And, then, one more analogy is musically, a beer should be balanced—that’s what we would say. The taste of the beer should be balanced, that means specifically not sticking out too much, having all the flavors. In the same way, I feel like with music, when you listen to a live show—even if it’s the best Warren Haynes solo in the world, you wouldn’t want him to be necessarily loudest or louder than everything else that’s going on. So you have to find the right balance between your mix when you’re playing music, and how you interpret what other people are playing, and as well the same thing with beer, in the final taste.
AJ: And you’re going to be taking this beer out on the road, and you’re calling this the Bruru Experience?
KH: Exactly, but the Bruru Experience is much wider than just Hoopla. It’s a discussion of beer, a discussion on the process of making beer—different styles, kind of like a Brewing 101, the purpose of the Bruru Experience is to turn people on to home brewing, and also the craft beer industry.
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.
