2018 is a big year for the String Cheese Incident. With a slew of 25th anniversary dates on the calendar, another Electric Forest festival in the works and plenty of original music emerging from their Colorado-based Sound Lab, the jamgrass fusion sextet is primed for some memorable performances. Percussionist Michael Travis, meanwhile, is particularly busy, balancing SCI and EOTO with an ongoing desire to put his stamp on both projects. “The fact that we’re improvising and we’re going for it hour after hour, it’s unique,” Travis says of EOTO. “We spent all this time getting this signature sound and the concept, we’ve made it through the gauntlet of an extremely challenging, emotional landscape and now we’re in the position to rev it up again.” Calling from his home, Travis gives us the skinny on String Cheese, EOTO and his dream collaborators. ________________________________________
Are you excited about getting out on the road with such a big anniversary? Yeah, it’s pretty wild, all this time has passed and we still like each other [Laughs]. It’s definitely been a long, strange trip. Can you briefly track the evolution of the band and how far you guys have come? Billy Nershi moved to town and moved into my house while I was away for the summer. I came back and he was already jamming with Michael Kang and then they added Keith Moseley. Then I, the percussionist, came back, so we could do a band and do some gigs. At first it would just pay for our skiing habits, just get some free lift tickets wherever we’d go and play during the night. Then people really liked it, probably more than they should. Considering little time we’d been around and how little reputation we had, people were really, really loving it so we were kind of like, “Well, maybe we should do more of this.” That’s when we added Kyle, the keyboard player. We really wanted to step it up and be more of a rock band opposed to the acoustic projects so about a year before we added Kyle I started playing drum kits, which I didn’t do when the band first started. And then, Kang started playing electric for the first time as well, so we were obviously intent on becoming a bigger rock outlet. We toured Kyle around for a while. He played shows with us and every night we’d say, “This is Kyle on keyboard, don’t you think he should join our band?” to try and guilt him into it and eventually it worked - that was ’97 or ’98. We started big time touring until 2002, 2003. Then it got a little of weird because we were in these small arenas. Everyone kind of lost their aim and direction and then in 2005 we added Jason to try and fix things, but it didn’t really do much. Billy quit in 2006 for two years because it was too crazy and got in the way of what he wanted. Then he realized how great it was, we all did. and we came back together after a two-year break and there was a continuous, different angle on everything. Right now, especially, we’re spending a ton of time in the studio, trying to work out how to be a good band [Laughs]. Being in a band is a lot like being in a family. It’s a lot of diplomacy and figuring things out together. A quarter of a century later, do you feel like you guys have a handle on those types of things? Uh, not really [Laughs]. It’s so interesting. I have this theory with people’s personal angles on life. They become whatever the color of their issue is within the group. It doesn’t go away, it just becomes a lighter shade. Hopefully it becomes a pastel version of itself eventually. We’re still all dealing with each other’s initial imprints, but hopefully we’re just getting better at not responding to them, not getting triggered by them, and not having them be as heavy-duty versions of previous incarnations. But we are learning a lot. We’re doing well. From a fan’s perspective, it seems like the Sound Lab is helping you guys do that: giving you all a place to explore your own ideas and release music without any pressure. The only restriction is the lack of time because everyone has their own lives and families and we all live in different places. But it’s way better than any other time, like, getting under the hood and looking at the real, intense stuff. Can you give us a hint as to what the 25th anniversary shows might entail? I’m not really at liberty to talk about some of the stuff, but we are trying to show up with more commitment than previous times. We have like 15 new songs now, and we’ve only played about two thirds of them. We’re just trying to enter the 25th year with a new, revived, explosive version of ourselves. Would you say the 25th anniversary shows are going to be looking ahead as opposed to being retrospective? We’re going to do some retrospective stuff as well for sure. One of the shows falls during the second week of Jazz Fest. Are you excited to play New Orleans during such a vivacious time? Oh, it’s always so amazing to be there during Jazz Fest. To be in a city that’s built on music be at its musical peak is incredible to be a part of. You’ll have Pigeons Playing Ping Pong opening. Do you think you’ll collaborate with those guys? I bet we will. Let’s talk about Hulaween. SCI’s costume set this year was the divine feminine. What motivated you guys to bring in all of these amazing female performers and explore that theme? Well, it seemed like a good theme. I don’t know, it’s in the air. Considering the root of sexism, it’s latent. It’s all around us. We still function in this very hardcore patriarchy - to celebrate womanhood and all its glory, especially in our format of rock and roll... There were a lot of pieces that came together. All these opportunities to feature people like Ann Wilson and Jen Hartswick kind of appeared, so we said “Let’s do it.” I don’t think a lot of men realize how deep sexism lies and is in built in the fabric of society. You have to actively rail against it to get anywhere near an appropriate look at it. Do you have a wish list for the 25th anniversary shows or even the years ahead, for special guests? Well one dream for me has been Pat Metheny. He’s always been my favorite artist. He’s a jazz guitarist and has been around for many, many years. He’s really done some amazing stuff. That’s the only one that comes to mind right now. He’s been on the wish list for a long time but I don’t think we’re really worthy. I don’t think he’d do it because he’d hear us and be like, “Um...” [Laughs.] I know you guys just collaborated with Rayland Baxter. He co-wrote one of your new tunes, “Gone Crooked,” and he jammed it with you guys during Hulaween. What was working with Rayland like? Oh it was great. That song we did with him was just an incredibly perfect song. He’s a genius songwriter and I had been turned onto his album because Keith was writing with him. I just fell in love with that song, so it was so fun to get to play it with him.
One of the last things I kind of wanted to touch on is the band’s new song “Illegal,” which you spearheaded. Can you talk a little bit about the background of that one? Well, I tend to get conspiracy-minded and I’ve long had this sensibility the middle-class is totally crushed these days. There’s just super rich people and super poor people and it all feels like it’s coming from the same point. The military industrial complex and the pharmaceutical industry is the same thing as the anti-weed campaign, is the same thing as keep everyone poor and so I kind of had this thought, “Will they make us illegal?”. That’s the final statement, they just make it illegal to be straight up, normal people. And so then in the verses I outline all the different ways, or some of the different versions of how they make it hard to get along in daily life and how they keep us repressed. It’s kind of a light-hearted tune in itself. I try to keep the light-hearted feel of the song to keep that juxtaposition, except for the bridge where I get angry [Laughs]. You’re also singing lead vocals on it. Was that a different muscle for you to flex? It unfortunately is a different muscle. There’s just too many songwriters in String Cheese Incident to get any time in. I have three other songs on String Cheese albums that I sing and I sing occasional covers, but it’s hard to initiate myself into the rotation when everyone wants to sing their songs. It gets tougher to get an outlet for my singing and songwriting but the band stays open-minded. In a perfect world are you singing a few songs every night with Cheese? I definitely noticed that when I’m supposed to sing my song, or a cover song, or “Illegal,” it definitely puts me more in the game and I know it’s how those guys feel. I would like to sing a song a night, maybe, but I don’t think that’s likely to happen and that’s my role. I want to be a team player, I want what’s best for what we are without trying to necessarily rewire it because I want to make some statement. It’s been 25 years and I think it’s best that everyone does their thing they’re good at. Lastly, any big plans for EOTO in the future? Um, no big, shifting plans, I’m really enjoying the EOTO and Friends sets. We just did one with Marco Benevento and that was super fun and that’s really exciting for me. That’s always my goal: to be considered a musician by my peers. Because as a drummer… Often drummers can’t play other instruments so much, and now these incredible players are sitting in and I’m the guy making the rest of the music, and everyone’s enjoying themselves. It’s very satisfying.
