The Doobie Incident, Lockn’ 2015 photo by Dean Budnick
“I’m kind of running around trying to pick up all the pieces of my life,” Michael Kang laughs, calling from his home in Santa Cruz, CA. After releasing a new album, Believe, and flying all over the country to support it, The String Cheese Incident’s multi-instrumentalist is glad to be in one place, recharging his batteries before the band gets back on the road for a stretch of shows at Red Rocks, as well as appearances at the Element and Lockn’ festivals.
Yet, despite String Cheese Incident’s steady schedule, there’s always something “cooking on the back burner,” from new collaborations with bands like The Floozies and Big Gigantic, to a possible International Incident overseas. In a wide-spanning conversation, Kang spoke about his spiritual roots at Burning Man, his golf buddy Jeff Chimenti and strengthening his 20+ year bond with his bandmates.
You’re playing Element Festival in a few weeks, with 6 sets spanning over 3 nights. This will be the band’s first trip to Canada in at least a couple of years. How does it feel going back to the great white north?
We went to Pemberton not last summer but the summer before [July 17-18 2015]. It’s really cool to get back there. We’re going to be in a different part of B.C. that I haven’t been to in a long time. It’s the eastern side of the Canadian Rockies, and I’m really excited to to go up there and be in that part of the hill so to speak.
At Element, you’re sharing the bill with Steve Kimock, Garaj Mahal, and Dead & Co’s Jeff Chimenti. What’s your relationship with those guys?
Over the years, we’ve had different forms of relationships with all of them. Kimock and I— I first saw him when I was going to college. I saw Zero at this frat party in Berkeley back in the late ‘80s so I remember seeing him and being like, “Holy shit this guy’s really good.” That was before I’d even started playing mandolin. So he is kind of a legend as far as I’m concerned in a lot of ways. We kind of have this friendship, we’ve played in different projects together. We share a guitar builder. And now that he’s back in California I see him a little bit more often. He’s an absolute legend, and all the Garaj Mahal guys too.
And then Chimenti and I go back. I don’t know how we first met. It must have been through all the RatDog crew and the Kimock tour, but he and I are golf buddies so him and I try to get out and play golf together. We usually don’t talk about any kind of music, we just go play golf.
As far as setlists go, how do you tailor setlists to festivals? In other words, how do you approach Element vs. a festival like Lockn’ vs. a headlining show in a major city?
Something like Lockn’ a lot of times we’ll get paired with some other artist and do what we call a special “Incident.” That will obviously get tailored to what we’re gonna do with them: our songs, their songs, or whatnot. And then festivals like Element— I think British Columbia we haven’t been back there in a while and it’s going to be kind of out in the middle of nowhere so it’ll end up being really loose in the terms of we’ll get to play whatever we want.
Sometimes when we play festivals that are not just our fan base, we may play different styles of setlists. It really kind of depends. Like when we play Electric Forest we tend to lean more on our electronic side and stuff like that. It really depends on the crowd, but we’ll change it up as is custom to our scene. There won’t be any repeats and stuff, as usual. We’ll get it together when we’re there.
This summer tour, SCI has been busting out a lot covers; everything from The Doors, to Michael Jackson to Maroon 5. How do you guys come up with such diverse covers? Does inspiration strike randomly or do you come to rehearsal with concrete ideas?
It’s pretty random. Like the Maroon 5 song came through because my kids love Maroon 5. Maroon 5 is one of those bands where it’s so sickeningly sweet it’s like candy crack, you know? You hate the fact that you like it, but you like it anyway [laughs]. So we just did it in a middle of a song. I think our whole theme for a long time is we try to surprise people with the kind of covers that we play. A lot of times we’ll only play them once or twice a year. Some have made it into the repertoire a little more frequently than that, but most of the covers we play are once or twice a year and we’ll just bust them out.
A lot of that also comes from our Halloween shows and the covers we like the most will make it into the regular repertoire. Sometimes somebody will bring something up and most of us being completely pop music illiterate will be like, “What the fuck it that?” But we have a pretty open musical world. We’ll try stuff out. And sometimes we fall flat on our face, but that doesn’t keep us from trying.
Throughout a typical Cheese show you bounce back and forth from mandolin to guitar. Tell me a little about your gear. Are you playing anything new these days, adding to the sound?
I’ve been interested personally in different effects and stuff. I think the biggest change for our sound in the last six to eight years has been— having been at the beginning parts of the electronica and jamtronica scene so to speak. We’re friends with a lot of those people. Lorin [Ashton a.k.a. Bassnectar] and I go way back for instance, from our old Burning Man days in the mid-2000s and stuff.
And even though I don’t listen to electronica all the time, even having the influence of Jason and Travis, and EOTO, that’s probably been— we’ve kind of broadened our sonic spectrum. We can do the bluegrass thing and go fully acoustic, which on our last spring tour we did that a lot more, but then it’s also nice to have a completely different thing with the electronica and working with that and everything in between. We try to keep it as open as possible. Individually, people get into different things that work within those genres of music.
I haven’t changed too much, but I’m always interested in trying out new effects and stuff. My clarinet debut on stage won’t be for a while [laughs], but yeah pedals and effects. I’m waiting for this guitar to come from Scott Walker, Kimock’s and my builder, but he’s so backed up these days. I’m excited to get my hands on that.
The biggest thing we’ve gotten into lately is we now have this home studio. We bought this building in Colorado and we call it the Lab and it gives us a lot of sonic flexibility to just be able to do whatever we want. So there’s going to be a lot of collaborations with people in our scene, different guest vocalists and different songwriting things that happen with different people. And that was the intention. I think that’s kind of the next level of where SCI is heading, getting even more diverse and getting into whatever interests us. That’s probably the most exciting thing going on for us.
You and the team at Madison House just wrapped up another successful Electric Forest and Hulaween is on the horizon. Can you talk to me a little about your role in these fests besides music? Back in the Rothbury days you worked art installations, right?
Yeah, so when Rothbury started way back when, Cheese was on break and I started this non-profit with some other friends and my Burning Man camp where we felt it was important to do a lot of environmental— I studied environmental science in college and worked for Greenpeace and a bunch of nonprofits before I even became a musician and it always felt the power of messaging through music could be a really inspirational thing. So when Rothbury came about our nonprofit took some of these artists under our wing, this guy Shrine and this other guy Peter Hudson, who now have installations all over the place, all over the scene and otherwise. And we loaded a semi in this warehouse in Oakland before Burning Man and cruised it around all over. We filled the trucks with biodiesel and pretty much spent the whole summer going to music festivals. I think Electric Forest, or Rothbury at the time, was the first one and we had this huge semi of art with environmental messaging based around the core of it.
That original team of artists is a lot of what comprises Electric Forest’s Forest Crew right now. Back in the day, I wasn’t playing music so we were sitting there building art installations and stuff like that, which is really fun. It’s actually a blast to do something like that, interacting directly with fans, being out in the field. And Electric Forest some ways is the ultimate culmination of all of our common, eye candy vision and messaging. It’s obviously morphed over the years, but that’s something that we’ve always been really, kind of, wanting to incorporate into our shows as well as the idea of the magic that can happen out in the field which is what we did a lot at Horning’s. A lot of those same players are people who are still doing that with us just in the middle of Michigan instead of Oregon. And it’s been quite a ride. It’s something that’s so cool to watch happen and see how the artists keep upping their output and yeah, it’s something we’re really proud to be a part of.
So we’re not out there these days building installations because we have to focus on the music, but Madison House and us have always had the same sensibility. It’s almost like our common intellectual property so to speak. We don’t actually own the festival, we’ve just been kind of grandfathered in as curators I suppose. It’s always going to be part of our lore.
I’ve been to a couple of Electric Forests, and what makes it so unique is that the art aspect so important, and so stressed. It’s not just an afterthought.
It was consciously done. We did it on purpose. A lot of festivals, by the time they pay the big headliners and stuff there isn’t enough money left to really focus on the production. With Electric Forest there was a lot of conversations we had early on, directly with Madison House— and it’s an ethic we had early, playing Horning’s— we would go all out on the production and not make any money. But the experience was so awesome that it didn’t matter. And if we just take that ethic, and put that love into it, and show people something they haven’t seen before they’re really just going to really, really enjoy it and it’s going to stand apart too.
This year was the first Electric Forest in a two weekend format. How did you feel that changed the experience for bands and fans?
Well, I think it was kind of nice. Last year when it was all in one weekend it was so insanely crowded that it was kind of hard to get around. It’s kind of funny, they said last year they sold out so quickly they could have sold 70,000 tickets for it, but it’s not really set up for that kind of thing. In order to make it that kind of festival, all of a sudden you’d have to build this huge stage, which you could do, but I don’t think that would be the direction anyone wants to go with it. So I think the idea was to try to keep it intimate, or as intimate as 40,000 people can be. And so they capped the number of tickets on the first weekend and split it up. I think it worked out pretty great. The first weekend felt crowded but it wasn’t as crowded as last year, which is good because there was some weather and stuff. And the second weekend it was just more relaxed, but there was still over 30,000 people on site. But I think in some ways, I enjoyed the second weekend because it made it feel like there was a little bit of room. On the first weekend, I tried to go see Odesza’s set and I could barely get through the crowd to get to a point where I could actually watch the show. That kind of thing is almost too much.
I really enjoyed both weekends, but the second weekend was nice. And I’m sure the promoters would say differently, they would have been psyched if both weekends totally sold out. I don’t know what’s going to happen next year, but my guess is that they’ll probably do it again.
You’ve had some awesome collaborations over the years i.e. “The Lauryn Hill Incident” “The Zac Brown Incident.” What would your dream “Incidents” be? Do you have a “one that got away” in terms of these collaborations?
We had Gregg Allman happening, but then he got sick last year which was a total bummer. There’s some that are surprises. Like when we did the thing with Zac Brown it was like “Woah, we don’t really know his music,” but our managers knew each other and when we got together with them, even though they’re kind of in a different scene, it was pretty simpatico. The vibe was really, really good between everybody.
The Doobie Brothers thing was great too. We didn’t really know those guys, obviously we knew their music, but the calm energy, and vibe and the camaraderie that came out of that was great. The Kool and the Gang thing was awesome too. This list kind of goes on.
We have a short list of people that we always thought would be pretty awesome to do. We may or may not ever get around to them. I won’t name too many names because we obviously want to keep it a surprise. None that have really gotten away. Obviously, we would have loved to do something with Prince, but that’s not going to happen. That’s something that’s always cooking on the back burner.
In January SCI played the Muertos Con Queso event in Mexico. Can you share some memories from that weekend?
Yeah, those trips are great to just be able to go and hang with your family. Whenever my kids show up, even though daddy’s working, it’s really all about them. So my best memories from that show are just running around, being in the pool and swimming up to the bar and getting a banana milkshake [laughs].
But the shows themselves, standing on stage and watching people go in the water, that’s pretty special. The only other time I’ve seen that was at the Hangout music fest, but it’s Mexico so people can actually go in the water and do whatever they wanted. Hopefully we’ll be able to do something like that again soon.
These destination events are more popular than ever. In addition to Muertos Con Queso, Phish, Dave Matthews & Widespread Panic have all held them in the past year. Have you and the rest of the band considered doing another International Incident in the near future?
We were one of the first ones in the whole scene that started this thing. We went to Jamaica, and we went to Costa Rica and we put a lot of energy into those things. We were never really totally into the idea of doing it at an all-inclusive resort. So the idea that we have cooking is we’ve always wanted it to be a cultural immersion. As much fun as it is to sit at some resort and eat catered food all the time— as easy as that is— to me there’s something that is a little bit missing with being able to interact with a local culture and take an experience out of that. So we have some things cooking that we want to do that would allow us to really immerse ourselves into a scene and maybe bring our fans along to really experience that with us. But that kind of stuff takes a lot more work. So yeah, we do have things we really want to do but some of these ideas would be very difficult to pull off. So it takes time, and we’re hoping it happens sooner rather than later. And we’ll probably, in the meantime, still be able to play with our friends down on the beach, and do that kind of thing. We’re open to it all, but we have plans for doing something that is a lot more experiential in that regard.
I know you can’t give me too many details, but would it be something south of the border? Or even further?
Maybe. We’ve talked about south of the border. We’ve talked about Europe. We’ve talked about a lot of different places. We’ve talked about North Africa. There are things that obviously wouldn’t be the easiest thing for people to pull off. And right now is tough, because some of us have young kids as well, so we can only be gone for so long. But as our kids get older, we’ve definitely been talking about wanting to cook up some really interesting, new stuff.
You mentioned you studio, the Lab earlier. How did this Sound Lab approach change how you write tracks and play tracks live?
Yeah sometimes. We’re working on some collaborations. I’m working on something with the Beats Antique guys. They’re old friends of mine, but that’s actually happening in California where we all live. We just did a song with the guitar player from the Floozies that will get released from them and us. And I think we have a tune that we wrote with Big Gigantic. I’m sure there’s going to be some other stuff, more bluegrass-y stuff that’s coming out. On the last album we had Bonnie [Paine] from Elephant Revival come and sing on one of our tracks. Colorado is a really ripe music scene, and a lot of people there are our friends. And that’s the idea, to be able to have a lot of music coming out. And it’s not something we’re trying to maintain ownership of or anything. We’re just saying, “Hey, here’s some new music that incorporates people you may like together or not, we’re just doing it for fun.” Right now we’re fully in tour mode so it’s hard to get into recording and mixing and all that, but there’s stuff coming out for sure.
This August will be the 10 year anniversary of SCI’s “Final” Shows At Red Rocks. Tell me about those shows, how they felt, and how it feels now that the band is back, touring the US, curating festivals and promoting a new record?
It’s funny to think about it being 10 years ago because life has gone by really quickly in a lot of ways. But those shows 10 years ago were really emotional. The hard thing, I don’t know if it’s hard or easy for people to realize— the ride that we’ve been on in this band, even though it’s been 23 or 24 years it also feels like it hasn’t been that long. When we first started out, the first 10, 15 years of it were just full-on. Complete commitment to it constantly from 1993 until 2007. And by the time it got to that point we really hadn’t— everything took a backseat to the band, which I don’t think is necessarily the healthiest way to try to live a life, to have something that runs your life so intently. So when we took the break, beyond the fact that it was sad because it felt like an era ending, it also allowed us to re-incorporate and gain our individuality and get ourselves back, really. And that ultimately paved the way for us to want to play shows together again. And I think that the things that we learned from that we’re carrying to this day.
Who knows what the future holds? I don’t think we’ll ever get back to the point where we’re touring as much as we did, but we want our experience together to be as unified when we are together. We definitely want to break new ground and continue to do so. We’re figuring out different ways to do it. Our scene, it has always been about touring, and that’s something we’d like to break the mold in, to not feel like we have to constantly tour and just do it because we do it. We want to have a reason for why we’re doing it. I think we’re in a really good space right now. Everyone’s really motivated, feeling good about really wanting to make the band sound as good and vibrant as possible. Yeah, we’re in a really good space.
Your next shows are at Red Rocks as well, are there any memories that stand out from all of your performances there?
We played there a lot of times now. I think we’re in the upper 20s or 30s in the amount of times we’ve played there now. There’s a couple things that really stick out. I remember one time— we’ve been lucky, extremely lucky, with the weather there. We’ve not really been poured on except for this one time. So I remember the one time we did get poured on, that was really intense. That was two or three years ago. Yeah, just different memories. One that’s sticking out right now is one time we did “Back in Black” with John Cowan from New Grass Revival. A lot of those sit-ins over the years.
And of course there’s the first time you play Red Rocks where you’re just like, “Holy shit.” You sit on the stage and everyone’s looking down on you, and it’s this pretty intense sensation. But now it’s almost like we’ve done it so much, that we’ve gotten used to it and it feels like home. It’s totally the home crowd and it just feels really natural. And being home, it can be not necessarily the most relaxing environment because there’s tons of friends and people you want to hang out with. We try to keep it mellow backstage, but at Red Rocks everybody comes ready to rage and wanting to go and so it’s a lot of energy. I’m glad we’re not doing anything this week to get ready for it [laughs].
Rehearsing for the String Cheese & The Gang, Lockn’ 2014
I think one of the most interesting things about SCI’s evolution has been how you allow each of the band members musical styles to shine, while still sounding musically cohesive and united. “Beautiful” has electronic, EOTO-like elements while “Colorado Bluebird Sky” harkens back to you and Billy’s more acoustic, bluegrass roots. How do you guys manage that kind of musical diplomacy? Allowing all 6 members to be heard, and then channeling them all into one larger voice?
Well, it’s not the easiest thing. In fact, there’s quite a lot of friction that arises from that. I think the one thing we’ve learned is that we’ve realized that friction is what makes the stew feel interesting. We’ve always said sometimes we lament like, “Ah man, I wish we all saw things the same way,” then we’d be able to move through stuff easier. But at the same time, that potential clash has made some very interesting combinations come about. I think we’ve all become more resigned— not resigned— but we understand that that’s part of the equation. And nobody said democracy was easy, you know? We’ve learned that on many levels, from being in a country to being in a band.
We always said, man, we wish it wasn’t like that but we’re learning how to achieve resonance with each other. It’s taken a lot of personal work too. It’s one of those things where we always say that if we weren’t in a band together I don’t know if all of us would be hanging out together, best friends or anything like that. But we realize that the collective effort and everything we put into it is a journey for us individually and collectively. With any venture really it’s about putting as much positive energy as you can into it. And so it is difficult for us for us sometimes, but we also know that if you mine for that stuff you can really find some nuggets. It’s a process, it’s not easy at all. A lot of people have needs, wishes, ways that they assert themselves and we’re trying to keep it all together as best we can. Being in a band is not easy. [Laughs]
We give ourselves a lot of credit for having stuck it out this long. And we actually just had this mediated session with this guy who is an amazing coach, to kind of help us figure out what it means for us to want to get to the next level of whatever we’re doing. And it made us realize we have a lot to be grateful for and there’s a lot of ways we can improve as an organization as well. It’s a work in progress. Just like life, it’s many faceted and not always easy.
On March 3rd, At Fox Theater, you guys spent your 2nd Set playing A String Cheese Incident in its entirety. What was the process like relearning that? Are there other songs or albums that fell out of rotation that you’re thinking about reviving?
It’s a balance with that. Because the old school peeps always want to hear the old stuff, yet that might have been stuff that we played a lot at some point and just got sick of playing. And then the band is always focused on making the new material sound as good as possible and that requires a fair amount of repetition to be able to feel it out live, to make it sound good. It’s a balance. There are some things that could easily make their way into the rotation more. We recognize how our old fans really want to hear some of the old stuff. It’s one of the things we have to add to the equation when we go into setlist mode. But this last tour was great because we got to go to a lot of older, smaller venues we played back in the ‘90s and stuff and our sound also was more tailored to being more acoustic and not as electronically bombastic so to speak. So a lot of that stuff comes across that way because of the instrumentation and where we’re at as a band right now, but it was really good to tap back into that. That tour was really educational for us in a lot of ways. Yeah, I think it’s a little bit of both, remembering your roots as well as being able to dive forward into the unknown.
Now that the band has really geared up this summer, playing bustouts and covers, are there songs from any of your solo projects that you’ve considered playing in your sets?
Some people are more prolific than others. EOTO doesn’t really have songs, but their vibe makes it in on the jams that we do. Kyle has probably the biggest backlog of material, and he has his whole other band that he plays with. We’ve been trying to do this thing in the last couple years where we do SCI specific songwriting retreats where we go hole up in a house and it’s just the six of us and we write songs together. We actually have a backlog of a few songs that came from the last couple of sessions, that just need to get into the studio to flush out. So there’s something always in the works. We just need more time to make it happen.
You guys have played a few Allman Brothers Tributes in recent history, “Hot ‘Lanta” at Mountain Jam and “Ain’t Wastin Time No More” in Atlanta. Why did you choose those two songs specifically?
When we were getting ready for this Gregg Allman Incident last year we learned a bunch of songs to do this whole set, and then when Gregg passed away we were like “Oh my god, what a gift.” We actually knew some of the stuff and had it under our fingers. Those were just the ones that seemed like they stuck out. Billy is a huge Allman Brothers fan, they were a formative band in his growing up. So those were the ones that rose to the top for us, but there’s some other ones that we might bust out. And it obviously seemed like the right time, especially at Mountain Jam. It used to be Warren [Haynes’] thing. We were hoping he was going to be there, but unfortunately he wasn’t. So we were kind of hoping if we had a couple of things under our belt he would be able to seamlessly come up there and do his Warren thing.
SCI had played with the Allmans in the past, do you have a favorite memory hanging out or playing with Gregg or any of the other members?
We never really had that much access to Gregg. They played Red Rocks with us a bunch of years ago and it’s kind of crazy when you play shows like that. Everyone has to get into their show mode, and when they’re playing we’re getting ready to go on and then by the time we’re done some of them may be around some of them may not be. A lot of the hanging we get to do comes at totally different moments. I’ve hung out with Oteil [Burbridge] a bunch. When we did this boat thing last year with Kyle’s band, we would just hang out and shoot the shit and talk about our kids and just life in general. Unfortunately when we’re in show mode it’s hard to carve out the time. It’s like a work day. There’s an amazing amount of preparation for us: setlist, warming up, just getting everything ready.
I haven’t seen Derek in a long time. We had some moments with Butch last year when we played that festival with them. It was really, really cool to hang with those guys in the times that we do and definitely as time passes we’ll look back and cherish those moments.
Finally, Jerry Harrison of the Talking Heads produces your last two albums, is he your go-to producer now?
Well it seemed like that, but we’re actually thinking we might self-produce the next few releases just because it might be easier for us to do that. Jerry was great on so many levels. He’s just got so much experience, and different styles. We can sit around and talk about all kind of different stuff, which makes it interesting to have somebody to bounce around war stories. There’s a lot of downtime in the studio where you’re just waiting for stuff to happen so with producers you’re just hanging out with them, and building a relationship and having meals and all that stuff. Their signature on a project oftentimes doesn’t just have to do with how they hear things, or whatnot, but the vibe as it comes up in the record. And I feel like the last few recordings we did were really cool in that regard. It sounds different than what we would have done by ourselves, and it definitely sounds different from any other producer that we’ve had too. Hopefully, we’ll work together in the future. Jerry’s a busy guy, he keeps himself constantly busy, but it was great working with him.
