Aswe officially enter autumn, there’s no time like the present to take stock ofthe amazing musical happenings of summer 2019. And since The String CheeseIncident have been in a reflective mood for some time - celebrating their 25thanniversary with a slew of shows throughout this year - we rang upsinger-guitarist Bill Nershi for a wide-spanning conversation.
“Ourband is different than a lot of bands,” he said of SCI, phoning from his Denverhome. “Some bands, like Umphrey’s McGee for instance, those guys went to schooltogether. They’ve known each other forever. String Cheese, we all met at a skiarea when most of us were around our 30’s, except Kang was a little younger. Wedidn’t have that common denominator of growing up in the same place. Everybodyhas different styles and tastes and personalities. But, musically, you get toknow each other: what they listen to, what they play like, why they likecertain kinds of songs, things like that. Although it can be a pain in the asssometimes, in the end, it’s really helped make us who we are now.”
Fromjamming with bluegrass legends at DelFest to reuniting with Keller Williams atRed Rocks to that legendary 75-minute “Rosie” at Electric Forest, below Nershireflects on Summer 2019.
One of SCI’s summer highlights was DelFest, jammingwith both Billy Strings and Del McCoury. Can you share some memories from thatday?
BillyStrings is somebody that I’ve met in the bluegrass world. I played with theTravelin’ McCourys for a little while as a side project, and ran into BillyStrings a lot. He was there at DelFest and I heard that he had been playing“Black Clouds,” which is a song that I wrote a long time ago. So we said let’sget him up and do it. And man, he’s really on fire, that kid. He’s really,really amazing, his singing and playing. So that was really cool to get him upthere and mix it up with him a little bit. And also playing with Del and theMcCourys, is especially cool, because during our 25th anniversarywe’re trying to play some music with people who have really inspired us overthe years. The Del McCoury band is definitely one of those groups that hasreally turned us on and so it was great to get to play with them.
Being in the same circles as Del,has he ever passed on any insight or wisdom to you guys?
Playingwith somebody who has so much experience and success like Del, it’s just beingable to perform with him, see how he carries himself before the shows and onstage, and to get to sing with him. Del is also a great storyteller and he’sgot some great stories about days when he was playing with Bill Monroe. Theyalso were really involved with David Grisman and Jerry Garcia and knew them, soDel has some great stories. And he is just the nicest guy. It’s like, “Oh, youcan be really nice and a pretty normal person and still be really successful in music!” That’s very refreshing.That’s what I strive for and I think the band strives for trying to avoid toomuch drama and just being able to enjoy the music and create.
Since it’s SCI’s 25thyear, do you find yourself thinking about the idea of legacy?
Makingour mark as far as what we’ve listened to growing up and putting our kind ofown original twist on it, that’s important to us. It’s not something we thinkabout and say, “We have to do this,” we just try to create and be original andwe thank everybody that has given us so many great ideas of how music can beplayed and if we can do that for somebody like Billy or the new generation ofbands coming up, then that would be an honor for us.
Yonder Mountain String Band was andis very much a part of SCI’s era of performers. You and Jeff Austin wereactually neighbors, right?
Yeahwe were next door neighbors for a couple years.
What was that like?
Wehad some fun, we drank some tequila, we played some music, we had some goodpicks up there. It just kind of blew my mind when I heard that he bought thathouse. My wife and I went up to the mountains to look for property in 2001after String Cheese had come back from the first tour that we actually mademoney on. Our management said, “Hey you guys made some money,” and that’s whenI went to buy a house. The house that we went to look at had a big chain acrossthe driveway and it was locked, so we drove up to the next house, which was notfinished being built. We ended up buying that one and the house that we hadgone up there to look at originally is the one that Jeff bought years later.
Crazy.
Yeahit was kind of a crazy turn of events but yeah, it’s been a tough time for alot of people with Jeff passing on, and his family I’m sure the most.
At least there’s this big showcoming up in November, What the Night Brings. It’sreally cool that everybody in the jamgrass scene is going to come out for Jeffand for his family.
Yeah, Jeff was kind of a wild man, but the bottom line is that he was out there, like we were out there, on the road, which kind of makes him like a brother in arms to musicians. It is great to see everybody rallying like that. I would only hope that if I were in that position that people would put so much effort into it as they are with Jeff. I think it’s great, and I think that one of the most important things is thinking about his family too and trying to make sure that they’re not suffering. They’re gonna suffer from his loss but we’ll try to help them financially so that they’re not in dire straits with Jeff gone.
To pivot a little bit, you guys andKeller did an awesome show at Red Rocks this year. Whose idea was it torecreate Breathe?
WellI don’t know who initially talked about it, but it was kind of a convergence ofour 25th anniversary and the 20th anniversary of Breathe coming out. Also, like I said,we’re trying to play music with people that have influenced us or have beenimportant in our growth as a band. We’ve played so many shows with Keller backin the day that it just felt really appropriate to do it and it was so greatplaying with Keller. And he was so easy going about it all. He could have veryeasily gotten really picky about how every little detail had to be for thealbum and he just was very laid back about it and made sure that it was fun,and it was a lot of fun.
Were there any dormant songs thatwere tricky to learn again?
Yeah,like all of ‘em. [Laughs.] Some were tricky, some were not. Keller has acertain way that he writes songs. After reabsorbing and going into the third orfourth song, you could almost anticipate the way the song was gonna develop andchange and it was really cool to get back into Keller’s head and how he writes.
Welove Keller and we’re just really psyched that it went so well at Red Rockswith him. I think we were a little nervous about how it was gonna go, how thesongs were gonna come off and all of that and it was just smooth as silk.
As far as this 25thanniversary tour goes, what have been some personal highlights for you?
Wel,I did enjoy that one song set [“Rosie” at Electric Forest] and I’m really proudof the band as a whole that we didn’t find reasons to not do that, ya know? It was our smaller play at Electric Forest,so we were like, “What can we do differently in this show that’ll make itspecial?” There were different ideas brought forth to like learn an entirealbum from a band, to which I was like, “Please, god, don’t make us do that.”
What band was it?
Wellit could be anybody, but we never got that far on that concept. I said, “Whydon’t we just play three or four songs and just jam through the whole rest ofthe set?” We ended up with, “Let’s start with ‘Rosie,’ start changing the keysand just jam and we’ll have different people in the band call key changes?”
Wehad general ideas and guidelines on how we could get through it, keep it movingand keep it interesting and then when we get done, we’ll come back into “Rosie”at the end. I felt like it was a great challenging musical set, to have to pushyourself to be creative and musical when you don’t know what’s gonna happen. Isaid, “Well we’ve been calling ourselves a jamband for 25 years. We’ve actuallydone a jamset it took us 25 years to do it.” I mean we always jam but that waslike, “I’d do that every night! That was fun!”
Any other stanouts.
Yeah,that was fun playing, the Cap is always great. It’s hard for me to pick outindividual things I feel like I’m enjoying the consistency of the bands playingnow and I am really psyched that we have a lot of new material right now we’vebeen writing and recording tons over the last two years and ya know we talkedabout it like, “hey let’s not become a cover band of ourselves,” we have tokeep creating and keep it fresh. So I’ve been enjoying that.
Yeah, you beat me to my nextquestion. I was going to ask about how things are in the SoundLab.
Yeahwell I think we’ve been making good use of it. We’ve probably recorded, I don’tknow, 14 songs over the last year and a half or so. We haven’t put it out as analbum, we may, but now it’s just like, let’s do this song and then let’s dothese in three years and then we’ll finish ‘em off one at a time and finishthem as singles and then we’ll work on the next three songs because everybodyin the band writes, there’s no shortage of original tunes. Sometimes there’stoo many to get ‘em all in. That’s better than the other possibilities.
Yeah, well the last thing I wantedto ask about Billy is, you’ve been playing cool free shows with your wife,Jillian. Tell me about what draws you to that kind of thing. Obviously I’m sureit’s fun to play with your wife. Is there any kind of creative itches that itscratches or do you just kind of like getting out there?
Ohyeah. We’re really into the old country Waylon’ and Willie, and who are some ofthe other guys that we like doing, like Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris. Whenwe’re at home we play a lot of music and get into harmony singing and workingup these tunes. We’ve always kind of played a couple or three gigs per year. Wehave a friend who runs a concert series in Golden and we’ve always played a fewshows with him per year. We did a recent one that was super fun with our friendRoss James and Ross is part of a family from back in Marin County out in theBay Area. He plays with Bill and Scott Law and a bunch of those, Grahame Lesh,and he moved to Denver so we said, “hey let me come up and come over and welllearn a couple of tunes and you can come sit in with us when we play our Goldenshow,” and he ended up playing on every song. He plays electric guitar, I playacoustic, and Jill and I sang and it was super fun, so were looking to do thata little bit more now that he’s out here. But yeah I think everybody in theband in String Cheese has some other projects that they work with to a smalleror greater degree so they don’t have to feel like they make the band playcertain kind of music all the time. Rather than do that its like, scratchingyour itch or getting your jones on, it’s something where you can say, “I loveString Cheese but I’ll never play a George Jones tune” or something like thatso I like to play tons of bluegrass but I can’t make the band play bluegrassall night. People in the band wouldn’t enjoy it because people would be like,“what is this” and it would create tension that you don’t want in the band, so Ithink that’s why a lot of people pick up side projects so they can pursue thosekind of outlets and different styles.
That does it for me, Billy, thankyou so much for your time. Is there anything we haven’t talked about that youwant to bring up?
Ithink that we covered our bases. Once again I’d like to say that during our 25thanniversary, I wanna thank people like you and Relix that have supported us and all our fans that have really keptus going through thick and thin. String Cheese really appreciates its fans andwe’re really proud of all the people that come out.
