The 2023 live-music finale at the Rose Music Center at the Heights will forever be referred to as “the Incident.” The String Cheese Incident, that is. 

The now-30-year-old band from Colorado rolled in to Southwest Ohio Sept. 20 to close the concert season that began four months earlier with a gig by Robert Plant & Alison Krauss. On a night off from the Outlaw Music Festival where they played shortened sets alongside Willie Nelson, Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros Featuring the Wolfpack and others, the sextet was hungry to “expand a little bit,” as acoustic guitarist Bill Nershi put it to the small-but-enthusiastic audience that gathered for the last Rose of summer. 

And expand they did, focusing heavily on the back catalog during three hours of spiraling exploration and improvisation that found the band playing warhorses like “Windy Mountain,” “Big Shoes” and “Texas,” covering Tom Petty’s “You Wreck Me” and transforming the traditional “I Know You Rider” into a modern SCI trance while battling a poor mix that left Keith Moseley’s four-string bass and Michael Travis’ kick drum overpowering the intricate overtones. 

The sound problems were evident from the moment the band took the stage at 7:25 and opened with the title track from Lend Me a Hand. Denizens of the Rose would not be surprised by this; that the mix never gelled was the surprising part.

Michael Kang was most impacted, as his electric guitar and mandolin struggled to break through the aural mud. But when he picked up his violin for an electrifying “Bumpin’ Reel” toward the end of the night, Kang willed himself into the sonic tapestry and reminded the audience he is often the group’s special sauce in the soloing department.

His bandmates had an easier time, with Travis and percussionist Jason Hann – who employed sticks, his hands, shakers, a washboard and other rhythmic implements – carving a deep sonic groove in which Nershi and keyboardist Kyle Hollingsworth planted fertile solos. Few musicians seem as into what they do as Hollingsworth, who, with an inflatable unicorn on his rig, mouths the notes to his solos, plays the talk box and generally gets into his own space while staying right in line with his musical compatriots.

He’s a show unto himself.