The String Cheese Incident (SCI) is an American jam band from Crested Butte and Telluride, Colorado, formed in 1993. The band is composed of Michael Kang (acoustic/electric mandolin, electric guitar, and violin), Michael Travis (drums and percussion), Bill Nershi (acoustic guitar, lap steel guitar, and electric slide guitar), Kyle Hollingsworth (piano, organ, Rhodes, and accordion), and Keith Moseley (bass guitar), and, since 2004, Jason Hann (auxiliary percussion).
Their music has elements of bluegrass sounds, as well as rock, electronica, calypso, country, funk, jazz, Latin, progressive rock, reggae, and psychedelia. All members write original compositions and sing.
History
1996–2001
After a few years of playing local ski resorts and private functions, the band formed the independent record label SCI Fidelity, on which they released their first album, Born on the Wrong Planet, an album split between originals and covers. The album featured melody-driven music with room for improvisation. Instrumentals and covers constituted half of the album. Many songs from the first album are still frequently played by the band, including "Black Clouds", "Land's End", "Texas", and "Jellyfish."
Less than a year later, SCI released a compilation of ten songs, including "Land's End", on their self-titled live album A String Cheese Incident, which chronicles a single concert from the Fox Theatre in Boulder, Colorado and adds pianist Hollingsworth to the ensemble (he was not in the band during the recording of Born on the Wrong Planet). Despite spanning only one disc and containing only ten tracks, the album clocks in at 72 minutes even (thus, with an average track length of 7:12, displaying their propensity for extended jams).
'Round the Wheel, released in 1998, refined the band's sound and displayed a marked increase in both musical and lyrical maturity, and added Paul McCandless as a guest player on soprano and tenor saxophone and Tony Furtado on banjo, but did not earn them quite the level of fame that they would achieve in the next millennium. From 1998 through 2001 SCI toured the country extensively and steadily, playing over 500 "Incidents" in hundreds of cities, including an appearance at Woodstock '99.
In 2001, with the help of guest producer and Los Lobos member Steve Berlin, they released their third studio effort, Outside Inside. This album marked a shift from the band's traditional bluegrass leanings to a more standard rock sound, thus making it the most accessible album to a mainstream audience to that point. The band did not completely abandon its bluegrass roots, however, sneaking in the short three-minute track "Up the Canyon" at the end of the disc, which has become one of many live favorites along with "Rollover", "Close Your Eyes", and others.
2002–2004
In August 2003, SCI's in-house ticket selling service, SCI Ticketing (now Baseline Ticketing), sued Ticketmaster, which controlled nearly all of the larger venues the band was playing. SCI alleged that by restricting bands from selling directly to fans more than 8% of a venue's tickets violated the Sherman Antitrust Act. The suit followed an unsuccessful petitioning by SCI, R.E.M., Pearl Jam and other bands calling for the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate Ticketmaster's high service fees and anti-competitive practices. The parties settled in 2008, and the band gained a larger allotment of tickets to sell and agreed to not publicize the settlement.
In October 2003, SCI released their fourth studio album, Untying the Not, produced by Martin "Youth" Glover, formerly of the band the Killing Joke. The release continued SCI's use of electronic music and trance elements. Both Travis and Kang got into electronic music around the same time and started pushing the group in that direction.
In the summer of 2004, SCI booked to play the touring festival Lollapalooza; thereby becoming the caravan's first jam band. But poor ticket sales led to the festival's cancellation and the band re-routed its summer tour.
2005–2006
In June 2005, the band released their fifth studio album, titled One Step Closer, containing thirteen original tracks with guest songwriting collaborations, including Jim Lauderdale. In 2005, the band also welcomed percussionist Jason Hann. The album was produced by Malcolm Burn at a studio in Boulder, Colorado, where the band is based. One Step Closer was a return to the more roots-based music of earlier String Cheese Incident fare, while still retaining some of the pop sensibility of previous studio albums.