{"id":2442557,"date":"2019-04-04T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-04-04T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=303123"},"modified":"2019-04-04T16:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-04-04T22:00:00","slug":"string-cheese-incident-returns-to-ski-town-roots-for-the-apres-in-aspen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/string-cheese-incident-returns-to-ski-town-roots-for-the-apres-in-aspen\/","title":{"rendered":"String Cheese Incident returns to ski town roots for The Apr\u00e9s in Aspen"},"content":{"rendered":"
The String Cheese Incident’s Bill Nershi photographed at Belly Up in 2017. The band will return to Belly Up on Friday and will headline The Apres at Buttermilk on Saturday and Sunday..<\/strong>
Courtesy Michael Goldberg<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Long before they became jam-band royalty, The String Cheese Incident\u2019s earliest gigs were apr\u00e8s-ski shows slopeside in Crested Butte.<\/p>\n

So there\u2019s a resonant full-circle feeling for the band as it headlines The Apr\u00e8s \u2013 the Aspen Skiing Co.\u2019s big new spring music festival on Buttermilk Ski Area \u2013 and celebrates its 25th anniversary.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlaying outside on the mountain when everyone has been skiing all day out on the mountain, it just feels really familiar,\u201d String Cheese bass player Keith Moseley said in a recent phone interview from home in Longmont.<\/p>\n

The band will headline a sold-out Belly Up on Friday night and The Apres on Saturday and Sunday night. String Cheese is planning two full sets for each night on the hill at Buttermilk as the centerpiece of a six-band, three day festival that coincides with Buttermilk\u2019s closing day and (fingers crossed) warm spring-skiing conditions.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to be great to get up there for a season finale kind of thing,\u201d said Moseley.<\/p>\n

During those modest proto-Cheese shows, the band was a trio of Moseley, Bill Nershi and Michael Kang, who were scraping by while ski-bumming in mid-1990s.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the band started, we were kind of just ski bums playing music so that we didn\u2019t have to work any other job,\u201d Moseley said. \u201cMusic was a passion, but wasn\u2019t a job at the beginning.<\/p>\n

Like most young people in ski towns \u2013 and many of the thousands of String Cheese faithful expected to be descend on Aspen for this weekend\u2019s shows \u2013 the young Moseley and his bandmates worked service jobs so that they could ski, bike, hike and occasionally bail on work for festivals like Telluride Bluegrass and RockyGrass. But then the band started getting some traction.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Billy, Michael Kang and I started playing Happy Hour gigs in Crested Butte, it was as if this great weight had been lifted of \u2018Oh my god, I don\u2019t need to show up and bus tables at the restaurant tonight because I\u2019m playing! This is great. Can we turn this into a full-time thing?\u2019\u201d Moseley recalled.<\/p>\n

A quarter-century later, String Cheese toasted its 25th with a monumental three-night New Year\u2019s celebration at the 1st Bank Center outside Denver, with special guests like bluegrass master Sam Bush, pedal steel great Robert Randolph and New Orleans funk bandleader Ivan Neville joining in. They\u2019ve followed it with celebratory multi-night runs of shows in Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe and New Orleans.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are all really thankful that we\u2019ve been able to do it and that the fans have been along for the ride for this long and we\u2019re excited about where the band stands,\u201d Moseley said.<\/p>\n

But while many band anniversary tours are valedictory affairs that look backward, String Cheese has its feet planted in the now. The band is in the midst of a remarkably fertile and adventurous creative stretch, with new songs sprouting from the recently completed Louisville studio they\u2019ve dubbed \u201cThe Sound Lab.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got new material that we think is as good as anything we\u2019ve ever written,\u201d Moseley said. \u201cThe band has a refreshed energy and excitement for the shows. We\u2019re in a good place \u2013 just happy to be where we are and to play some special shows in Colorado.\u201d<\/p>\n

The recording studio and rehearsal space gives the band the band \u2013 finally, after 25 years \u2013 the chance to lay down songs whenever they\u2019re inspired. It untethers them from the expensive and anxious grind of renting studio time and trying to make an album\u2019s worth of tracks in a limited number of days.<\/p>\n

Since going to work in the Lab last year, the band has released nine surprise singles. These fresh tracks hop un-self-consciously from bluegrass to funk and country to EDM to jam rock. The most recent came last Friday, when they dropped \u201cI Want You,\u201d their folky down-home collaboration with Andy Hall of the Infamous Stringdusters. A paean to Colorado living, with breezy feel-good lyrics like \u201cIf the mountains are my home\/Guess I\u2019ve really got it made\/Feels so fine to chase the sun\/On a sunny day,\u201d the band strategically released the single before this hotly anticipated Aspen run of shows.<\/p>\n

Recent live shows have also been peppered with premieres of diverse and often untitled new songs that have sent String Cheese\u2019s fervent fan-base chattering online.<\/p>\n

With the Lab at their disposal, String Cheese simply loads in their gear whenever they get back from the road and they make music whenever they want.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been great,\u201d Moseley said. \u201cBeing a band for this long, really the juice that keeps you going is being able to crank out good new material.\u201d<\/p>\n

They\u2019ve additionally released a a slew of live recordings in recent months \u2013 including a March 2002 set at Denver\u2019s Fillmore Auditorium \u2013 with recordings selected by band archivist Larry Fox.<\/p>\n

String Cheese has never broken up, though for several years \u2013 following the arduous tours supporting the 2005 album \u201cOne Step Closer\u201d \u2013 its members turned their attention to other projects. They didn\u2019t release new music between 2005 and 2014, with scant live shows between 2007 and 2010. In short, String Cheese burned out at the tail end of its first decade of aggressive touring and unhinged live shows.<\/p>\n

They learned from that experience, Moseley said, to keep it fun and fulfilling by making time to for family and for creative exploration off-stage.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing able to have a bunch of new songs to play out live really keeps things interesting,\u201d Moseley said.<\/p>\n

And these days they mostly book multi-day runs of concerts in places they like. So, sure, a three-day concert series in Aspen or Jamaica or Lake Tahoe keeps the band happy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe prefer it,\u201d said Moseley, who has been skiing in Aspen all week. \u201cYou can set up, settle in and get sound-checked and get the nuances of the sound and venue, and get to check in locally. If it\u2019s in Aspen, we\u2019ll get some time on the slopes and walk around town and connect with some local people and eat in the local restaurants.\u201d<\/p>\n

They challenge themselves to not repeat any songs over the course of a multi-day single-city stand. For a series like this weekend\u2019s, that puts them in the 90-to-100 song range, which Moseley said is a welcome challenge.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are digging pretty deep into the catalog,\u201d he explained. \u201cIt takes some rehearsal, on our part, to stay up on all those songs \u2013 a little backstage rehearsal to make sure everybody knows the parts and can remember. \u2026 That keeps it interesting for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Celebrating 25 years in Aspen, Moseley and his band mates can\u2019t help but get nostalgic<\/a> about their early shows here in the mid-90s and their apr\u00e8s roots in Crested Butte. But it\u2019s clear that they\u2019re still looking ahead.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe worst thing we could do is rest on our laurels and just say, \u2018OK, let\u2019s just show up and play,\u2019\u201d Moseley said. \u201cWe\u2019re focused on trying to push forward with new and better songs and reach higher heights together.\u201d<\/p>\n

atravers@aspentimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The String Cheese Incident’s Bill Nershi photographed at Belly Up in 2017. The band will return to Belly Up on Friday and will headline The Apres at Buttermilk on Saturday and Sunday..Courtesy Michael Goldberg Long before they became jam-band royalty, The String Cheese Incident\u2019s earliest gigs were apr\u00e8s-ski shows slopeside in Crested Butte. So there\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2442557","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-16 05:51:54","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2442557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2442557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2442557\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2442557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2442557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2442557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}