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Charleston City Paper • September 24, 2003
A New Knot in the String: String Cheese Incident breaks new ground

Revolver by the Beatles, Achtung Baby by U2, Kid A by Radiohead, Blonde On Blonde by Bob Dylan, Untying The Not by String Cheese Incident.

This may be the first time anyone has mentioned String Cheese Incident in the same breath as legendary artists like Dylan, U2, or the Beatles. But with Untying The Not, a case can be made for a comparison to such legendary acts.

Achtung Baby, Kid A, Revolver, and Blonde On Blonde are all examples of albums that represented bold steps by artists into new musical territory. And while no one, including String Cheese bassist Keith Moseley, is ready to put the band in a class with the Beatles or Bob Dylan, he sees some truth in comparing Untying The Not to such noteworthy albums.

“I think certainly this will be an album where people will be able to look back on it later in our careers and say that was a turning point for the band. That was the point where they creatively really took a jump forward,” Moseley says. “I think people maybe will (think that). I think this will be an album that will kind of mark a turning point for the band.”

Formed in the early 1990s by Moseley, guitarist Bill Nershi, mandolin player Michael Kang, and drummer Michael Travis in the Boulder, Col. area, the group didn’t really take wing until 1996 when keyboardist Kyle Hollingsworth completed the current lineup.

Four CDs arrived in rapid succession — Born On The Wrong Planet in 1996, A String Cheese Incident in 1997, Round The Wheel in 1998, and the live release, Carnival ‘99 in 2000 — as String Cheese Incident gained a reputation as one of rock’s most successful do-it-yourself acts, filling large theaters in many markets.

Up to this point, though, String Cheese Incident were still primarily known for their free-wheeling, improvisation-spiced live show that continued to draw most of its fans from the mushrooming jam band scene.

The group’s 2001 CD, Outside Inside, found the band focusing more on songcraft, as the CD featured more concisely structured material and a greater reliance on hooks over instrumental skill as a foundation for the CD.

Still, it was a diverse CD that not only showcased the group’s bluegrass and pop roots, but the jazz, Latin, reggae, and psychedelic rock elements that had always made up the group’s sound. Even Moseley says Inside Outside still retained a strong element of the group’s live sound.

“That album is more like a live show in that we’d just taken a group of new songs and tried to groom them for a studio record, cut them down in length and highlight the songwriting,” he says.

The same can’t be said of the approach to Untying The Not. Moseley says coming into the project, the band members felt they needed to completely set aside any preconceptions for how their music should sound and shake themselves up artistically.

“Going into this project, we were all feeling a little bit stale, like we kind of had plateaued creatively and we really needed something to shake things up, to break the mold,” Moseley says.

A key step in the process was the decision to hire Youth to produce Untying The Not. The one-time bassist for Killing Joke, Youth became known as a producer for his work with the acclaimed British rock band The Verve. More recently he has been heavily involved with British dance and techno scenes.

It’s hard to imagine String Cheese Incident choosing a producer whose resume was much further removed from their own signature sound.

Moseley admitted that he was at first wary of working with Youth, but the group eventually decided to take a chance and see how they worked with him.

While working with Youth presented creative differences that had to be overcome, Moseley thinks the effort was worthwhile.

“I think we broke a lot of new ground and we came out feeling surprised and elated and really excited about some new directions,” he says.  “And it’s really helped us kind of re-light the fires of creativity I think. We realize, number one, how little we know about playing in the studio, and the potential for songwriting and taking our tunes in a different direction.”