STRING CHEESE INCIDENT RELEASE MORE COLLABORATIVE ALBUM

The String Cheese Incident have released their new album, ‘One Step Closer’ and one of the main differences with this new record is the amount of song writing collaboration the band had. With songs co written by the legendary Robert Hunter, who was Jerry Garcia’s longtime song writing partner, fellow Grateful Dead lyricist John Barlow and Jim Lauderdale, ‘One Step Closer’ was a surreal recording experience for the band. We caught up with Guitarist Billy Nershi and Keyboardist Kyle Hollingsworth to talk about the songwriting process of ‘One Step Closer.’

String Cheese Incident have released ‘One Step Closer’ on SCI Fidelity Records, which is the bands own record label. We also talked with the band about how SCI Fidelity allows them a certain artistic and creative freedom, which is a luxory most bands aren’t fortunate enough to have.

“I think, one the big difference on this new studio album ‘One Step Closer’ is we did a lot of co writing on this CD. Who did you co write on the album with? I wrote a couple of tunes with Jim Lauderdale that are on the CD and you? I wrote with Robert Hunter. Robert who? It was great, it was very surreal and very internet. I emailed him the MP3’s and he emailed me back the lyrics and we never spoke. So we kind of co wrote in that way.”

String Cheese Incident recently concluded a dual headlining tour with Bob Weir and Ratdog. Next up after a performance at the 10,000 Lakes Festival in Minnesota will be two performances at the Fuji Rock Fest in Japan. After String Cheese Incident finishes up their summer tour the band will concentrate on a few of their side projects, like Zilla, Pangea Allstars, Kyle Hollingsworth and Friends and Honkeytonk Homeslice.

“There’s a lot of benefits to not being signed with a different label but having our own label. One is a lot of artistic control in the type of music you record, who you want to use as a producer, when you want the record to come out, you never feel like you’re going to be trapped by the label by their release schedule or something like that. Another thing that Kyle and I have taken advantage of is that we do some side projects. And we have our label so we can record and put out music from our side projects through SCI Fidelity.”