Groove summit

New life for old Canadian punkers

by Don Fluckinger

Break out the tie-dyes and patchouli, Sunshine, it's time to fire up the bus and head to the first great outdoor music festival of the summer season.

Call it groove-rock, call it the jam-band scene, call it the legacy of Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead, call it whatever you want. Three bands who fit the mold will be playing the Nashoba Valley Ski Area, in Westford, this Saturday under the umbrella of the "Hoodoo Bash" tour. Luckily for music fans who don't necessarily derive pleasure from playing the part of neo-hippie joyboys and -girls, the music of Strangefolk, moe., and String Cheese Incident stands on its own merits.

The Northeast owns bragging rights to jam-rock, helping fuel Phish's eventual world dominance of the groove. Two of the Hoodoo Bash bands, Strangefolk and moe., came up through the same New England ranks. The other band, String Cheese Incident, hail from Crested Butte, Colorado, but are no strangers to Massachusetts and Vermont. A fourth band originally scheduled for the Hoodoo Bash who've since pulled out -- Leftover Salmon -- also come from Colorado. The four bands have all run into each other out on tour, sharing stages and venues. No one is featured as a headliner; in fact, the spirit of the tour is egalitarian to the point that the line-up rotates for each gig.

Strangefolk and moe. play rock-oriented music with unsubtle brushstrokes of country here and there, while String Cheese Incident prominently feature an electric bluegrass sound, with hints of Caribbean and African influences as well as elements of jazz. Many of The Cheese's original tunes can be found on last year's self-titled live album. Coming out early this summer is `Round the Wheel, a new studio CD. Formed in 1993, Cheese include a veteran line-up with Bill Nershi (who played with Taj Mahal, Arlo Guthrie, and the Subdudes), drummer/percussionist Michael Travis (Leftover Salmon, Merl Saunders), bassist Keith Moseley (Ryestraw, Tony Furtado), and Michael Kang, who plays electric fiddle and electric mandolin. Jazz player Kyle Hollingsworth took over as organist several years ago.

"Although we get classified as a jam-band -- we do enjoy the concept of jamming and improvisation -- for us it's all about music, across the board," Hollingsworth says. "If you looked at our CD collection on the bus, you'd be amazed; it goes from Pancho Sanchez to Tony Rice."

In concert, String Cheese Incident can cook up a wildly diverse, entertaining set, a musical trainwreck combining the Allman Brothers, Doc Watson, and Johnny Clegg and Savuka. One tune can showcase all of these different ethnomusical influences, like their rendition of Vassar Clemens's "Lonesome Fiddle Blues," which includes a long, slow-rocking-blues middle section that segues into a furious organ solo. Yet that solo is bookended with bluegrass licks played in unison by Nershi on electric guitar and Kang on electric mandolin. "Little Hands" features a South African feel. "Rhythm of the Road" evenly serves up jazz and blues. After that, the group are more than likely to launch into their original hardcore bluegrass tune "How Mountain Girls Can Love," that, yes, features a rolling, country-style keyboard solo -- not the first thing you associate with bluegrass music. Before things bog down in the foggy Appalachian haze, though, they can throw in "Pirates," a spunky little Latin number.

On top of their own tunes, String Cheese Incident also do bluegrass renditions of rock classics such as the Allman Brothers' "Ramblin' Man," Prince's "Little Red Corvette," and Aerosmith's "Walk This Way." Last winter on a cold, dismal, snowy night in Cambridge, String Cheese Incident packed the downstairs at the Middle East, and despite the horribly depressing weather and late, late hour, the normally urbane MIT crowd turned the club into a backwoods hoedown, swinging their partners and do-si-do-ing. That's typical nuttiness for String Cheese Incident fans, Hollingsworth says. When the group play outdoors, he adds, there's another party trick that comes into play: hula hoops.

"Some friends of the band at Telluride [bluegrass festival] started hula-hooping at shows, and we said, `That's a great idea,' so we actually started making our own hoops. People are definitely encouraged to learn. You never know what will happen with the hoops; sometimes it's on stage; most of the time we just put them out in the audience for people to hoop with. But that's part of, in our minds, the festival atmosphere."

Strangefolk and moe. definitely rock out harder, singing tighter harmonies and playing poppier hooks than String Cheese. Moe., who hail from Upstate New York, have the major-label deal, the big-sounding, slickly produced CD, and the offbeat lyrics like "She loves me, a whole freakin' lot." They've been called equal parts Phish, Zappa, and Primus; similarities to all three can be heard in passages of their most recent disc, No Doy. Although the group claim they're flattered that critics compare them to such "good" musicians, they prefer to be seen as originals. But those unfamiliar with moe. should make no mistake: if you like Phish, you're going to love these guys.

Strangefolk, on the other hand, hit fans hard in the '70s-rock bone. In a good way, playing a strain of music lead vocalist Reid Genauer rightly calls "melodic rock." They come from Burlington, Vermont, where Phish started out, and though they're as prone to the long jam as The Cheese or moe., their tunes tend to be much straighter and, believe it or not, the catchiest. It is the Tunes like "Valhalla," "Westerly," and "Elixir" are the ones you'll most likely be humming on the drive home, and among the three bands it's Strangefolk's latest CD, Weightless in Water, that stands up best to repeated playings.

The group started as an acoustic duo in the early '90s, with guitarists Genauer and Jon Trafton, who built a small following local clubs and coffeehouses. "What launched us was a small gig in small bar in Winooski called the Middle Earth," Genauer says. "We played every Wednesday for a summer, pretty much until we showed up one night and without telling us, they had booked another band, and that was the end of our tenure there."

After that, they added bassist Erik Glockler and drummer Luke Smith.

Of the upcoming festival, Genauer says: "I think it's a nice blend. There's enough overlap that if there are individualized fans for each group, they can probably still find enjoyment in the other bands' music; yet there's enough originality and enough individualism from band to band that it'll still provide an interesting evening of music."

String Cheese Incident, moe., and Strangefolk play Nashoba Valley Ski Area, in Westford, on June 6 at 4 p.m. (all ages). Tickets are $18.50 in advance, $20 day of the show. For tickets call 800-4PROTIX. For information call (413) 256-4280.