Billy Nirshi
By Deb Dion
When he wasn’t skiing, biking or climbing, and when he wasn’t cooking at the Floradora, you could usually find Billy Nershi sitting on a bench in Telluride, plucking his Martin guitar like a street minstrel. Nershi said that back in those days, he would climb onto the empty stage in Telluride Town Park, imagining what it would be like to play for thousands of people at the annual Bluegrass Festival. A decade later, his band, String Cheese Incident, was more than just the hottest act at Bluegrass: They were selling out venues such as the Fillmore and Madison Square Garden.
“I didn’t plan on any of this,” laughs Nershi. “It just kind of happened.”
It wasn’t exactly a Forrest Gump ride to fame for the unassuming ski bum. When he planted himself in Telluride in the early ’80s, he became immersed in music. His first gig was at the Iron Ladel (where the Toggery is today), then he played just about every stage with just about every musician and group in town: Ben Hall, Jack Rajca, Todd Creel, Cottonmouth, the Rusty String Band, and—perhaps most memorably—regular gigs with Liza Oxnard of Zuba fame.
In the early 1990s, Nershi hooked up with a four-piece, mostly string ensemble in Crested Butte. Michael Kang played violin and mandolin, Keith Mosely played bass, Michael Travis played congas and other hand drums, and Nershi played guitar and sang as they spent their first winter swapping performances for lift tickets. String Cheese Incident stayed in Crested Butte for one winter and played the southwestern circuit of skiing and biking meccas: Telluride, Crested Butte and Moab. “I wanted one last year as a ski bum before I started to grow up,” says Nershi. “It was a lot of fun. Right around that time, we decided to give up our ‘day jobs’ and go for it.”
The band’s rise to cult status was as fast as its brand of furious finger picking calypso-bluegrass. String Cheese started playing 200 shows a year, traveling to gigs in a converted transit bus, and soon their tours were like caravans. They attracted a legion of fans as fervent in fashion to those of Phish, The Grateful Dead or Widespread Panic, who taped their live shows and traded set lists. But String Cheese was wary of the music industry and its corporate control. The band opted to keep power over its creative product, forming its own record label (SCI Fidelity Records), facilitating travel arrangements for fans, and taking on Ticketmaster, a ticket-selling monopoly giant, winning the right to sell tickets to the band’s own shows. “It all just kind of snowballed,” recalls Nershi.
Because they veered away from the music industry complex, Nershi and his friends didn’t have to make ethical compromises. Forget the bad-boy rock image of hotel-trashing, binging on drugs and alcohol and other illicit behavior: This band’s message is about love, tolerance and social consciousness. They donate money to various charities or “Gouda causes,” try to raise awareness of social issues and even urge their fans to pick up before they leave the show. “We try to impart a sense of responsibility that these towns and these cities we play in are giving us an opportunity,” says Nershi, “and it’s our responsibility to give something back.”
The social consciousness is more than just rhetoric. String Cheese Incident formed the Footprints Foundation to leave a positive legacy and hosts beach cleanups, food drives and hurricane relief efforts as part of their commitment to make the world a better place. They play a benefit concert in Boulder every year, and Nershi says that last year, they were able to donate all of the proceeds to charity. “It’s nice that we’ve gotten to a point as a band that we can do that,” he laughs. “For many years, our only charity was ourselves.”
String Cheese Incident has transcended the jamband circuit in this country, performing internationally in Europe, Japan, Australia, Costa Rica and Jamaica. Despite the momentum of the band’s popularity, Nershi manages to keep his fame in perspective. “It gets kind of wild sometimes, playing big shows in lots of cities. But I’ve got a family, and that keeps me grounded,” he says. “I think we’re just trying not to lose track of who we really are. I know I’ve changed, but not too much. None of the rock star baloney.”
Nershi sticks close to his roots. He still plays the same Martin D-28 that he bought in Telluride in 1983, weathered and road-weary, and he still sports the same bushy Jerry Garcia beard. His latest side project is Honkytonk Homeslice with his wife, Jilian, an acoustic return to days around the campfire, drinking beer and trading songs. In a music scene that has become businesslike and an artistic career that is essentially a job, Nershi says Homeslice is “just for fun. It reminds me of why I started doing this.”
Nershi makes his home outside of Nederland, Colorado, with Jilian and his two daughters, Lauren and Ariana. Still, he is nostalgic for Telluride, his brother who still lives here, his friends, and the accessibility of the outdoors. Nershi says playing on the Bluegrass stage where he used to imagine himself performing someday is an “emotionally charged” experience. And although he misses the small, intimate types of shows he used to play, he admits there’s something special about performing for big crowds. “It’s a different feeling,” says Nershi. “It’s much like the adrenaline rush of skiing San Joaquin. Maybe that’s why I like it.”
SCI w/Bob Weir
