On March 2nd, coinciding with his 50th birthday, Kyle Hollingsworth—keyboard wizard for the String Cheese Incident and his own Kyle Hollingsworth Band—will release his fourth solo studio album, 50, via SCI Fidelity (pre-order the album here). In celebration of the new album and the landmark birthday, Hollingsworth has planned a string of album-release shows across the Colorado Front Range, which will see Kyle Hollingsworth Band joined by a number of special guests including Michael Kang, Jen Hartswick, and The Motet Horns.

Live For Live Music got the chance to speak with Kyle about his upcoming release, as well as a whole slew of other topics ranging from being intimidated by famous head brewers to the String Cheese Incident’s possible return to Horning’s Hideout to “creating a party” with just three people. Check out the interview and the Live For Live Music premiere of the lyric video for 50‘s “Stuff” below!

Ming Lee Newcomb: Congratulations on your new album, 50! The record earned its name in honor of your 50th birthday, right?

Kyle Hollingsworth: What was I thinking when I named it 50? Yes, I guess I’m acknowledging and announcing that to the world. Or, it’s my second 25th birthday—that’s another way to look at it. [laughs] I’m turning 25 again!

MLN: With that being a landmark date, whether it’s your first 50th or second 25th, what sort of insights or wisdom do you have to share with us?

KH: Oh god. That’s a hard question and a good question. As it relates to the album, it’s a statement as to where I am right now. I don’t think this album is a culmination necessarily of everything I’ve been doing for the last 50 years, so the album stands on its own as a statement of where I am.
As far wisdom, [laughs] I don’t think I’m old enough to give any wisdom yet. I’m still receiving wisdom every day from my children. They’re instructing me on how to be a better person.

I think, for me, the reason I’ve been as successful in music is I’ve been able to be super focused on one track. I think that’s what makes String Cheese and myself be able to take it to the next level. I guess what I’m implying is a lot of people just jump around and try different things, which is fine, and maybe I could do that too. At the same time, I’ve just been focusing on music, music, music. I’ve been doing it for 35 years, so you start seeing success in whatever you envision you want in your life.

MLN: Going off that, when you say that you focus in on one track at a time, when making the new album, were you thinking of it track by track, or did you have an overall conception of what you wanted?

KH: A short backstory is that the String Cheese Incident purchased a new space called the Sound Lab. When Michael Kang wasn’t looking, I stole the keys and would sneak in super late night with my band and record two or three songs. So, to answer your question, this whole process took about a year and a half, and I’d record two or three songs at a time—they’d be whatever the muse was at that moment. There’s a song where I was like, “I want to do a song that sounds like Vampire Weekend,” so I wrote “Tumbling”. Then I’d said, “Now, I want to write a song that sounds like Mumford & Sons,” or something. I got inspired by different types of music and intrigued by trying to learn from those artists.

Putting all the songs together, I think by the end, it started to have a weave and things started coming together nicely. I have this whole intro, onset, and then offset, so the songs do have a bit of an arc and a storyline, but that wasn’t planned. It was accidental, though it worked out. I feel like it feels like an album.

MLN: It seems like the recording of 50 also coincided with the recording of String Cheese’s Believe. What was that overlap like?

KH: Some of the songs for sure overlapped, and then it just became extremely hectic for me. I find that certain songs I write, I still want to be able to record, but they might not be the best String Cheese songs to record or perform. Sometimes, I need to write outside the mothership, outside the bubble of String Cheese, to feel like I am being fulfilled. So working side-by-side with these two albums, some of the recording did occur together, but I was able to navigate through all of that.

MLN: What are the characteristics of songs that you feel are great for String Cheese versus songs that you set aside for yourself?

KH: It comes down to… I don’t want to be too mean to myself. [laughs] I sometimes write some cliché stuff here and there, but I don’t know. I think it comes down to more like if it’s electronic-based, like the song “Take The Ride”, which is the last song on the album. I was like, “That doesn’t feel very String Cheese.”

If a song feels like it’s going to be fully realized with my band and me, I take it on. If I feel like it could be better realized or it would be better outside of me with String Cheese, then I do that—so it’s based on the song. I’m not going bring a Vampire Weekend rock song to them, and I’m not gonna bring an 80’s hit to them. It’s certain things: String Cheese has got the bluegrass, the Americana, a little Latin flavor, the funk. Sometimes too, it crosses over, like String Cheese ended up playing songs from my last album.

MLN: This is your first release since your last solo album, Speed of Life, in 2014. Compared to that and your two other solo albums, where do you feel 50 fits into your discography?

KH: Interesting. Well, on this one, it’s a new lineup of musicians, although I’ve been with the same lineup since my last album. The Motet always recorded my albums—The Motet lineup was my original band with Garrett [Sayers] and Dave [Watts]. This time around, I’ve been with my current band for four years, so it was nice to document where we are. Right away, it has a little more edge. I kind of went into this album trying to make it a little more rockin’ than my other albums, so I feel like this holds a different space than the other three.

MLN: The Motet Horns are on the new album, along with a bunch of other repeat offenders like DJ Logic and Kim Dawson. Plus, you have Jen Hartswick, who you’ve collaborated in the past with, and she’ll be involved in some of the release parties. What draws you to return to those musicians, besides the fact that some of them are fellow Colorado musicians?

KH: Well, I’d first like to comment on one of my favorite tracks from the new album, “Finding Our Way”, which features Andy Hall, the dobro player from the Infamous Stringdusters—well, now they’re the Grammy-winning Stringdusters. I said, “This song needs something,” and I’d been playing with the Stringdusters that same year, so, I feel like the song spoke to me as to what it wanted. In that particular case, it wanted a dobro or another Americana-type instrument. For a boogaloo thing, the song needed DJ Logic. I don’t necessarily think about them as repeat offenders outside of whatever the song needs.

MLN: You and the collaborators you’ve tapped for 50 all seem like fun folk. Do you have any fun stories from the studio you could share?

KH: [laughs] I do actually. We were recording a song that was originally nicknamed “Elvis” but turned into “Come On”. It’s sort of a party song toward the end of the album, and I wanted Jen Hartswick to come and play horns and do this middle shout section that gets the party going. We were in the studio, getting it going on, and trying to figure out a way to invent a “party sound.” So, my manager, his assistant, and I were grabbing keys and cups and glasses, dropping things on the ground, clinking glasses, throwing things all over the place. It was just a really hilarious moment—you might have had to be there a little bit [laughs]—to invent a party between the three of us. We’d just scream and yell and whistle, throw keys at something, and then we’d overdub that again, so by the time we were done, we had 18 people at the party.

MLN: You’re also a big craft beer fan, so predictably, with the release of any new album, you always seem to have some sort of beer release going on as well. Can you talk a little bit about Ground Score IPA and what the process is for creating your own beer?

KH: Well, it’s been my trip for a long time. I’ve been homebrewing since I was 18 or 17, and now I’m turning 50, so I’ve been doing it on-and-off all those years. It’s been a passion of mine, and just in the last few years, I’ve started connecting the dots on how I approach my brewing process and my music process. I’m starting to see parallels in how I improvise in both those worlds. You get the basics under your fingers, but then you’re able to riff and improvise over the top.

Dean [Budnick], the main editor from Relix magazine, said Relix wanted to make a beer, and then it came to us because we’re the beer people in the music scene. It was a much more detailed process than I’ve done in the past, and I’ve done, like, 30-something beers with people. This time, it was very hands on. SweetWater, the people who make Ground Score, brought us out to Oregon, and we saw the hops farms and chose the hops. We helped develop the recipe personally with the head brewer and actually helped make it with them, so it was very hands on and felt very personal. Other times, it’s a little less personal, but overall, it was great. I’m super excited about it, and you know what? The best part: it’s really good. [laughs]

Some of my beers are not always great, and that’s the way it goes, too. You’re in the middle of a live jam session, and you take the best solo, or it could be the worst solo, or it could be the best solo and the worst tasting beer. You kinda just take that risk, but this one, this one was a home run. It’s only available where they sell, so I think you have to get it to you somehow in Colorado if you want it.

On a quick side note, I did make a beer with Joyride Brewing Company, and they’ll be there for the Friday show at Cervantes’ in Denver. Then, of course, my favorite collaborators are Mountain Sun, and they’re presenting the show on Saturday at the Boulder Theater. I made a beer with them; it’s a stout for Stout Month.

MLN: What do you find more intimidating: releasing an album or releasing a beer?

KH: [laughs] Definitely releasing an album is more freaky to me. You know, it’s much more personal. With a beer, I go in there and do the best I can, but I’m not a professional brewer, so if it really sucks, it’s kind of my fault, but in the end, the fault kind of falls on the brewers because that’s what they do professionally.

A funny story about that though is that I get intimated by meeting famous head brewers from around the country. I’ve met Paul Simon, I’ve met tons of famous people, but I walk up to the head brewmaster of Stone Brewing, and I don’t know what to say. I’m like, “Oh god, I’m your biggest fan,” and they’ll just run away and won’t say anything. And then I’ll meet the head brewmaster at Dogfish, and I’m like, “Uh…” I get so intimated meeting head brewers, and it’s just funny how that is, because you’d think that it’d be the opposite.

MLN: Now that 50 is almost released, though you still have some tour dates and the album release parties coming up, what are you looking forward to next, once that passes?

KH: Yes, I’ll be doing some tour dates with Kyle Hollingsworth Band around the country for sure. I just got back from New York doing some shows with them out there. Meanwhile, in my real life, String Cheese is in the studio working really hard on making new music. We’ve been rehearsing eight-hour days for the past two weeks, so my vision is once KHB finishes up in the spring, I’m gonna switch my focus to the String Cheese world and making sure that the new music we bring out is great. I will continue to play some dates in the summer with KHB, but right now, I need to jump back into the SCI world.

MLN: That’s not a lot of recoup time since Believe. Do you think that a new String Cheese album would be coming soon, or is this something you’re going to sit on for awhile and let marinate?

KH: I think the vision is just to be releasing tracks. As tracks come together, maybe there’s an album in the future. Right now, we’re just going to get a couple tracks out over the summer and then release some more in the fall. The idea of an album, in SCI’s mind, is not necessarily something that we’re interested in doing right now, although I like it. There’s a little bit more of a story, a little bit more interest if you can package everything into one, so I’m at odds a little bit with the band about that. Either way, we wouldn’t have an album out for at least ten months or so.

MLN: Since Believe, String Cheese has slowly but surely been incorporating new songs from the album into your live shows, and it seems like you guys have gotten a lot more comfortable playing them in a live setting—they’re growing into their own. How has that process and that transformation been?

KH: The same thing has been happening to me with my solo thing. You make these songs, and then you’re like, “Okay, so now we need to figure out how to play them. Hm, how’s that going to work?” So, it’s like the song with Bonnie [Paine] from Elephant Revival on the last album. Bonnie’s not on tour with us, [laughs] so how can we pull songs like that off? What happens is we have to adjust, and once we adjust them, we just have to rehearse the heck out of them, and then we just play them as much as we can. They start forming their own identity. There’s an album identity, and then we can kind of break out of that in the live setting.

MLN: You guys played Element Music Festival up in Canada last year. I interviewed Kang last summer about how there was a tentative hope that the festival could become an “international incident” of sorts. You guys aren’t returning there this year, and Horning’s has kind of been absent, so do you guys have plans for beefing up a West Coast incident at some point?

KH: I love it! I love that idea. We are talking about that for sure. We just have to find the right location. One of my favorite places was Summer Meltdown, which is a little north of Seattle. We played it with, speaking of which, Elephant Revival, and some other bands last year. We are constantly on the lookout for a nice West Coast thing. I’m not going to say that Horning’s is off the grid forever. We’re just currently trying to figure out how to make something like that fit into the timing of our schedule, so who knows?

MLN: For New Year’s, how did it feel switching over to The Capitol Theatre after a number of years at 1st Bank in Colorado? Is that something you want to continue to do—to spread the love to other cities for New Year’s?

KH: I don’t really know for a fact because we’re still kind of weighing the options. First things first, I loved being in a different location for at least one year because it was much more relaxing. When we play locally, it’s friends of friends and your best friends’ best friend and your family. The backstage is filled with all your guests, and it’s really exciting, especially for them, but it’s difficult for us to concentrate. So, we went to New York for three sold-out shows and went in there and just rocked it—I felt like it was really focused.

If we come back to Denver, I want to find a way that we can come and make sure we’re doing the best we can—not that we haven’t done our best in the past—but I don’t know. Let’s see? I think Denver is definitely one of the options on the table for this year. I can’t say what the other options are this year because I don’t really know.

MLN: Since the String Cheese Incident is a born-and-bred Colorado band, how do you feel the Colorado jam scene has evolved over the course of your career?

KH: Well, even just in the past two years, right? It’s crazy. We have Borahm [Lee] and the Break Science guys. We have so many people moving into the scene. People are starting to love Colorado, and the fans here support live music so much. You can’t go wrong. There’s a great connection between the local music scene and the fans. People move here to be supported, and it’s centrally located for flying in and out.

When we first started 25 years ago—and I wasn’t quite in the band yet—during that time, there was some jam scene like Leftover Salmon and Band Du Jour—some of the bands that have been around for a long time. There wasn’t as much of a hardcore improvisational group at that time, if I remember right, though I might get myself in trouble. There was Big Head Todd, The Samples, that sort of thing, so a little less of a jam-oriented scene. I think as the years have gone on, some people have gravitated toward the Colorado scene, and I’ve definitely noticed that change.

MLN: Going off that, are there any up-and-coming bands out of Colorado that you think deserve props outside of the Colorado microcosm?

KH: The Magic Beans, I’ve played with them numerous times. Cycles I like a lot. I’ve played a bunch of shows with them, and they’re really great guys. What I love about them is that they’re not trying to be anything else. Not that I try to be anything else, but I definitely tailor my show to be like, “Alright, this is going to be a funky moment. Then there’s going to be a disco moment and then a bluegrass moment,” and kind of craft the set. They just go out there and are like, “This is what we freaking do. Either you like it, or you don’t,” and I really respect that about them a lot.

MLN: To close this out, with your upcoming Colorado shows, you have a bunch of special guests. What can we expect from those shows?

KH: Well, I have lots of special guests through the week. Two nights with Jen [Hartswick] and [Michael] Kang and the Motet Horns. Lots of songs from my new album, of course. Plus, anytime that Jen’s involved with anything, it’s a huge dance party, and then Kang rages. [laughs] So it’s going to be really fun. Then on Saturday, I’m going to bring out some friends from my musical past, and it’s going to be a little bit more of a Kyle & Friends set, so there will be different shows all along. We start in Fort Collins, just KHB, and then work our way down, and the stage gets bigger and bigger each night.

You can pre-order Kyle Hollingsworth’s new album, 50, here, or pick it up or stream when it becomes available to the public on Friday, March 2nd. Fans in Colorado can celebrate the release of the new album with Kyle Hollingsworth Band and a number of special guests on March 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, as they work their way across the Front Range with dates in Fort Collins, Denver, and Boulder. Head over to Kyle Hollingsworth’s website for tickets and more information about upcoming tour dates.

Kyle Hollingsworth Upcoming Album Release Tour Dates

1-Mar – Aggie Theatre* – Fort Collins, CO

2-Mar – Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom*# – Denver, CO

3-Mar – Boulder Theater*#% – Boulder, CO

* Kyle Hollingsworth Band with special guests Hot Buttered Rum

# Kyle Hollingsworth Band featuring Michael Kang, Jennifer Hartswick & The Motet Horns

% Mountain Sun presents a very special birthday set with Kyle & friends