The String Cheese Incident wasted no time kicking off its a night New Year’s Eve run at Oakland’s Fox Theater Friday night with a strong setlist, two first-time played tunes, and an extremely location-appropriate cross-genre cover of “California Love”. With three full nights to explore the band’s massive catalog fans were ready for anything and everything and what they got was a wonderful mix of tunes from Cheese’s very beginning to some of their newest creations.
Set one opener “Song In My Head” set the tone for the night early before giving way to a pair of popular and decidedly happy versions of “Best Feeling” and an unfinished for now “Way Back Home”. The opening back and forth in “Way Back” was of note for how the band finds new ways to keep older tracks fresh, with some fun interplay between the ever-grinning front-line duo of guitarist Billy Nershi and keyboardist Kyle Hollingsworth.
The String Cheese Incident – “Song In My Head” [Pro-Shot] – 12/29/23
The Indian elements embracing “Bhangra Saanj” gave the dancers in the crowd the signal to get in motion, while giving the rock-solid rhythm section of Michael Travis on the kit, percussionist Jason Hann, and bassist Keith Moseley acted as almost a single unit. That energy persisted to the following stage debut of “Take Me Love” from this year’s new release Lend Me A Hand. A dense three-song block of “Illegal” > “It Is What It Is” > “Restless Wind” gave the audience as much as they could handle (and maybe a little more in some cases) so the set break managed to serve as a welcomed chance to reset, reload and regain any loose, melted faces.
The second set lost no momentum with long-time faves delivered with power and precision, like the rollicking “Howard” along with a fun “Miss Brown’s Teahouse”. Newer tunes like this year’s “Love And Friends” and the live debut of “I Will Follow You” snuggled right up next to older track “Black Cloud” as if it had always been there. As the night drew to a close Cheese unleashed the first half of a pitch-perfect “Let’s Go Outside”, before stuffing the middle with a wildly received surprise filling with vocals from an out-of-the-percussion world and “On-A-Mission” Jason Hann.
Hann had the crowd in the palm of his hand as he took center stage and crushed the sing-song rap of “California Love”. He strolled the front of the stage whipping the crowd into a frenzy while the rest of the band did their thing before Hann slipped back into his percussive kingdom to blow back into the second set-closing second half of “Let’s Go Outside”.
The encore, “Rivertrance”, was the last chance to trance dance of the evening but the Cheese classic got into full-on throw-down mode with the furious fiddling of multi-instrumentalist Michael Kang effortlessly, melodically skipping over the riff as he is wont to do. The crowd was truly enchanted as String Cheese shaped the song’s speed and direction to the vibe of the room, notes curving up the walls and through the dancing hordes. It was a perfect illustration of how Cheese synergizes all genres into a cohesive whole and it was as amazing to hear as it is that it simply exists at all.
The mark of true iconoclasts like Cheese is the ability to explore and expand while never morphing beyond recognition. Luckily for the band and their seemingly endless legion of fans of The String Cheese Incident, it’s a skill their favorite band has in spades. No matter how far the band roams, be it musically or physically, String Cheese remains constant in its level of talent, effortlessly fluid in its jams, and instantly recognizable.
Many factors led to The String Cheese Incident evolving into one of the jam scene’s top acts…the band’s heart and soul being in every tune chief among them. If night one of the Oakland run is any indication of what’s to come it looks like Cheese is set to remind everyone of why we’re all together as we collectively ring out the old and rage on into the new!
Existing nugs.net subscribers can tune in for complimentary livestreams of The String Cheese Incident’s three-night New Year’s Eve run in Oakland. Find out how here.
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Setlist: The String Cheese Incident | Fox Theater | Oakland, CA | 12.29.23
Set 1: Song In My Head, Best Feeling, Way Back Home [1] > Bhangra Saanj, Take Me Love [2], Illegal > It Is What It Is > Restless Wind
Set 2: I Will Follow You [2], Miss Brown’s Teahouse, Howard, Love and Friends, Black Clouds, Let’s Go Outside > California Love (2Pac) > Let’s Go Outside
Encore: Rivertrance
[1] Unfinished
[2] FTP