Digital Interviews: When did you first get an interest in playing music?

Michael Kang: I started when I was a kid. I think I got my first violin lesson when I was eight years old. I had this teacher, a really cool guy. He and his wife had this house; his wife taught downstairs, and he taught violin upstairs. My sister would learn piano downstairs, while I was upstairs learning violin. It was easy for my parents to get them all in the same place. It was all about having fun, from the beginning. The guy had this sick electric miniaturized train set that took up half the room. So if you got through your lesson, he’d let you f--k around with the trains. [laughs] He had to bribe me, basically, to keep coming.

DI: How did you expand from the violin to other instruments?

MK: I played classical music all through high school, in orchestras and stuff like that. I picked up the guitar in high school, and started learning how to play with other people, and playing different kinds of songs. Then I just quit everything in college -- didn’t really play music. After I got out of college, I got a cheap $150 mandolin. I was up in Alaska and started playing with other people. That’s kind of what kept me going. 1991, ’92 is when I really started playing again.

DI: These visits to Alaska really got the juices flowing?

MK: When I was up there, there were a couple of friends of mine who were playing locally in bars and stuff like that. Before that -- you know, the classical music scene is not really that fun. I never really got to experience just getting to play in front of other people before, people getting drunk around you and having a good time just partying, basically. Seeing that was a real eye opener. It’s infectious, to be able to play music for people when they’re really enjoying it. That’s kind of what got me fired up to continue to play music.

DI: How did the String Cheese Incident come about?

MK: We all lived in Crescent Butte in 1992, the winter of ’92, which was the biggest winter in Colorado in a long time. We were all just skiing there, skiing really deep powder. Billy [Nershi], our guitar player, Keith [Moseley], [Michael] Travis -- we all lived there at the time. Our first gig was in the fall of ’93. We had all known each other and played bluegrass jams and stuff like that. But we got offered a gig in Telluride, the first gig we’d ever gotten. We didn’t have any repertoire as a band, but Billy, basically, put it together. We played the Depot for three nights in a row. They gave us a condo and lift tickets and all that stuff. We’re, like, “Hey, this ain’t so bad.” [laughs] It just kind of happened to us.

DI: You guys are able to crossover into other types of music, like jazz and classical.

MK: We came into it with the mentality of wanting to play the music that we like. There are five people in the band that like different kinds of music. We’ve all had to learn to play the types of music that other people like. That’s an important part of our band, in that sense.

DI: You’ve also extended into your own record label.

MK: We’d gotten courted by the “majors,” stuff like that. We just decided that we had the resources to do all the stuff ourselves. We weren’t hearing the best stories from bands getting involved with major labels, feeling like they just weren’t able to maintain control. We built our own thing. We have a pretty big fan base, people who buy our records and also tape the shows. We aren’t the kind of band that feels like we need a big industry push to sell a million albums or anything. It’s not our goal. We just want to maintain the integrity of what we do. For us, if we can do that -- put out our own albums and feel really good about it -- then, it’s great. We enjoy doing it. We basically get to do whatever we want, since we own the record company. The whole Comotion project came out of the flexibility of just being able to say, “Hey, we can record an album and do whatever we want with it.”

DI: You opened for Phil Lesh and Bob Dylan at the Gorge. The next step, obviously, is you becoming the headliner and playing the larger arenas. How do you approach that ominous future?

MK: Well, we just want to stay close to the integrity of what we want to do as musicians, and as people, and not be affected by whatever promises of success or whatever come along down the line. It’s just a matter of doing what you believe in. I think that’s going to come through in our songwriting, and our ability to go out on stage and enjoy ourselves, and enjoy playing with each other. If there ever comes a point in our lives when we’re not enjoying playing with each other, then I don’t think any of us are going to want to play in a band together. That’s the key behind it, regardless of what it means, whether or not it’s a job. That’s the ultimate responsibility, to really maintain good communication and friendship with all the people in the band. I really am trying to enjoy what I have going. All of us just want to enjoy where we’re at right now. We’re at the golden age of any band. If we can live through this point and have fun, then we’re just loving it, just to be able to play these small theaters that sound good. You get into a big “shed” experience, and some of the energy gets taken away from the experience, and it’s not the same thing anymore. So, I try not to look forward to what might happen in the future, and just enjoy what’s going on right now.

DI: In addition to just playing music, you always infuse a feeling of community, a raised spirit level.

MK: That’s what we want to do. It’s interesting, the only show that we played with other people the entire year was the Phil Lesh show. We wanted to do it to get to see Dylan and to hang out with Phil again. But, generally, we’d much rather do our own thing, play our own show, and not feel any pressure to end early, or be on anybody else’s time schedule. We have a different vision. I think what we want to do is just be able to create an atmosphere that’s really conducive for our fans to just enjoy what we do. That, for us, is to really incorporate things like being outdoors, providing the creative impetus for people to be able to experience different things. That’s really important to us as a band, to be able to bring out other people’s creativity through our music.

DI: Tell us about your Horning’s Hideout festival.

MK: That’s our vision. We want to take our music to alternative venues, get to invite all our friends, hopefully on private property in a really beautiful place, and just give people the opportunity to relax for a few days and really get to know each other and become part of the creative flow that we express in our music, in whatever way they want to. For people to be able to get involved in different types of rituals, or to be able to find other people to really pursue their creative interests with -- that’s the forum we want to create in our shows. Horning’s was a really good example of that. That’s what we want to be able to do for people. We learned a lot of that from festivals and going to festivals. The things that I enjoy the most, as a fan, are just being able to go to a show and really feel like I can be part of the whole experience. That’s what we want to be able to create.

DI: What would you tell a young musician, just starting out?

MK: Just follow your heart, and always continue to find that level of enjoyment for yourself in it. You know, you’ve got to love what you do, regardless of what it is, to be able to keep on doing it. It’s a challenge. Just keep on going, and dig deeper.