Jam Worlds Collide: Kyle Hollingsworth on His Gig With Joel Cummins of Umphrey's McGee

String Cheese Incident's Kyle Hollingsworth remembers the first time he played piano with Umphrey's McGee's Joel Cummins. It happened when they ran into each other in the late '90s, while both their bands were on tour.

"It's one of the great stories: We were staying in some hotel, both had a little tequila," Hollingsworth recalls with a laugh. "And we snuck down to the ballroom at like, two in the morning. I found two pianos, but the problem was one piano was across the lobby from the other piano, in two different rooms. So when the front desk wasn't looking, we rolled a grand piano from the ballroom through the lobby. And then we started jamming and were like, 'This is actually a lot of fun! We've got to do something with this down the line.'"

Almost thirty years later, they finally are: The Kyle Hollingsworth Band is playing with Cummins for the first time on Thursday, February 16, at the Fox Theatre in Boulder; they'll be playing again on Friday, February 17, at Cervantes' Masterpiece Ballroom, with Eagle-based rockers the Runaway Grooms opening the show.

"It's gonna be a dance party all the way through," Hollingsworth says.

The concert is sure to be exciting, considering the dichotomy between the bands the musicians usually play with: SCI is free-wheeling and jam-centric with bluegrass roots, while Umphrey's packs a punch with prog-rock in a sound that folds in a myriad of genres. Hollingsworth acknowledges that stylistic difference, which is what makes him so pumped up about the set. "I'm excited to get face-to-face and play off each others' gifts. It'll be a little bit of a mystery, what happens. I'm excited, though, because that's where most of the magic happens. With uncertainty, sometimes things are magic. ... What I like about it is it's a little bit out of my comfort zone, but that intrigues me to try things like this in the future.

"We're kind of finding this really cool middle ground," he continues. "Umphrey's is a harder-edged sword, for sure harder than String Cheese."

Hollingsworth says the setlist will include both Umphrey's and Cheese songs (his favorite Umphrey's album, for the record, is Anchor Drops), and the audience will be able to see two of the jam scene's top key players rock out together. "I think we both have similar playing styles," Hollingsworth says. "We both come from improvisational groups that kind of push us to expand our plan and also think outside the box. He's more of a classical player than me for sure; I'd actually want to take lessons from him. But either way, we both are willing to explore space, we're willing to improvise."

As testament to his pre-show buzz, Hollingsworth wishes this could be a weekly concert. "People coming to the show will see a very unique musical collaboration. Not that often do keyboard players play together," he notes. "This is kind of a unique situation."

And the kicker: Hollingsworth has brewed a beer with Four Noses that will be available at the concert; it's called Jelly Drops, a nod to SCI's "Jellyfish" and Umphrey's "Anchor Drops."

Kyle Hollingsworth Band with Joel Cummins, 8 p.m., Thursday, February 16, Fox Theatre, 1135 13th Street, Boulder, and Friday, February 17, Cervantes' Masterpiece Ballroom, 2637 Welton Street. Tickets to the Fox are $20-$25; tickets to Cervantes' are $22.