By Patricia Calhoun
Bill Nershi will be at Wellshire Golf Course next week for The Hall’s 3rd Annual Golf Tournament, but he won’t be there for the game. He’s all about family: the extended family in the state’s music scene, as represented by Colorado Music Hall of Fame, and his own family, which will be playing music, not golf, at the Hall’s tournament.
A founding member and acoustic guitarist for The String Cheese Incident, a band inducted into The Hall in 2021 as part of the Flatirons Session class, Bill also now plays with his wife, Jilian, and daughter, Lauren, as the Nershis. The family act will release its first album, “Songs For The Road,” and will share some of these songs with The Hall’s golfers.
“It’s incredible for me to be able to put together an album and do shows with my daughter and my wife,” Bill says. “We have a chance to interact with the audience in a different way than we do with String Cheese.”
For Bill and Jilian, working together isn’t new; they’ve written many String Cheese songs including the Colorado favorite “Colorado Bluebird Sky.” “We write together a lot; we have for thirty years,” Jilian notes. “But it’s fun to talk about behind-the-scenes, how things came to be.”
Lauren got her start in music as a baby, lying on the stage when String Cheese played, “feeling the music,” Bill recalls. “Now she’s making music.” Today, Lauren is 28, and working her way toward making music full-time. “We definitely don’t want to discourage it,” says Bill. “There’s a lot more to music than having a good voice and good songs. It’s a whole different lifestyle. If she does it gradually, she’ll succeed.”
“I was always singing to Lauren…when she was young,” explains Jilian. That was when the family was living in Nederland; along with their second daughter, Ariana, they moved to Denver almost a decade ago to be closer to aging parents. But that didn’t stop the music, and they still feel close to Nederland, too. The Nershis recently did a benefit concert in the mountain town, which is still recovering from last year’s devastating fire. And Lauren and Jiian were just back in the area, playing a show in Rollinsville.
The family will be playing together again at the Avon Freefall Bluegrass Festival October 9-11, with the Nershi Hann Trio, adding Lauren’s vocals to the mix that includes String Cheese drummer Jason Hann. The performance will feature many of the other musicians who joined on The Nershis’ album. On October 10, Bill will return the favor by playing at the fest with the Infamous Stringdusters. That weekend will also mark the release of their album. “We’re just starting as a three-piece,” says Jillian. “It was always under our nose.”
Soon The Nershis will be in everyone’s ears. “It’s a dream come true for all of us,” Bill says of the album, “We just got the test pressing. It was killer. It just sounds amazing.”
It should: They recorded the album at the String Cheese sound lab, using the band’s engineer to record, mix and master. “We’ve had some other projects, but this is the first record. It’s just a different atmosphere,” says Jillian. “When you sing with all family harmony, it’s really fun,” explains Bill. “It’s fun to get the energy.”
Ariana cheers them on; she’s not performing with the family…yet. But Bill notes that “I heard she wants to take piano lessons and be in the band.”
In the meantime, they have that other family of musicians.
“It’s been a very busy summer for String Cheese,” Bill says. The thirty-year-old band played its annual two-night run at Red Rocks in July, and will be on the road again this fall. “It’s a different kind of adrenaline rush,” he adds, “where shows with family are just warm and cozy. I just enjoy that we can do that as a family. We’ll always look back at that album, that we had an idea and we just did it.”
Many of the songs on “Songs For The Road,” are ones they wrote for String Cheese, “stories of our lives,” Jilian says. But the album also includes “covers we love, material from writers/musicians we like, that we’ve been encouraged by.”
And they continue to be encouraged by what they’re hearing around the state, from musicians and fans alike. “We really appreciate Colorado Music Hall of Fame,” Bill says. “It’s really worked with us and helped us get what we’re doing out to the people.”
Concludes Jill: “We love supporting a good cause. We love our state. We’re so proud.”