DJ Harry ‘blown away’ by String Cheese Incident

Kirk Baird

Friday, July 27, 2001 | 8:57 a.m.

When DJ Harry first heard String Cheese Incident play small clubs in the Colorado ski resorts in 1994, he wasn't a big fan.

Maybe that's because the eclectic jam band still was in its infant bluegrass stage, and DJ Harry (real name Harry Antibus) was too far into house music to appreciate the rootsy style.

Flash forward six years later and after seeing SCI perform again, DJ Harry, who performs tonight and Saturday at Blue Note Las Vegas, became one of band's converts.

"I was blown away," he said in a recent interview from his home in Colorado.

Something that had previously alluded him -- a musical symmetry -- caused him to make a connection between the music SCI was playing onstage and its affect on fans, and the music he was spinning in clubs and its affect on dancers.

Hence the genesis for his first CD, "The String Cheese Remix Project."

Structured around samples from recordings he made of the band's 2000 summer tour, the album is 70 percent pure Cheese, with the other 30 percent being electric drums and percussion.

"The problem with the drums is it's hard to get a good mike on them," DJ Harry said. "(Other noises) would bleed through, so you couldn't get a really clean sample."

Since DJ Harry is signed to the band's record label, SCI Fidelity Records, and both he and the band are promoting new albums, it was only natural the two joined forces for select dates during SCI's West Coast tour.

So about a half-hour after the band has called it quits, DJ Harry goes to work at a nearby club -- and usually for the same crowd, he said.

"(The club performance) is promoted at the String Cheese show, so String Cheese fans see it as an extension," he said. Although, "some are confused by it, thinking I'm part of the band."

Which is easy to do considering various members of the quintet occasionally appear at the post-concert groove session to jam alongside their remixed songs.

For the musical purists who, despite SCI's endorsement of the project, still scoff at jam bands serving as a buffet for house music, DJ Harry said they're missing his point.

"Jam bands already are house music," DJ Harry said. "There's just a huge kick drum missing."