Kyle Hollingsworth has a lot on his plate these days. Aside from his role as one sixth of the String Cheese Incident, the keyboardist has also been touring with his own Kyle Hollingsworth Band and working with a variety of other groups, such as Euforquestra. His latest side project— Incidental Animals —will be making its live debut tonight at The Note in West Chester, PA before heading to a few more cities in the Northeast. The Heavy Pets will be opening for the band, which features Hollingsworth, Dan Lebowitz, Steve Adams and Dave Brogan of ALO and Jennifer Hartswick of Trey Anastasio Band. We spoke with Kyle yesterday about the upcoming Incidental Animals shows, the String Cheese Incident’s 2014 plans, his next brew and more.

How did this Incidental Animals project come about?

It was a meeting of the minds. We did some jamming together last Jam Cruise and I’m good friends with Zach Gill and I know they wanted to do some shows coming up this fall and Zach was out with Jack Johnson. [When they were putting together a special band for a private event], they thought of me. Zach and I were speaking and it made total sense. I think it’s a really good combination, I really enjoyed playing with them all Jam Cruise. It felt really good.

What can we expect from these shows? Are you going to delve into your respective bands’ material? Are you going to do covers?

Who knows? We’re going to find out tomorrow, right? It’s going to be a combination of our own material that we’ve been rehearsing on. I’m excited to see where this will go. I don’t think we’ve really improvised that much as a group together. This will be first time where we step into that space. It will be music from both of us, some covers, we have Jen playing with us from Trey’s band. She’s bringing in a lot to the table, and some free jam time.

How’d you first meet the ALO guys?

We jammed together at Jam Cruise last year, but the first time I think I met them was when String Cheese was doing shows with them in the 2000s, probably 2008-2009. I was intrigued by their sound and then I did a whole tour with just Zach Gill and I, it was a duo tour with one band. It was called the Four Hands tour or the Twenty Fingers Tour.

We played together for a whole run so I got to know his style of writing. It’s been a relationship for the past six years or so.

Have you ever played with Jennifer Hartswick? How long have you know her?

I haven’t known Jennifer for that long, certainly not as long as ALO. I was jamming with her for the Everyone Orchestra gigs with Matt [Butler]. She was on a couple of those. She was down for String Cheese Hulaween we did in Florida. She came up on the end. I’ve been recently getting to know her more and more.

Moving onto SCI, are there any details you can give on the new album or the Spring tour?

We are shooting to release the album closer to March and April now and that will be followed by a tour. We are excited to get into a bus and maybe do a little less one-off festival stuff. I think a couple of gigs that are set up now for the spring are festival-oriented, but we are going to push for a bus tour so we can dig in. It may not be till the fall though.

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