The Everyone Orchestra brings a wide variety of musicians together to get back to improvising and jamming—and the result will blow your mind

The sign says “Hopeful.”
For Kyle Hollingsworth, the Hammond B wizard from String Cheese Incident, “Hopeful” sounds a lot like a mash-up of War’s “Low Rider” and “Cisco Kid,” two songs that didn’t really conjure aspiration until Hollingsworth defined his interpretation.
Moments later, Matt Butler scribbles on his dry-erase board and raises the sign to the band.
“Reflective.”

Blown Away: Jennifer Hartswick finds the groove.

Bay Area guitar guru Steve Kimock takes this one and leads the Everyone Orchestra into a rich, ambient landscape of elongated chords and quaking riffs rife with Latin overtones. Mandolin maestro Jamie Masefield picks up on Kimock’s Latino spice and soon his eight-string mandolin is ringing with flamenco as Motet drummer Dave Watts picks up the tempo.

It’s just another night for the Everyone Orchestra, a rotating troupe of master musicians led by scrawling conductor Butler, the rhythmic backbone of string band Hot Buttered Rum.

Over three nights at Denver’s Quixote’s True Blue last May, the Everyone Orchestra hit just about every musical genre out there.

This time there were eight, with Jennifer Hartswick bellowing on-the-fly compositions with a trumpet that spooned perfectly with Kimock’s reflective fretwork. Boulder’s Jamie Janover worked the hammered dulcimer and percussion, lending a tangy thump to the deep-end, which was aptly manned by Motet bassist Garrett Sayers. Together, the group mastered its transitioning segues, a skill barely grasped by most of today’s nascent “jam bands.”

Butler runs the show with his chicken-scratch sign and frantic waving. Sometimes, he plays the mime, pulling jams out of his musicians with an invisible rope. He does the same with the crowd, using his sign to cull well-timed screams, stomps, moans and even an occasional “Thud!” His notes to the band reveal his inclinations toward in-the-moment expression, like “Explode!” or “Follow Kimock” or the head-scratching “Techno-Raga.”

There is never a plan and no Everyone Orchestra show sounds like another. No one on stage knows where they are headed, but they are very much able to get there.

“Nothing really ever comes up twice,” Butler says. “It’s about letting the musicians have space to just kinda rip it up and put them on the spot.”

Over the span of three shows at Quixote’s, the eight-top meandered from groove to groove, developing a playful mood that seeped into every note. The freewheeling nature of the EO party could not find a better home than Quixote’s, where Denver’s Jay Bianchi has corralled his one-time music venue empire into a single house o’ fun. Bianchi’s enviable collection of Dead-and-Deadish concert posters now blankets the main room. A second stage room often hosts set-break play and a new outdoor patio stage completes a three-stage venue.

The Ringleader: Matt Butler is the heart of Everyone Orchestra’s improvisational storm.

The three shows at Quixote’s unearthed countless spectacular moments with each musician given plenty of range to roam. Friday’s heavy-hitter was Masefield, who started out tentative but after an hour or so of backdrop noodling came on hot with raging licks that swerved between bluegrass, honkeytonk boogie, techno and Arabesque world-beat. Saturday’s show saw a more harmonic sound, as the musicians coalesced in more determined, yet still open-ended, directions, all anchored by Kimock’s smooth, laid-back slide sound. Sunday’s acoustic show was an intimate encounter that felt like friends jamming in the living room.

Sometimes a theme or chant emerged, like Friday night’s “Walking Arm in Arm,” a vocal duet with Butler and Hartswick that evolved into a sort of instrumental duel between Masefield and Hartswick as it stretched through two distinctly different songs.

As is common for most Everyone Orchestra outings, the Colorado concerts fed the charity Conscious Alliance, the 8-year-old Boulder-based group that works with jam musicians to distribute food in needy communities. Over the years, Everyone Orchestra has stirred its listeners to donate cash, toys and food to a host of causes. The idea, says Butler, is to add some sense of purpose to the wandering musical party.

Add in a first-night show at Hodi’s Half Note in Fort Collins and this Colorado version of the Everyone Orchestra played eight sets and more than 14 hours of where-are-we-going music in late May. Every experiential lick was unrehearsed and never to be heard again; a journey that definitely bests any destination. •

Jason Blevins writes for The Denver Post. He is a strange dancer, but that has never stopped him.

Everyone Orchestra alumni:
Umphrey McGee’s Brendan Bayliss and Andy Farag, String Cheese Incident’s Michael Kang, moe.’s Vinnie Amico, DJ Logic, Melvin Seals, Scott Law, The Flecktone’s Futureman and Jeff Coffin, Phish’s Jon Fishman and Papa Mali.