311 Interview (Courtesy of Guitar World)
More than a year after its initial release, 311's self-titled third album is a bona fide hit, spurred by the all-over MTV hit "Down," and few people are as amazed at its success as the band members themselves.
"I guess I'm kind of surprised that we're getting as much play as we are," says singer/guitarist Nicholas Hexum, 311's principle songwriter. "Alternative radio used to say that we were too rap or too funky, and R&B/rap radio said we were too rock. It's like we were sitting right in-between many formats. But that's something that we've always known that we're up against." That's not to say 311 didn't have hopes. When the Omaha quintet released its first album, Music (Capricorn), in 1993, it had every expectation of being the next big thing.
"But," Hexum says, "it just didn't happen." So as the band prepared its second album, Grassroots (Capricorn), it rethought its strategy, deciding to forego radio and video and focus on its live show. "We decided to just focus on the aspects of our career that we could actually control," says Hexum. "Just do it through touring, one fan at a time."
GUITAR WORLD: Now that the band is so successful, you have to deal with issues like marketing and exposure. Is this the sort of stuff you ever imagined you'd be thinking about?
NICHOLAS HEXUM: It's more humble to say, "I never thought all this was going to happen," but we did. My life's goal was to get songs on the radio and be a popular singer. And I think it's finally becoming cool again to get big. There was this big anti-rock star thing, and now we're just having fun with it. Lately the joke has been, "Quit fronting on alternative. Let's just embrace rock clichés." We're going to go out and have fun, and not pretend that we're holier than thou.
GW: You've been touring behind the current album, 311, for over a year now.
HEXUM: Fourteen months. In the past, we would make an album and do, like, a five-, six-month tour with over 120 shows. But we decided that we were letting our albums die too quickly. So rather than record last winter, after the tour, we decided we were going to just keep touring, and really make this album break. We knew that the material was there; we just had to work it.
The album's been climbing up the charts slowly. It's been a very slow process, but the momentum never stopped. It's exciting to see, because now we realize that we really don't have to worry about hits. We can be album-oriented, which is what we always wanted.
The goal for us has been to get such a strong, album-oriented fan base that we don't even have to worry about hits, singles, promotion, the radio whoring and all that stuff. We can just make albums and do shows...just strictly be artists.
GW: It seems to be a growing trend among bands these days to refuse to play the usual radio/video games.
HEXUM: Pearl Jam is kind of a role model, the way they have gotten to a level where they don't have to play that game. Because there is a lot of legal payola that occurs in the music industry today. Like, "You play our radio festival, and we'll play your single." The stations end up making tens of thousands of dollars on those radio fests, then they pay the bands very little. The bands do it in exchange for radio play, which is straight-up payola. But because there's no actual money exchanged, it's acceptable. td width=466 colspan=2> GW: Still, there are many bands these days that have a real solid audience and album sales without depending on radio. In fact, a lot of them aren't getting played on radio, period.
HEXUM: Right. There's bands that we really respect, like Pantera and Phish, that don't play the media game much yet still do great touring business and have huge loyalty from their fans. So when we talk about marketing and stuff like that now, we're more concerned with how to preserve the underground status that we have than with how to move tons of albums. We want to make sure to maintain what we've got, and preserve the vibe that we've created.
And we don't want to overexpose ourselves. We've finally gotten to the point where we're turning things down-things that we would have jumped at before. Because MTV isn't worried about overexposing you; they want to have you on all the time, once you're hitting. So at some point you've got to say, "Thanks, but no thanks."
GW: What do you think the primary differences between rock and rap are?
HEXUM: It's two totally different things. Hip-hop starts out with samples, sounding great on record from the top, but they don't know how to rock a crowd. Whereas a garage band is all about getting the energy and the emotion of the live moment.
GW: The guitar sound on this album is so raw and up front that you must have to play cleaner. That makes me wonder how much of that was part of the concept behind the music, and how much was just a function of the production.
TIMOTHY MAHONEY: With this record, there are not that many guitar effects. Like for me, it was just guitar, guitar and octaver. Just straight-up, rockin', in-your-face kinds of tones.
HEXUM: Yeah, one thing you'll find as a difference between Tim and my styles is that he's found this perfect tone and sticks to it, and explores through the playing and the melodies. But when I'm playing, I can't really touch his level of technique, so I'll just use a lot of effects, and add noises and textures and different shit like that. So it kind of works out. He's got his rig just exactly how he wants it. He spends hours setting it up, whereas I'll turn my amp on, and, `Eh, sounds good.' You know?
GW: So you're playing with sound, and Tim is playing with harmony and notes?
MAHONEY: Yeah. But I want to get back more into the effects and get more explorative on the next record, as far as tone goes.
HEXUM: Yeah, we're going to get into some psychedelic, trippy, dub production, and bring in different space noises and shit like that. Because from Music to Grass Roots to the blue album, 311, the sound just got more and more sparse. The first album had samples, percussion-all kinds of shit. And then there was a medium amount of that on Grass Roots. And at this point, there's very little percussion and samples and that subsonic bass sound that you can use.
I think now that we've gone all the way raw, we're probably going to revert back to some ear candy, and just make psychedelic shit. Because some of the greatest albums were so studio-oriented, like Pink Floyd or someone like that. So that's something you're probably going to see on our next album.
GW: It seems to me that we're heading into a time when people will accept that dance music can be rock music. But for a long time, it seemed as if the two had to be kept in separate rooms. Is this why you think your sound is changing?
HEXUM: It would be wonderful is we could groove so hard that we started getting played on R&B and hip-hop radio. We're always striving to groove, and now I think we're going to get more funky, more acid-jazzy on this next record. But there will still also be a heaviness. But that's something to strive for. Everyone's moshing to us, and it's obviously high-energy, but if we could groove to such an extreme that it also could go over at a dance club, that would be the bomb.
Yeah. There's going to be some stuff on the next album that might kind of be like guitar-based acid jazz. You know what I mean? Because it's going to have funky drums and bass, but with a strong guitar presence. And we also have some stuff in the works with chording guitar riffs- guitar leads with chording, like you hear all over Boston records and shit. That shit's fun.
MAHONEY: I think the challenge is more for Nick to be able to sing over some of the music. Whether he raps or sings or what. Because a lot of people will ask, `Is it hard to play guitar in a band where there's guys that are rapping and stuff like that?' And it's not at all. I think it's more the other way around. I think it's a lot harder to rap and to sing the melodies over the musical parts.
HEXUM: I can sing and play guitar, but rap and play guitar? It don't work. [laughs]
GW: What's the most important element of your music?
HEXUM: The groove. And the energy level. You can have a band that sounds the same, but there can be a totally variable level of energy that will make it that much more fun, or not. We could go out there and play our songs at just the right tempos, but be totally boring, because we're just not putting out that much energy.
For so long, our goal has been to save up our energy, and then get out there and let it out. That's what the joy of dancing, all the way back to the tribal days, is about. There's something inherently pleasurable about dancing and releasing energy to the music. And if you don't flush your system out, it's not as much a catharsis as if you just totally go out, and you leave there just spent, covered in sweat.
MAHONEY: And it flows. You can just feel it when it starts. It's like a recycler, just an infinite pattern-with people. Sometimes, you can definitely feel that energy, and you know that it's for real and that it's going on.
GW: Getting into a pocket is like falling-you have to let it happen. But that upbeat, jumping-around energy almost demands that you kind of push the issue a little. So I'm guessing that it's tricky to get to that level of energy and just let the groove happen.
HEXUM: I guess we learned some lessons from trying to rock out too hard right from the get-go. Back in the day, we would start out with a really high-energy song like `Freak Out,' and just go off too hard right at the beginning. Now, we've learned to start with a song that is familiar, just get into the groove, and then wait and put `Freak Out," which is maybe our most high-energy, wild song, third. So we get into the control mode first, find the pocket, find the groove, and then gradually get into it. Rather than just trying to explode from the top.
GW: I also have to wonder about the audience, too. Back in the Sixties and Seventies, any teenager who sat down at a drum kit played pretty much the same basic rock beat - boom bap! Boom-boom bap! Now, what teens play is that fatback beat-dung bap! dugga dugga-dun bap!
MAHONEY: [laughs] That's the only beat I know!
GW: It's like there was a genetic change or something. And I wonder, is there something about the times that makes that beat work now?
HEXUM: I don't know. It's an evolution thing. I don't know why I did this on stage today, but before one of our songs I said, `This is the age of acceleration/Earth-stamping feet in celebration.' It seems like music styles are changing so much faster. If you took, let's say, from the year 1210 to the year 1230, the music styles were probably not changing audibly. But if you compare now to 20 years ago, things just keep getting faster and faster and faster. But it's exciting. It's exciting to think what we might be doing in the year 2000.