It's that time of the year again. No, not time for your annual bath. No, not time for you to sign up for summer school because you somehow managed to fail P.E. No, not time for peace, love and happiness. Fool, it's time for rock bands to hit the road in search of groupies with huge racks and loose morals. It's time for you to willingly shell out 30-odd bucks for the privilege of baking in the sun and emptying the rest of your wallet out to buy $5 bottles of water. It's time for you to experience the stench of a high school football team's locker room coming to life as the crowd around you ripens. It's time to get your ass kicked by a girl in the pit and spend the rest of the day keeping an eye out for her. It's time for you to miss seeing your favorite band because the lines for the porto-crappers are 20 minutes long. It's time for you to wonder where the hell you parked. Yes indeed, it's that time of the year again.
The cool kids know what we're talking about, the cool kids have broken their piggy banks to pay for a day of punk rock summer camp before. It's called the Warped Tour, people, and it's coming to a venue somewhere near you at the end of June. You've seen the ads touting Pennywise, The Vandals, Living End, NOFX and so on, but like every round of the long-running summer festival tour there's at least one band that could seemingly pull in the same size crowds on its own. This year that band is 311, and the Hollywood-based quintet couldn't be happier about rocking the main stage.
"It's all about getting out there and playing a little bit, having some barbecue and drinking a beer or two," says guitarist Tim Mahoney, who is reportedly single for the first time in seven years and is looking forward to some serious quality time with naughty female fans. "The Warped Tour just seemed like a fun thing to do and it's a good way to get our feet back in the water as far as touring and traveling."
But for a band that's used to a rigorous touring schedule of around 150 shows per year and 90 minute sets, it seems like the shrunken 30 minute blocks allotted on the Warped stage won't be enough time for 311 to connect. "It's hard to play short sets because you get warmed up and then you're done, but when I see a band that I like play for a half hour, I still enjoy it," says Mahoney, who notes the longest set his band ever played took place last March 11 (wink, wink) in New Orleans and came in at almost exactly three hours and 11 minutes (nudge, nudge).
The 311 plan for the Warped Tour is to cram in as much music as possible, which means the band will have to cut out its notorious between-song dead spaces. Mahoney claims he and his co-horts are well aware of the pregnant pauses of the past where fans would commonly yell, "OK stoners, let's hear another song!" and are fixing to tighten things up and hopefully kick out six to eight jams. Ah, but which jams to kick? With six albums worth of original material to chose from, including the forthcoming From Chaos, it would seem some decisions need to be made.
"I think it will be mostly new stuff with a couple old ones and the occasional radio hit mixed in. The songs off From Chaos have great energy and they should translate well live," he says. "Now I've just got to go back and review a lot of our older songs because we don't play most of them live. I mean, we could but we really don't, so we tend to forget how to play them. It's kind of fun when we're rehearsing to play old ones we haven't tried to play in years. One time through it and we all remember it."
And what about that new 311 record? Fans haven't heard any fresh material from the band since 1999's Soundsystem, which went gold despite its former label self-destructing all around it. Few are probably aware that although 311 has sold over five million albums in the States alone, the band was never happy in its contract with Capricorn Records. Before said label could fold it was snatched up by Volcano Records, home to the polar universes of Tool and Weird Al Yankovic, and 311's contract with it. Luckily the band ‹ which was really the only reason for buying Capricorn ‹ was able to re- negotiate certain aspects of its contract and feels a little bit better about how things are going now.
"There were times in the past when we tried to get out of our contract and there was just no way to do it. So now we just try to look at it as guaranteed work," says Mahoney, who notes that Capricorn was the only label that offered his band a deal in the pre- nu metal era of the early Œ90s. "We know bands that have deals that are way more fair to the artist, but I guess that's the price you pay for being an artist. I'm on the one side so I think the artist is always getting screwed, but I really don't know how you could argue anything other than that."
Even though 311 is contractually obligated to make music, the members plan to keep making music for themselves and their steadily growing fan base. The band has landed a handful of radio hits over the years but Mahoney says 311 has always been after the long-term following of people interested in the albums, rather than the short-term mass appeal afforded by hit singles and videos. "You don't want to have to rely on anything mainstream and we're fortunate to be in a spot where we don't have to because our fans will always come see us play," he says. "We've always created the music we wanted to create, and we're lucky that our core fans have stood by us."
The band spent roughly six months working on From Chaos, splitting time between Sound City in Van Nuys and its own new studio, dubbed The Hive, in North Hollywood. After years of working within the confines of other people's schedules and equipment, Mahoney says the 311 guys are really looking forward to investing in a nice mixing console and optimizing their collective investment. "It's really rewarding because it's our place and we're the only ones working there so we can do whatever we want, whenever we want," he says. "It's weird because it's taken ten years to get to this point, but it's a nice pay off."
With close to a hundred recorded songs containing more stylistic hybrids ‹ hip hop, metal, reggae, funk, jazz, punk, etc. ‹ than Oprah has stretch marks, some might wonder what 311 has left to give. Could the band have a funky polka or punk-meets-salsa track waiting to be discovered on From Chaos? Although most sane folks will hope not, Mahoney doesn't rule anything out in the future. "Anything we enjoy listening to influences us," he says. "I might listen to a polka and find some really cool ideas in there. Even obscure bluegrass stuff can give you a different perspective on how to look at music. I like to check it all out and go with what trips my trigger."
As for getting the songs on From Chaos together, he continues, "It always seems like there's a wide open space when it comes to creating music, but there's so much great music out there it gets harder and harder to put out anything unique. That's why you've just got to follow your instincts and work on the ideas that seem real to you. And as long as you're playing music with the intention of having fun, it should be all good."
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