From Chaos to Evoultion (Pulse Weekly)

311 is the police code in Omaha for indecent exposure. Now stop asking.


You can always tell when it’s a 311 song. That funky beat, that distinct rapping, rocking groove that we all couldn’t get enough of back in the early 90s. Who would’ve thought a sound like that could come from Omaha, Nebraska? Ok, you can put your hands down now.

Anyway, with Evolver, the group’s latest album (the title of which is a play on The Beatles’ classic Revolver), 311 takes a more progressive look at things. In other words, it’s not your typical funkdafied 311 record, which may disappoint all y’all diehard 311 fans.

We talked to P-Nut, 311’s funky bassist, and we found out he’s also a huge fan – of the band Ween. Cool, we thought. Now we have something in common besides the whole being a huge rock star thing. [sigh] Yeah, we’re just daydreaming again. Don’t mind us.

PULSE WEEKLY: You guys played a one-off show with Jay-Z last year. Did you party with him at all?

P-NUT: No, he keeps to himself. He’s always surrounded by a ton of people. Nick [vocals] did exchange pleasantries with him and he said it was fun being on tour with us. But I didn’t get a chance to meet him, which I was disappointed about, because he’s a great musician.

PW: I’ll bet you drank a ton of Sprite, since it was the Sprite Liquid Mix tour and all.

P: It was everywhere. If we ever needed any, there was a case outside our bus in two minutes.

PW: What do you usually drink in the summer?

P: I’m a coffee addict, I’ll admit. I always make a pot when I wake up, so it’s my everyday drink. I try to take a day off a week but that’s been happening less and less frequently. And I always have a pint of Guinness onstage when I play. When I’m completely thirsty and hot from playing a show and I can just barely breathe, that stout just goes down nicely. I can take a pint down in a couple of seconds if I really need it.

PW: Rumor has it that you’re also a big Ween fan.

P: They’re great – no limits. I’ve seen them play two times, but it seems like more than that because each experience was so huge. I saw them at a theatre out here; they played for like two and-a-half hours. They played every song I could’ve thought of, and I’m a Ween historian. It was fantastic. Then they started taking requests. I think bands that do that really have a one-up on other bands because they’re ready to do anything at anytime.

PW: Do you ever play requests?

P: We don’t make it as big of a habit as Ween does, but we do every once in a while. Our fans make signs, which is what we tell them to do if they want to hear us play an obscure song. We’re rehearsing tons and tons of obscure songs, which we never really make a habit out of doing. Usually we just concentrate on a core group, maybe like 50, and we’ll play 23 to 28 a night. But this time around, we’re rehearsing like 60.

PW: Is the home video that you guys are putting out going to have any skits on it, or is it just going to be strictly recording footage?

P: I filmed pretty much everything in the studio. There will be the normal behind-the-scenes stuff, but the cool thing is, it’s not like us reenacting recording, it’s how it’s actually going down. It’s also the making of the cover of the album, which is a photograph, and we haven’t done that since we were a band in Omaha, before we were signed or anything. I think it was high time for us to do an interesting, and hopefully classic album cover.

PW: It looks kind of Pink Floyd-ish and abstract.

P: There’s tons of anomalies within the photograph, and kids are already leaping to assumptions about their meanings – but there’s little to none, it was really just an interesting setup.

PW: That’s the fun part though.

P: It is. There’s a whole stream of ideas on our bulletin board that fans are coming up with. It’s really interesting but totally out there. Our kids have a lot of imagination.

PW: Who would you say is your favorite bassist?

P: Alive or dead?

PW: Let’s go with alive.

P: That’s so tough. I don’t know if it would be one person. I would say Dirk, the bass player who used to play for Incubus. He was totally one of my favorites because I think he was semi-raised on listening to 311 albums. It makes it a little bit easier to like his style because I can hear the influence, but he’s not in the band anymore. I love Hoobastank’s bass player; he’s kind of similar to me because he manhandles his instrument, he’s animated onstage. Good things in the future for that band. And the guy from Alien Ant Farm is like the Tasmanian Devil on bass.

PW: I heard Les Claypool is bringing back Primus.

P: That would be great. With all the original members, right? We toured with them on one of their first tours without Tim on drums, and that was a lot of fun, but it was weird – it wasn’t Primus. It was some other band that had two-thirds of the same members with a different drummer. It was fun to watch and I learned a lot but it wasn’t the same. Bands should keep their members, if at all possible, because it’s never the same after one person leaves.

PW: Give me an example of something you guys do on a night out together when you have off.

P: Chad has been getting us to go out and see drum corps performances, which is pretty cool. It’s even more fun to experience it with him because he’s kind of obsessed with it. Watching Chad get excited about it is probably the most exciting thing.

PW: Do you think marijuana is ever going to be legal in America?

P: Our generation is coming to be the people who control those laws, so I guarantee it’s just a matter of time. People are going to wake up and be compassionate, because all we are right now is quick to incarcerate, and nobody learns anything from that. They should shut the hell up and let people do what they need to do in the privacy of their own homes. That’s what America is all about. They could even tax my weed!