As they take their ’311 Day’ tradition to Las Vegas, veteran reggae-rap rockers 311 reflect on 20 years together—and their hunt for a new record label.
With only a few words the minister managed to crash his own Southern Baptist convention.
“Christians need to courageously seek persons of other races to mix with—and to marry,” he said.
The crowd of 12,000 gasped. Interracial marriage? Dr. R. Lofton Hudson, the father of pastoral counseling, struck a chord with his conservative audience. He spoke of unity. While lost on this crowd, Hudson’s message that day in 1970 would eventually rub off on his newborn grandson. Nicholas Lofton Hexum would form rock band 311, graduate high school early, write songs of acceptance, and move out of Omaha to spread unity far and wide. Twenty years on, Nick’s crowd is clearly listening—311 regularly sells out shows and has moved almost 10 million albums.
Since 1990 the funky reggae partiers known as 311 have promoted peace and positivity across the globe through live music. The five-piece band will play its biennial blowout, an event dubbed “311 Day,” to an audience at Las Vegas’ Mandalay Bay on March 11 (3/11). The tradition showcases a five-hour setlist and unites as many as 15,000 spectators from all 50 states. This 311 Day will be the first for lead singer Nick Hexum since he started a family.
“I’m on a little daddy duty this morning,” he explains in a hushed voice from his Los Angeles home, an hour before band practice. 311 is wrapping six weeks of rehearsing songs from its latest album, Uplifter, released last summer following the band’s three-year break from the studio.
“I took some guitar lessons and really buckled down on a daily discipline of working on becoming the player I always wanted to be,” says Hexum of the last few years. “The only way you can really screw yourself as a musician is to you think you’ve got it all figured out.”
That’s why reggae-rap architects 311 turned to a new mentor in 2008. #Uplifter#, the band’s ninth album, finds long-time Metallica producer Bob Rock pushing 311 beyond its comfort zone. While the group hasn’t left behind its trademark approach to songs, the rap-rock style isn’t leading the charge this time around. “Too Much Too Fast” emphasizes guitarist Tim Mahoney’s soaring tropical riffs over a shuffling Beatlesque time signature. P-Nut’s rich bass throbs in time with Chad Sexton’s brilliantly precise backbeat
on the textured ballads “Golden Sunlight” and “Two Drops in the Ocean.” These softer gems highlight the vocal beauty of 311 co-frontman S.A. Martinez and allow a break from the band’s more formulaic output, like “Hey You,” a single suited for those content with the familiar, radio-friendly side of 311.
“There’s plenty of 311 fans that say, ‘Just do the heavy stuff,’” says Hexum. “The truth is that we have to make music that’s just from the heart. You can’t make music by a focus group.”
“If we were just the same band every record, maybe we wouldn’t even be a band anymore,” admits drummer and songwriter Chad Sexton. “I think the last one is the most formulated musically on the songs, but in a good way, a way that 311 absolutely needed.”
While Los Angeles bands Fishbone and Red Hot Chili Peppers drew up the funk-metal blueprint in the early ’80s, 311 pioneered and popularized the double-frontman, call-and-response concept of the ’90s. Soon after the band recorded its first official demo, #Unity#, in an Omaha studio in July 1991, the tape caught the ear of Capricorn Records’ general manager.
“They had this ability to cross-pollinate all these different musical genres in a seamless kind of way,” remembers Don Schmitzerle, who signed 311 the following June.
Twenty years and nine albums later, the band plans to start recording again following the spring tour—with or without a label. “We’re free agents now, and so we’ve got a lot of options on the table,” says Hexum. The band satisfied its contract with Volcano Records last year. “I will say that we’re leaning towards one, kind of a label-producer combination,” he adds.
Before the band moved out to L.A. 20 years ago, 311′s tradition meant Monday night gigs at a popular Omaha bowling alley. Now the guys have their own holiday. 311 Day, a five-hour, Grateful Dead-like experience, never disappoints and always climaxes with a drum solo performed by every member of the group. To watch it is to witness unity at work.
“311 really showed us how to be a band, how to tour, how to make it a business,” says Sugar Ray leader Mark McGrath. “They’re really underestimated for what great musicians they are. They’re working on another plane.”
This year that other plane finds four of the band’s five members turning 40, an age when, as the adage goes, life begins. If all his years of making music didn’t convince Hexum of this, the realization hit home six months ago when he and his wife welcomed their first child.
“It’s just a very fulfilling thing,” he says, “a sense of purpose that you can never really fully understand until you’re in it.”
No comments:
Post a Comment