Monday, June 6, 2011

311’s Nick Hexum Discusses New Album, Universal Pulse (MyYearbook)

The legendary frontman opens up about their new single and the energy of the universe.

311 has been entertaining fans for almost a quarter of a century, and they have no intention of calling it quits anytime soon. “I don’t feel like we’re slowing down at all,” says singer Nick Hexum. “We’re still just super excited to get out on the road.” In fact, the band has only expanded their reach in the last year by hosting a 311 Caribbean cruise for over 3000 fans (who represented all 50 U.S. States and 13 countries) and setting up the three day 311 Pow Wow Festival in Live Oak, Florida, to be held this August. These events flank the release of 311’s 10th album to date, Universal Pulse (out 7/19), and their annual Unity Tour that kicks off this July.

Below, Nick Hexum takes a moment out of his busy schedule to reflect on the achievements of the band’s career, rock n’ roll tourism and what keeps the band going after all these years.

The last time we spoke, you had just released your album Uplifter. Now, you’re set to release Universal Pulse on July 19th – your 10th studio album to date. How does it feel to achieve such a milestone in your career?
It feels like just another dream coming true when you consider just how difficult it is to have longevity and that we’re almost at our 21 year anniversary, we stay grateful because we know that everything is temporary. To have such a long career is pretty amazing.

This is the first release of yours on 311 Records. Why was it important to you to create your own imprint and move in this direction?
The internet has good and bad to it, but mostly good. It’s provided the democratization of pop culture. Now that we’re able to have such a one-to-one, direct and immediate relationship with our fans, we realize we can provide everything that a label was doing. We’ve always been a kind of do-it-yourself kind of band anyways as far as not expecting to have any sort of press that did it for us. We just take it to the road, and that’s how people find out about our music. Now we realized more than ever that once we finally finished out our record contract with Jive, we decided to do it on our own. We’re really excited.

The other thing is that we want our fans to know that this is our own label. We’re kind of empowering them to be a street team and say, ‘Hey, if you dig it – pass it along. Share how you feel about it.’ That’s the great part of social-networking. If it’s good, people will do the promotion for you through word of mouth.

Are you hoping to add any other bands to your label in your future?
I had a label a long time ago. I much prefer to be an artist than a businessman. I don’t expect that we’ll be signing bands or anything. I think it’s just a vehicle to put our own music out. I would not expect that we would go back to a major label. I don’t see the point.

Unlike previous albums, you were able to record drums for all tracks at the same location as you were recording the rest of the album, Hive Studios. Do you feel like this added a sense of cohesiveness to the album?
We’ve always done a lot at our own studio. This was a higher level, since we even did the drums at the studio. It didn’t seem like much of a big change. We’ve had our own studio since Soundsystem, so like 13 years. So we’re kind of used to getting in there and mic-ing stuff up ourselves and plugging stuff in. It’s great because I’m kind of a morning person, so I’ll just go out there at like 8:30 a.m. in the morning and start working on stuff by myself. Knowing where everything is pretty good.

Is it true that this album will only have eight tracks, making it the shortest 311 album to date?
Yeah, we just placed quality over quantity. We did like four tours last year and we’ll do three or four this year, we’re away so much. This is as many songs as we could get out and have the quality that we wanted. Otherwise, we would have had to wait and couldn’t have gotten it out in time for summer tour if we wanted to make a longer album. We figured our fans wouldn’t want to wait. The record before took us four years. So we figured it was time to get something out.

This is the first record that we could all agree that everybody wanted every song. When you have a longer album then you have, ‘I’m not sure about this song. Well, I guess we can go ahead and put it on the album.’ It’s that kind of conversation. This one was just like we are sure about these eight, so that’s all the record will be.

Did you do anything differently in terms of the writing process this time around that allowed you to all have that same feeling about these songs?
Yeah, there was more of a vibe of cooperation and co-writing going on. S.A. and I have always handled all of the lyrics, but this was the first time that P-Nut got in and wrote some lyrics to a couple of tracks. That was cool to do because me and S.A. and P-Nut and [producer] Bob [Rock] would just sit around in a room and be like, ‘Here’s a title. What do you think?’ Then we’d just kind of talk out the lyrics. That vibe of cooperation definitely helped. Some songs will be written all by one person completely. This record probably has more of a collaborative thing going on.

You’ve said that this album had a more focused approach to it, and that it also features a heavier sound with distorted guitars. Would you say that it’s heavier than Uplifter, which you’ve also mentioned is one of your heavier albums?
Man, I don’t know. It’s more fun than Uplifter, even though Uplifter was uplifting. We definitely took the energy up a notch. Heavier, I don’t know. There is one song that is about as heavy as we get, but then there are a lot of fun times on there too. It’s kind of tough to describe.

Speaking of fun times, you have a very unique album cover. Justin asks: What’s up with your album cover? It needs some explaining.
I don’t know what art needs explaining ever. I know plenty of artists do choose to do that sometimes, but I’ve read a lot of interpretations and I’ve enjoyed reading them. So I’ll leave that explaining up to people’s imaginations.

Who designed the cover?
It was an L.A. artist, named Sonny Kay. We told him the title and then he custom-made and art piece. He’s a fan of the band, so it really just came together quite nicely.

Your first single, “Sunset in July,” will hit the airwaves on June 14th. Can you tell us a little bit about the song?
“Sunset in July” might be our ultimate summer jam thus far. It’s about good times that we have out on tour and watching our fans dancing and having the time of their lives, and how we get inspiration from them. It’s a cool shuffle groove, which is kind of a throwback. We haven’t done that in awhile, maybe back in the ‘90s with the blue album [1995’s self-titled album]. There are not a lot of bands that are doing that kind of feel that we have on this song. I’m going to world premiere it shortly, I’m super excited. The feedback we’ve been getting is really strong.

You’ll be hitting the road this July through August for your annual Unity Tour. Are you planning anything in particular to make this one stand out?
Anytime we’ve got a new album, then that’s just a new injection of new music so our hardcore fans can know that they’re not just going to hear the same old thing. We just try to make a nice balance because we know there are a lot of different types of people. Some people want to hear the hits, some people want to hear really deep cuts, some people want to hear really new stuff, so we just try to make a nice blend and not everyone is completely satisfied every time, but we just do the best we can.

This past March you hosted your first Caribbean cruise with 3000 of your biggest fans. What was that experience like, and do you think you’d do it again?
It was nuts. It was awesome, and yes we are going to do it again. I guess the analogy that I have is that if a city is on an island, like New York or San Francisco, there’s just a compacted energy there. So a cruise ship is like an extreme version of that because you’re on a boat. So everywhere you look there’s people loud and high-fiving, smiling and stumbling around. Just the shows – there was so much energy that I kind of got overwhelmed as we walked out for our welcome show on the deck. So many people said that it was the most fun that they’d ever had, and we definitely feel like rock n’ roll tourism is where it’s at. It’s the future. People want to come to a show, but they also want a new experience that they haven’t gotten. That’s why we’re doing our camping event in August.

This August you’ll be hosting a three day 311 Pow Wow Festival in Live Oak, Florida. Special guests will include Sublime with Rome, The Deftones, Reel Big Fish, The Dirty Heads, Ozomatli, SOJA, and so on. Was it the good vibes you got from the cruise that inspired this festival?
Yeah. We just announced the lineup, and we’re so excited because we think they’re all bands that are going to be fun to see live and that our fans in particular are going to love. We’ve been huge fans of The Deftones for a really long time; we toured with them a long time ago. We finally reconnected with them when we saw them down in South America a couple of months ago. Now we have Ozomatli, an amazing live band, of course we got G. Love and Sublime with Rome. It’s going to be just a killer time. And when you add the outdoors with it, it just creates a lifetime memory.

Chris asks: I am in the military, so I have to ask what made you come up with “Thank Your Lucky Stars”?
I think S.A. tossed that one out. I think the attitude of gratitude is the expression that we use, and it’s been around in our lyrics. If you go back to like “Jupiter” on Transistor there are lyrics about that and focusing on what’s right in your life rather than what’s wrong. The song is about that and I can only imagine that a guy overseas in the military and being away from family it’s going to be kind of tough, so I hope that the song inspired him a little bit.

Thormejh asks: What song that you’ve made is your favorite?
It’s like picking your favorite child. You know what I mean? They’re all our children. I’m super into “Sunset in July” right now; I can’t wait for the world to hear it.

Nikk asks: What do you hope your music accomplishes?
Bringing people together.

Bobbi asks: What keeps you going after all of these years?
We get inspiration from the fans. The energy of the universe compels us. It’s hard to say. I don’t feel like we’re slowing down at all, even though some of us have families and life is very busy. We’re still just super excited to get out on the road.

Is there anything else you’d like to say to your fans?
We’re grateful for the longtime support of all of our true fans and we look forward to seeing you this summer.

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