It's hard to believe that 311 has been on the scene for two decades, but here they are, still going strong.
The Nebraska-to-California transplants will be playing Wednesday night at DTE Energy Music Theatre with Sublime and Rome in support of their tenth album, "Universal Pulse." "Pulse" will be released on July 19.
I spoke with bassist Aaron "P-Nut" Wills by phone about the newest set and what to expect at DTE tomorrow night.
You worked with producer Bob Rock again for this album. How's that been?
"It's great, and a lot easier the second time working with him. For the first album ["Uplifter"], he was really tough on me because I'm like a three-take kind of guy. If it doesn't work with me in the first three takes, then forget it. So to overanalyze the bass lines seems kind of redundant to me. But on this batch of songs, I think I made the adjustment that Bob wanted me to make and he wasn't critical on me at all about my playing.
How does it feel to be back on the road again?
"It feels really good. It's just part of the life we've built for ourselves, get ready for at least four months of touring a year. And there's nothing like it. We built it up, we own all of our successes and all of our failures."
Did you ever think you'd be here in 20 years?
"Absolutely not. Ten albums deep, seeing the world, got fans all over the planet... no, not at all. I don't think we were thinking outside of the first five years. It's like a fake it to make it situation for everybody.
When we were starting, there was so much coming out in the L.A. scene. That made it a lot easy for us in Nebraska to decide if we were going to New York or L.A. We were so excited for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Fishbone, that schizophrenic ska-punk sound, and Jane's Addiction. The wilder the band in the studio, the focus on the live shows and just the unique expression that was coming out of these three bands was all from the same city."
Describe the process of making "Universal Pulse."
"It was the first album where we threw away tracks and just obliterated the first batch. The second batch was heads and shoulders above the songs from the first batch. So it was good. We think we realized we were taking some missteps and grinding our gears and not making any headway, and we just threw them all away and started over. You could feel it in the room when these songs were coming together."
Is it harder to fit in with modern rock today?
"It feels like we're finding that groove. I don't know if we've ever followed a trend -- and this was always our aim, let's lead the trends -- and I think we've made our stamp within American music. Maybe that's up for debate, but we just do what we do. We were the No. 1 most added song on Modern Rock last week, better than Coldplay, better than Foo Fighters. That comes from how dedicated a fanbase we have. When we have a song, we get a big groundswell from our audience when a new song comes out. For me, it feels like we have more momentum than we've had in the last 10 years. I'm really looking forward to riding this thing as long as possible.
What can we expect at DTE?
"We did a Detroit show that was one of the best shows we ever played. We had just done Chicago, and they cut us off short due to the noise ordinance restriction. And we're like, you f***ing tell us that now? You should have gotten us on the stage and cut the openers short. The next night we went to Detroit, so we had all this crazy energy and proceeded to just slay the audience. This was magic."
http://www.mlive.com/music/index.ssf/2011/07/311_bassist_p-nut_talks_new_al.html
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