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Right now, three-fifths of 311 are decompressing by the pool at their home in L.A's Laurel Canyon. Singer Nick, drummer Chad Sexton, and guritarist Tim Mahoney moved into this large, airy house last year; there's still barely any furniture. A bad poster of a sailboat hangs in the studio. 311 are never home to decorate.
I intend to ask them what it's like to incite small riots, but they get me really stoned on their big leafy California weed and all I do is say "Wow" a lot. Tim does reps on the bench press while Chad goes off to try to find the rest of the band: Bassist P-Nut livess in West Hollywood, rapper/scratcher S.A. Martinez in Koreatown. Nick, meanwhile, is articulately stoned, dreaming up ways to sell more 311 CDs.
Not that he particularly needs to. In the last few months, 311 have seen "Down" become an MTV Buzz Clip and their latest album go platinum. This year they've joined both the Warped and H.O.R.D.E. tours and teamed up for shows with No Doubt, the Pharcyde, Cypress Hill, AND Kiss-a mix that's a fair reflection of 311's own sound.
And the inevitaable backlash has begun. "Now that we have a huge hit, there are people who say we suck," Nick tells me. "That doesn't happen until you're BIG, you know?" A couple of nights ago Nick was on the Web, and he dropped into a chat room where people wee discussing 311. "Someone wrote, '311 makes me cry,' and I thought it was going to be this huge emotional compliment, but instead the guy started slamming us. He said Midwestern guys shouldn't be stealing urban music."
But there isn't anything THAT unusual about five guys from Nebraska fusing dancehall reggae, hip-hop, and crunch-guitar rock. not in 1996 there isn't. What's unusual is that today they can succeed without much more of an angle. Bule-oeyed hip-hop has become so familiar that the band's self-described "Omaha stylee" now sounds perfectly natural. And 311 are as natural as it gets-this is a groupo notable for what they DON'T do. They don't dress up as lightbulbs or 70's cop-show characters or hang tube socks on their phalluses. They don't put forth an aggressive political vibe-311's antigun, anitjuck, pro-pot message is as uncontroversial as Amnesty International. And unlike most Buzz Clip bands, they don't want anything to do with, you know, WHINING. As one line goes, "All the angst shit is just cheesy!"
No glam, no angst, no tongues in cheek: What IS 311's hook, anyway? in Nick's view, they don't need one. "It's just about songs, about playing. We try to be almost faceless."
Adam, the band's anxious manager, has cooked us a healthy dinner covering all the four food groups. He calls us in from the pool like the perfect mom, and the guys report with flip-flops and bare chests to stuff their faces. P-Nut and S.A. have finally straggled in. The others call S.A. Grandpa because he sleeps a lot. "Southsider," CHad explains. Like every town, Omaha has its neighborhood stereotype(s?). Nick, Chad, and Time went to high school together on the west side-"the REGULAR part of town," as Nick puts it. P-Nut and S.A. grew up in working-class South Omaha. S.A. met Chad in 1988 when they were freshmen at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, and remembers being impressed by his drumming. 'Chad would be playing Prince when everyone else was drumming to the Cure," says P-Nut. The following year, Chad dropped out and joinged Nick in L.A.-their first band, Unity, played more-straightforward rock, and didn't take off. But they played the role to the hilt. "We hung out with waiters and paryters, doing a lot of hard drugs, getting really messed up," Nick remembers. Exhausted by the scene, he and Chad soon retreated back to Omaha; Tim and the Southsiders joinged the band, and they took the name 311.
After a breakthrough hometown gig opening for Fugazi, they took another shot and moved back to L.A. in 1992, befriending groups like No Doubt and Korn, and buckling down to work. "I got very toug," Nick says. The band rarely went out, never lost control, never tripped; at home they still don't drink much more than ginger beer or fruit juice. "In 1989 I was cocaine and Jim Beam," Nick raps on the new album. "But now it's '95 and I'm ginseng." Indulgence after rehearsal usually meant a fewe joints and a game of basketball in the driveway.
Focused or not, the band hasn't had the easiest of rides since scoring a contract four years ago. In 1993, they went on the road in Chad's father's ancient Winnebago. One hot day in Missouri, the RV burst into flames. The band dove out to safety and watched all their equipment burn. "All we had on were our shoes, shorts, and wallets," Chad recalls. They somehow made it to the next night's show with borrowed gear; Nick finished the tour with crispy hair and singed eyebrows.
Meanwhile, a friend who was taking care of their house in L.A. started indulging his phone habit at the band's expense. (They slam him in the song "Silver" on their second album, GRASSROOTS: "You left a big surprise from Pacific Bell/Called all your relatives and your friends in hell.") After GRASSROOTS, relations grew ugly and heated with their then-producer; the band teamed with RonSaint Germain, producer of Bad Brains, for the latest album. Then came last year's rumor that the band's name stood for Ku Klux Klan (K being the eleventh letter of the alphabet), whick caused Omaha's Westside High School to ban 311 T-shirts. Naturally, MTV and USA TODAY picked up the story. "Our first major publicity and it's about THAT," Nick sighs. "We got the name from a friend who was arrested for skinny-dipping-311 is the police code for indecent exposure."
S.A. tells us he was at the record store and saw all three 311 CDs. Nick sits up. "You didn't try to sell them?" he says. "You should have been like, 'Ladies and Gentlemen, HERE'S a good value for your money.'" Nick may be the Future Business Leader of the band, but he's equally concerned about holding onto 311's core fans, keeping the control of the band's success. "We don't want to be seen as a mainstream band. That way we cann keep making unusual music."
Then again, Nick has a different idea of what constitutes the fringe: "Kiss is kind of a role model. I mean, Kiss became huge and only had one big hit-that really bad song, 'Beth.' But besides that, they were a tour band that came from the underground."
Somehow Kiss isn't the first thing that comes to mind as we pass ginger beer around the dinner spread of grilled salmon and oil-free salad. Apart from the sinsemilla, the strongest thing in the house is a bottle of echinacea. But it turns out that even clean living has its excesses. "Oh, man," Nick says, "I PUKED on ginseng once."