After a couple of album and a lot of touring, the average band would be overjoyed to hear that its latest album is beginning to catch on with radio. But singer and guitarist Nick Hexum of 311, a band founded in Omaha and now based in the Los Angeles area, says radio play is nice but not something he thinks about much.
"Videos and radio and all that, that's something that's out of our hands," he said from a tour stop in Asbury Park, N.J. "So we just focus on putting on a really good live show, because radio and video isn't where the roots of music are.
What we're doing is a continum of the most basic form of communication, going all the way back to, like, an African drum circle, where a few people banged on drums and the other people danced. That is what has been going on for thousands and thousands of years, and we're just one tiny piece of the time line."
Even so, Hexum said he has been somewhat surprised at the warm response "311" has received from radio programmers. "Alternative radio says that we're too rap or too funky, and R&B-rap radio says that we're too rock," he said. "It's like we're sitting right in between many formats. But it's more rewarding in the long run to be in the noman's-land area, because I guess we're paving our own path in some ways."
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