Busy summer, huh? Take a gander at your city’s summer guide – that is, if you live in a place that’s even slightly considered a metropolis. What are you looking for? Talent. They’re all there. Everyone. This summer, all bets are off and everyone’s on the road or doing something. Why? Perhaps they want to take advantage of the blistering sun. Or, maybe they just want to party. For 311, it’s a little bit of both.
These Omaha rockers aren’t just soaking up the sun and what have you, they’re throwing an endless soiree for their devoted fanbase. Today, they released their 10th studio album, Universal Pulse, and currently they’re on a headlining tour with Sublime with Rome. But that’s not all. In August, 311 will launch Pow Wow Festival, their very own three-day fiesta in Live Oak, FL, featuring fellow acts like Deftones, Murs, Reel Big Fish, and more.
But, why now? In recent interviews, the band has discussed that they’ve been working with a different swagger and momentum these days, one that they haven’t felt in a while. Luckily, we were able to chat with bassist Aaron “P-Nut” Wills to hear all about it.
I can’t lie, man. I’m a big fan. I’ve been following you guys since 1995′s 311 and have never looked back…
I love how people think that’s our first album, since it was self-titled and the first one everyone heard.
Yeah, that’s definitely the first one I heard, and then I backtracked. You guys have been together for nearly 21 years. How do you manage to keep it fresh?
I mean, that’s probably up to debate. [laughs] Probably, with other writers at your website, too, the most recent “Sunset in July” comment is “Hey, it’s the new 311 single, and it sounds just like the other 311 singles.” [laughs] So, I don’t know. I think our nuances are missed by many, many people. But they are caught by certainly enough people for us to sustain a 21-year career. We’ve been playing amphitheaters every summer since ’97, only taking the summer of ’99 off. For any band to be able to do that, we must be doing something right. For me, it feels really fresh, even after 21 years, probably mostly because of being a father now.
I’m nine months into my most important job, and that’s changed my perspective a good bit. It’s made every little thing really important. Like, as soon as my son, Falken, was born on September 3rd last year, about two weeks later we were in the studio rehearsing new tracks and doing pre-production. It was so profound. I felt like my whole life was changing and is changing. All of our lives are, but when you go through something like that, the huge rite of passage, the responsibility level goes infinitely more intense. There I am, in the studio, playing with my best friends, and we’re playing only new songs, not playing old stuff. It was great. I think it has a lot to do with how excited I am about this new batch of songs and going out on the road and doing our Pow Wow Festival and maybe another cruise in the future. Just how lucky I am, and how hard work does pay off and all these things. Being a father makes being a musician really, really fun.
You talked about change. I read in an interview with Nick Hexum that you were going to be part of the lyric writing process on this album. What was that like?
It was great. It was my favorite kind of creativity. [It's] the same reason why I still love playing shows. Every night, it’s a little bit different. I really like making eye contact with people in the audience, and I feed off of that kind of immediate one-to-one interaction. So, I’m leaving the studio to go home one day, and Bob [producer Bob Rock] is still hanging out in pre-production time, and he’s like, “You’re gonna write some lyrics today.” I’m like, “Oh, sweet. Call my wife. Tell her I’m gonna be a little late.”
Sat down, Nick is like, “What do you wanna talk about?” He points right to me, and SA [DJ SA Martinez] is there, and Bob Rock, and we’re just in this room, and we’re gonna write lyrics. [laughs] It was great. So, I was like, “Let me introduce you to the excitable crew.” I wanna talk about the fans. I wanna recognize them as being just as important as the band, as far as keeping us around. We just built the song, maybe about two and a half hours after that first line got spit up. There have been a couple of different versions, but most of it we wrote right there, sitting down with Bob Rock in attendance, and he helped, too. He helped bridge some of the ideas. It’s just so much fun. With those two hours we had what I think is a great road song and one of the best songs off of Universal Pulse, “Time Bomb”.
The album itself is only 8 songs…
Yes, sir.
Was this a quality over quantity decision, or was there more that just didn’t make the album?
That was what was really interesting. The more interviews I do, the more I get to reflect on the process, and I’m realizing that sometimes you have to do that, I guess. [laughs] I’m realizing that we had a batch of songs before this batch of songs, and we pretty much scrapped all of them. You hear record labels telling bands to do that, or they used to when record labels had power. You know, I always thought that was such a, like, “Wow, you’ve got a lot of balls to tell the artist what to do.” You know, a bunch of number crunchers and stuff. But, a lot of times, the albums you would hear by the bands doing that would be great. We kind of did that on our own, and the quality is amazing. It would have been tough to release some of the songs. It would have been a real uphill struggle. We agreed that all of these songs should be on the album, and the fact that there’s only eight and it’s a click under 30 minutes? It’s going to be tough for some people to swallow, because they want so much new stuff. But, you know, it’s going to make it so playable. You’re going to play it on repeat. You’re going to want to start it over again. It won’t be long enough that it will ever be a drag. This is our point of making a short album that’s all stuff that we really believe in. We will hopefully do the same thing every 14-15 months, like every year and a half or so. Get out and make another 30 minutes worth of music.
That’s going to make a lot of people very happy.
Yeah. Hopefully, we’re going to be able to do it. That’s our goal for ourselves, and I know there’s an audience out there that wants to hear new stuff. I think the longer we stay in writing mode, even while we’re touring, really helps keep up the creativity. Nick’s really good about it. But, I think the rest of us kind of go into tour mode. And when it comes to writing again, you have to start that, and if we kind of stay in that mode, I think we’ll have better songs faster, and we’ll get deeper. This is what Nick does all the time. That’s why he’s our primary writer, and he’s so dogged about keeping at it. I’m probably on the opposite side of that. I really need to be inspired to write. But, if I am, I can spit out some good things. I just like it like that. I like that we’re creative in different ways.
What kind of new music are you listening to now? I know you’re a big Arctic Monkeys fan.
I am. I am. I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of the new stuff. Just loving Band of Horses and Great Lake Swimmers, Bon Iver. There’s some great, new, young kind of folk, kind of rock thing that is just perfect for a youngster in the house, a musician in the house, and my wife is a yoga teacher, so somewhere in that trinity of professions. Quiet, soulful, three-to-four-chord songs have been the soundtrack for the past couple of years. When I’m at home, it’s vacation, so it’s not like I’m trying to work out some demons, because that’s what I do out on the road.
You’ve recently founded 311 Records, as partnered with ATO Records. With over eight million records sold, you are all obviously established and can afford the luxury of being on your own. For up-and-coming bands, would you recommend this same route, or is a major label beneficial when just starting out?
Oh, you don’t need anything except good songs and maybe a stylist, nowadays. [laughs] Some joking aside, it’s really all about the songs. If you have a great song, you’ll have a career. If you write a career’s worth of good songs, you’ll have a career. Maybe that’s better. It’s easier to get heard and also harder to get noticed. There is some use for a record label, but it’s getting less and less. We have come up with almost all of the good ideas that have kept us afloat, and the dedication of our fans to the music and the energy we like to push out while we’re on stage, that’s what it’s all about. If you have songs that you can be honest about, that’s you making that music and not making music for someone else. Then you have a great live show, and that’s the 311 model. We’ve helped a lot of bands by showing them that this is one way to do it; it’s certainly not the only way, but anyone who says there is only way to do it is lying to you.
So, basically, if you have a good product, ”if you build it, they will come,” right?
Yeah, totally. If that’s you, and you’re being honest, then it almost doesn’t matter. If writing music and being honest is what you do for fun, then you don’t need anybody. You don’t need a record label, you don’t need a band, you don’t need an audience. There is something so therapeutic about being a musician: being able to make something out of nothing or to play along to your favorite Pixies album or learn a Rancid bass line. There’s an infinite amount of wealth in becoming a musician and being able to play the songs that you love and/or write the songs that express yourself. I’ve been donating my time here and there to kind of influencing high school kids to pick up an instrument and to fall in love with something creative, even if it’s not music. You see kids thinking high school is their whole world and thinking that it doesn’t get better. I love the whole “It Gets Better” campaign. Something to fall passionately in love with makes you unique or helps you see how unique you are, because we all are. It’s really the only way to go in life. It will make your life so rich.
You do a great job of mixing up the hits and deep cuts on your setlists. When you release a new album, is it hard to cater to everyone, because you want to be able to give the new songs their time to shine?
With eight, it will be that much easier. I wanna play all these songs this summer and get them in a continuing rotation. It seems, the last three albums, we’ve attached ourselves to maybe three songs, if that. Don’t Tread on Me is even worse. “Don’t Tread on Me” is the only song we play from Don’t Tread on Me, and we don’t play that very often. It’s weird. As much as I don’t listen to U2 at home, I appreciate when they have a new album. They are like, “This is the new shit, and we are going to play it.” I respect that “best foot forward” or “new foot forward” mentality. I think we can embrace that as well and be better for it.
Are you surprised at how receptive and rabid fans are to the deep cuts like “Jupiter” or “Mindspin”?
That’s me. I’m that fan, too, even though I play bass. When we are making setlists, I’m that guy in the band. Not that the other guys aren’t, but I’m consistently that guy. We need to be playing the songs that we took the time to put on the album, that the fans love. We can teach the casual 311 fans that maybe only show up in the summer or never traveled to go see us or are just going because their friend really loves us. I think if we play outside of those singles and play those deep cuts and teach this casual audience, just like we taught the casual audience that was just learning about us back in the day, 15-20 years ago… We only had 15 songs at a certain point, and we were playing all of them, and some of them were really, really weird. There’s something great about that. If we are going to lose an audience member because we played “Jupiter”, then fuck ‘em. It’s better than playing the Greatest Hits album. What are you gonna learn from that? We’d be playing state fairs if we did that, and I am never going to let that fucking happen.
Are there any songs in particular that you’ve wanted to dust off but haven’t? You have some songs and B-sides that you guys have never played before, maybe like “Firewater”?
Yeah, never played “Firewater”, I don’t think. We’ve played “Juan Bond” a few times, and that’s a kick in the pants. That’s Chad Sexton at his finest writing. We’re going to be playing Transistor in its entirety at the Pow Wow, so we are going to be playing “Tune In” for the first time. That’ll be really funny, because we’ve never played it. We will probably save it for that show, of course, to make it a little baby world premiere for that audience that will be camping with us. I love that shit. We’ve got 220-something songs. Let’s play them. It’s so exciting to play something we don’t play as much. We put all that love into writing it and recording it; we can’t let these little ideas and dreams die. Let’s keep putting new life into them. The songs get better the more we play them, especially the ones we don’t play as much. It’s smart to be aware of our whole catalog of music.
Listen: “Firewater”
Was it your idea to play Transistor at the Pow Wow in its entirety?
It got brought up by one of us, and I was like, “We have to do that. That’d be the coolest thing we can do, I think.” And that’s what my brand of die-hard 311 fans wanna hear. We aren’t making it very easy for them, because it’s a three-day festival in the middle of August, in Florida, 100 miles from anything. It’s going to be intense. It’s going to be something the people in attendance will never forget.
Is that something the band might look into more, playing full albums as sets? I was at the 10th anniversary show here in D.C. about 11 years ago when you played Music all the way through. Is that something you will explore?
Yeah, we did the same thing on Halloween in Atlanta last year, playing Music. It’s just fun to do, especially with the older albums. Those were the only songs we had, so we had to play the whole album. That’s easy to do. Transistor is going to really be difficult, and that’s the way fans most of the time listen to the songs, in the album form. There’s something cool about playing the songs in order, though. It’s fun for the band, and it’s certainly fun for me.
Speaking of festivals, what was it like playing the Chile Lollapalooza?
It was unbelievable. It was so sick. Those fans are nuts. If you’re an American band with any kind of heat or little legend, go to South America and feel it out. Just the excitement that’s there for rock, reggae, and punk is perfect. South America is ready to eat it in large doses. Seeing Flaming Lips and Jane’s Addiction from the side of the stage, that was the best. That was worth the plane flight alone.
When you guys have gone out on tour, you’ve taken a wide variety of bands with you: Snoop Dogg, The Offspring, The Wailers. This year you’ll bring Sublime with Rome with you. What do you guys look for when selecting an opening band?
Usually, we look for contrast. Not this year, so much, because we are kind of relative to Sublime with Rome. We came up at the same time, and if you’re a fan of one, you’re probably a fan of both. You can’t go to a 311 show without seeing a Sublime shirt, and you can’t go to a Sublime show without seeing a 311 shirt. So, it’s perfect. It’s a concert that was sort of made to happen. I know the fans want to hear the songs that Bradley [Nowell] wrote. It’s going to be fun, and it’s kind of “set ‘em up and knock ‘em down” this summer. Instead of a Snoop Dogg kind of thing, like “Wow, what’s that going to be like? How are we going to play after him.” [laughs] If Snoop’s not doing one of his own huge, fucking iconic songs that everyone knows, then he’s doing someone else’s. He’ll do a cover of, like, House of Pain, and tell everyone to jump. I don’t want to ever follow anyone that famous ever again.
Nick Hexum described the initial idea of Universal Pulse as a concept album about space travel. Did that idea remain throughout the album, or did it change?
I think we were always interested in that. To get off the subject of romantic love and to talk about the planets and the stars and how we are hopelessly connected to that… That is so much more interesting than “I saw this really hot chick, and I want to be her friend.” There are science fiction themes, but it’s so broad, you can put your own interpretation to it. It’s not that “I’m attracted to this person, and I pursued that action.” It’s like, “We are lucky to be alive, tiny and meaningless. Let’s have a really good time. Let’s make this a better existence than how we came in.” Much bigger picture type things. It’s good to step outside normal subjects and have that freedom of thought.
Is that why there are no real ballads on this album?
I don’t know. I don’t think we really wrote a good ballad. We could have put something on there that probably wouldn’t get played onstage that we weren’t really proud of. We are 10 albums deep. It’s really time for us to be all killer, no filler. I really think that’s the point. I’m the guy in the band that’s always saying we should put more songs on there. Our B-sides off Uplifter were some of the fans’ favorite songs, with “Sun Come Through” and “Get Down”. “Sun Come Through” is a Chad Sexton masterpiece. We used that kind of energy and motivation to push us in the direction that Universal Pulse is in. We mean business, and we were taking a step back and writing for ourselves instead of writing it for our audience. People can talk shit all they want, but this is the album that we wanted to make, and we are really into playing the songs live.
Many of the casual 311 fans reference “Amber” or “Love Song” as the songs they know of yours. “Amber” was very different from what you had done in the past and sort of opened up your ballad writing. “Love Song” just completely blew up. Did you have any idea these two songs would grow into what they became?
We would hear from bands opening up for us back in the day, and they would be like, “When we tour with you guys, girls at the show…” We were like, “Fuck yeah, there are girls at our shows!” We just always had the freedom within ourselves to do songs that women will appreciate, not necessarily more than men, but in a way that men and women are totally different. There are going to be songs that connect because of lack of aggressiveness, and they are easier on the ears. That’s something we have always been proud of and something that comes natural. Every once in a while, we are going to write a song that women can really get into, and they are going to annoy their boyfriends. We are always trying to keep expanding, and those were great songs to put out there.
You mentioned that you guys really only play the title track off of Don’t Tread On Me in concert. What is the band’s overall perception of this record?
I think it was something that was a big transition period for us. Kind of like a sink or swim kind of time. It’s better than we perceive it within the band, and it’s better than the fans think it is. It’s something that never really caught on for us or our audience. And that’s unfortunate, because there really is some good music on there. We were kind of in a weird place. It was the last album we did with Ron Saint Germaine, and maybe we needed to take a break. Although, I’d love to work with him again. He’s fun to be around, and he’s helped us make some of our best music.
Speaking of being in weird places, you mentioned previously you will play your Transistor album in full at your inaugural Pow Wow Festival. Where did the motivation for this album come from? I’ve always considered it 311’s Sgt. Pepper’s.
You would get a different answer from probably everyone in the band, but Transistor to me was a huge 50-foot-high middle finger of fire to the people who thought we would make the Blue Album Number 2. There are lots of bands that took success and did really good with it by keeping the same formula together. We were out to last longer than that. If we had just done a remake or watered-down version of the self-titled album as Transistor, instead of stepping out and doing a dub/metal, really out there, kind of philosophical album… We had to do that for the betterment and longevity of our career. It’s us being as creative as possible in light of [the fact] that we knew we had a million people listening to us at that time. We knew we didn’t want to do the same thing twice. Nick says it in “Jupiter”: “One thing I have to say before sales dive/stay positive and love your life.” That’s the shit. We saw it coming. We knew we weren’t going to be a triple-platinum band for every album. When you get into the thick of Transistor, it’s not an easy piece of art to take down; there are so many ideas and moods and sounds. It’s made for the 311 connoisseur.
You can really hear something new every time you listen to that album.
That is the mark of damn good art. I will take that as a huge compliment.
Fans are dying for a new DVD or live album. You’ve also said before that the band has recorded audio of every show since 1999. Will these ever be made available?
Now that we are on 311 Records through ATO, we are in a really good place as far as being able to take these ideas that some bands aren’t able to do and implement them. 311 Day 2010 should be out already on DVD. We’ve got the audio and video. It’s already cut. I don’t know what’s left to do. I’m always pushing for it. It’s been since ’99 when our last live album was out. It’s time for all of that.
What would P-Nut of the Universal Pulse-era tell P-Nut of the Music-era about life in the music business?
I’ve always been more emotional and instinctual. This band feels right. It’s always felt right. The message that we put out there and the energy that we create when we are together is perfect for who I am and our audience. [I would say] just keep making music and listening to your heart, and watch out for those consequences of sound.
http://www.consequenceofsound.net/2011/inteview-pnut-of-311
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