Nick Hexum of 311 on Blowing Up in the 1990s, Touring with Jay Z, Debunking KKK Rumors & More

0:00No Jumper, coolest podcast in the world, and I am very, very excited to present you guys with an interview with Nick of 311. How are you doing? How's it going, man? Real good. Yeah, I'm excited to have you on. Yeah. This is huge for me. Is it really? Well, you guys are rocking. It's a different audience for sure. It is a bit different. I was checking you guys out, and I was like, they want me on there? Okay, let's do it. Well, on my end, I got an email from a publicist and I was like, 311 is down to do an interview. That's insane. Let's do it. Yeah. Awesome. You ready for an intense core memory of mine?

0:39Absolutely. I was 13 and I was at a birthday party for a girl I went to junior high with and we were playing rock, paper, scissors. I had never kissed a girl before. my first kiss was with a fellow 13 year old puerto rican girl by the name of isabelle who was wearing an oversized dark blue 311 long sleeve that she almost certainly purchased from hot topic at the fessing lane mall in nashua new hampshire so you're from now new hampshire yeah so that was you know was it a good kiss it was probably like a type thing you know probably wasn't much to it but you were like on cloud nine for a day probably just because yeah it's the first one definitely yeah and it really stood out too because at that time she had glasses she's kind of dumpy looking it's like nothing to write home about and then you fast forward all of a sudden a couple years later we're growing up we're in high school and she's like a bad puerto rican chick with like the tommy hilfiger windbreaker and the the i don't know what women do to beautify themselves but you know she's a couple years later i really kind of wished that i had hung in there did she have timberlands on you think that's a good question i'm picturing like some little jordans or something but i don't know exactly but you know she looked a lot better a couple years later and i remember thinking like that's kind of crazy that was my first smooch right there yeah so glad we were part of it yeah i know it's crazy small way because in my mind 1997 is like the year that 311 became huge but as i'm watching the documentaries online and everything i'm realizing you guys your career goes back way further than that but i don't know was that a moment like that late 90s period yeah well 96 was the year that everything kind of changed before that had just been like slow we call it grassroots where you know going viral back then was just literally one person telling another person you'd go to a little town play a bar and then you come back the next time and it would be packed yeah you go you know so it was it was incremental until the mtv buzz clip for the song down that like yeah down which just seared into my memory like as i'm watching stuff and that was the song that i heard and i'm like oh my god i heard this song 5 000 times on waaf local radio uh back in the day that that was the one that kind of changed everything yeah it it was it was actually the third single we're pretty bad at picking singles like first we came out with don't stay home and then all mixed up and then down blew up and then we went back to all mixed up after that right because that was a huge one too right yeah no it's crazy so talking about the early days in uh nebraska like where were you at when you started the band had you been in other bands before that like what led up to the creation of the band yeah so i picked up piano at age five and took lessons but it wasn't until i got a guitar at age 12 that i really like played until i couldn't play anymore and got into talent shows and battle of the bands and had like so many different lineups with just like various random kids i'd be like you could play bass couldn't you um and then um you know then i met the guys two of my bandmates now chad and tim we went to high school together and me and tim had like a cover band we were doing like the alternative of the time which was like a lot of ska and like you know sort of british music and stuff and who were your biggest influences at that time because this is very much during the sort of ska explosion of the late 90s yeah yeah but the clash was the band that just love the clash oh my god there i was like just totally blew my mind like the perfect band i remember like first time hearing them back in the day and just being like this is it this is so unbelievably amazing yeah the the creativity and the energy and the rebellion it just really really spoke to me and and the the journey that they had from album to album and exploration you know I really took that in I was like I want to do that but then when I met Chad our drummer in the school jazz band and we would do like some funk and stuff and and then the three of us came together and had a band called unity and that's where I think the 311 sound was born in 1988 with like the funk and the reggae and the really high energy stuff and then in 1990 the lineup changed a little bit and that's when we hooked up with peanut our bass player and that 311 was born on June 10th 1990 so we're coming up on 36 years 36 is insane congratulations thank you yeah man that's that's crazy so but then okay what year did you guys sign that would be 92 okay and was it i mean it's hard for probably a lot of people to understand the extent to which that mattered at that time like did everything change at that moment because now you can be a pretty successful independent band but at that time it was just yeah you had to do that to make it anywhere right yeah i mean the barrier to entry with having to get a studio and a producer and then print tapes and cds it was very difficult to just do it all on your own at that time and And then, of course, radio and magazines, you know, the labels had a stranglehold on that.

6:19So you kind of had to play the game. Right. And so we signed to a label called Capricorn, which was part of Warner Brothers and then put out the first record in 93. Right. Called Music. Definitely. How far would you say that you guys got before you signed? Like how much buzz was there around you? because it's when you go back in time it's like this whole story of all the labels kind of going to all the different cities around america as they realize that like oh rock music is really picking up there's different scenes all over the country and we need to just sort of really get in there um did you feel like you were part of like a signing frenzy of a certain sort uh well first and only band for a while signed out of nebraska but yeah you did see little pockets springing up Seattle.

7:08Yeah. There's a lot of cool alternative coming out of like Minneapolis, Chicago, Smashing Pumpkins. So yeah, it was broadening out a lot. But we moved to LA together in 92 just so we could really be immersed in the music. And that's when like Cypress Hill was, you know, the hip hop and House of Pain and stuff like that. And of course, the more true alternative, like Jane's Addiction and Chili Peppers and Fishbone. We wanted to be part of that scene. So though we're Nebraska to the core, we've been out here since 34 years. Yeah, how overwhelming was L.A. at that time? It was, you know, you got lost a lot.

7:59You had to use a Thomas Guide to find anywhere you wanted to go. So, but when I first moved out here by myself a couple years before that, and I was like, I guess I should move downtown. That's got to be where all the action is, right? It isn't usually down. So, but it was like Crackton, like there was nothing happening there. So after a little bit, I moved to Hollywood and worked at the Guitar Center and I met a lot of my heroes there working at the guitar store. so it was overwhelming but I would go out to clubs every single night just to take in the local music they had all these kind of small they still have like the Roxy and the whiskey but there was also like the coconut teaser and club lingerie and all these were just cool music every single night and you'd see like Tom Morello's early band called Lock Up and so it was I was a kid in a candy store and just like five dollars at the door probably right like just five bucks and two drink minimum right which is fine with me the most raw scene that quick in comparison to now we're like going to a show for a lot of people it's like might cost you a couple hundred bucks by the time you buy a hoodie and get a couple drinks and buy the ticket and pay for parking and it's just like when i when i think about that era it was like everything was so easy in a lot of ways like a lot of those people who are going to those shows every night would just not be able to ever be the kind of people who could afford to live in LA now and be able to like go see live music every night like it was a completely different world it was it was very different security was much more lax and you could like get on stage with the band and stage dive and it was it was a pretty wild time definitely was it weird for you guys being such an eclectic band because I know it was it ended up being an asset they were able to fit in with so many different scenes as far as rock and reggae funk hip-hop etc but you know my memories of like being 13 uh in 1997 was that like the fact that i was into rock music and rap was something that i definitely got harassed about in school like that was just very uncommon at the time i feel like yeah it was i think the hybrid music thing that that we embraced that there was a lot more genre delineation before that you didn't have bands that were mixing it all together um and so that's why radio didn't touch us for the first couple albums we were just like we're gonna stick to what we do we love rock and reggae and hip-hop and funk and latin and jazz and but we're just gonna put it all in until people get into it you know what I mean, just stick to what we do.

10:44That's what a lot of great alternative bands like U2 or something, they just kept doing their thing and wait for the culture to come around to them. Yeah, and now it's like a rapper who segues into different genres is almost always going to be something that they get praised for. Now this is just something that, if anything, is aspirational. And even people like just the fact that you'll see a kid at a hip-hop show and he's wearing a Nirvana shirt and you don't even have to ask but you know that they probably have never listened to Nirvana. But I think they should. That's like the kind of upsetting part about it to me is like, you know, spend an hour on Spotify if you're going to wear that shirt.

11:23Yeah, but then you hear younger artists that are combining Nirvana with hip-hop. Definitely, yeah. And like, wow, unexpected. That's cool. I believe in no rules. I believe an artist needs to follow their curiosity wherever it leads. So that's like I'm still all about just like wherever I'm curious, that's where I'll go. Definitely. So you guys start to really blow up around like 96, 97. How does life change? Is it just now we're on the road almost all the time? Yeah. Well, it was on our second album, Grassroots, that we could actually afford to have a bus. And so they were like, we made it. We're not in the van.

12:04We're in an actual bus with bunks. um and then but we realized like we're just going to go live on the road so we we got rid of our shared little house that we had in vanuys california and we we didn't have any home we lived on the road and put our little meager possessions in a storage unit and just lived on the road sometimes we do like 20 shows in a row without a day off so we were just like road warriors and partying our asses off all the way too but like what you asked about 96 when things changed God the show's just got so much bigger and a lot of people that had been with us for the first couple years complained like now there's all these kids at your show and I was like good you know what I mean like we there's something about the brains like plasticity the music that you get into in high school and junior high will stay with you forever so the fact that you have this core memory of when you were 13 like we we love that so we never wanted to be like elitist and only want 21 and over anything like that but because of mtv the the age the demographic kind of changed a lot and but the shows were just super wild and then we toured non-stop made the follow-up album transistor which was like going off in way even more directions than the blue album which was our breakthrough um and then we were like burn out like okay we gotta like actually get homes and stuff like i just need to like be home and get a dog and like just yeah i was thinking it sounds pretty taxing not having anywhere that you could really uh go back to i mean like a hobo like yeah like you got you know you guys get a hotel or stay at your friend's house or everybody's always seeing a girl you could stay with her but not having that like rock as your foundation it's got to be tough yeah so then we all we all actually lived within a mile of each other in laurel canyon oh really which was nice and then we we got a studio out in north hollywood and just kind of just kept it going when now like i said 36 year anniversary crazy you know when i first saw you guys perform sprite liquid mix tour love that they had those kind of tours back so sick where would go from, you know, rock bands.

14:25And then we would play right before Jay-Z. Exactly. Jay-Z came up and was like, man, you guys got more people than us at this past few shows. And he comes out and he's got the cars coming out, the fancy ass cars coming on stage. He's got the whole Rockefeller with him. It was insane. Yeah. Yeah. And I remember the Chicago show that they had in the Kanye documentary where they were like, we just want to announce the newest member of the Rockefeller family and added kind of brought him in. on that tour that's insane yeah because i remember i was uh you know it was 2002 i was 18 i guess and i was a huge jay-z fan and also talib kwali was on the bill and being a young guy like that was just so much value to be extracted from this the fact that i got to see two of my favorite rappers plus 311 was pretty sick and uh just looking back on it it's like holy like that was just such a big experience for me because i had never seen a rapper live like i went to a lot of local punk and ska shows would go to boston to see like hardcore bands and stuff like that some metal bands but definitely like you know for my first rap show to be like talib kwali then 311 then jay-z in that order was just astonishing to me yeah and uh pharrell with n-e-r-d was on the bill was huh i might not have known what nrd anyrd was at that time yeah yeah and then uh when we played the la stop jay-z had justin timberlake out and they booed him i felt so bad for him he's like really nice guy and like they booed him because it was still coming right off of instinct yeah he didn't have the the cred that he got later and the cultural elitism was big at that time you know Yeah.

16:09Everybody had a lot of pop music. Yeah, exactly. Definitely. So you said that you guys were partying a lot and that, that was kind of the X factor that I saw in comparison between, uh, the documentary that you guys have on YouTube from, I think like four years ago or something like that. And then the chili peppers documentary that I watched a little while back was as I'm watching your documentary, I'm like, okay, there's not going to be a part of this where somebody gets hooked on heroin so that makes this whole thing feel like a lot more of a jolly uh experience in comparison but how hard were you guys uh going with the party uh i was probably the leader of the party you know what i mean so i i realized that i needed to clean up my act and get sober and now i'm happiest just being sober with nothing stronger than a red bull but but you got sober what year uh oh six okay and then i i went back to weed for a little bit and that didn't pan out so now i'm back to like complete that's what works for me oh yeah but was that ever um like a real stress factor on the band just the the party and lifestyle i yeah it probably i wouldn't say for everybody right but when i was kind of out of my mind yeah and i think it was probably had people pretty worried and stuff like that so um but yeah it's after watching a show like what you mentioned my brother Hillel about the chili peppers yeah a lot a lot of people don't live through that shit yeah so you know knock on wood that that documentary struck me as uh kind of similar to yours in a lot of ways like you guys really were just sort of working with a lot of the same impulses like hey why can't we combine the sort of lyrical elements of hip-hop the elements of funk that we appreciate etc was that were they always like pretty much you guys as peers you ever tour with them and stuff yeah what was really cool is um the big you know turn of the millennium of uh 99 going in 1999 going into 2000 chili peppers did five shows culminating in like their Mecca which is the forum because they're a huge Lakers fan and they had us on that tour so that's how I spent ringing in the new millennium was opening for the Chili Peppers so for me yeah they're a massive influence huge respect you know fleas bass playing it's just you know so looked up to them a lot they're up there in the top five as influences so but yeah they had that attitude of just anything we like we're gonna do it you know what i mean so definitely so as you guys kind of become huge on a mainstream level there are a lot of like choices that you have to make in terms of the the direction of the band in terms of like do we want to take this in a more commercial direction did you have the label sort of pulling you in the direction of like hey let's get you with some songwriters let's make some big ass hits or was where you kind of left your own devices yeah we had a fair amount of the label wanting to push us towards lighter stuff and you know uh or more commercial but um that was you know we kind of we held our ground you know and we're like we're just gonna stick to to what we do and and keep it lean so we can we can be fine even if it's not some like massive hit like a slow growth is what we were about and um but now you know things have changed so much that we can be our own label so nobody's nobody to fight with nobody also nobody to blame it on when things don't go well but you guys are independent now at this point yeah and is that like an easy decision or is it something where you feel like there is a lot of value to be gained from being with a major at this point in your career i would say not at this point because it really just comes down to having a direct relationship with the fans through social media and putting on great shows and having a content guy out there with us that's kind of replaced you know what i mean like you had chance the rapper that like changed everything by like by just being independent and just bringing a content man out with him so that that's that's adapting but to in the 90s yeah the the fact that our label also had all these huge bands and like got us opening for kiss at madison square garden and these different that they you know they pulled their weight and had it at a certain point and sometimes they we wouldn't be much of a priority to them but that's why it's nice that like there's no middleman anymore.

20:57We just take it straight to the fans. Looking back on it, were you guys in a f***ed up deal? Or a regular old deal? All deals were f***ed up. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, where they would keep 80-some percent of the money. And then, not only that, they would also charge back all the recording costs, and the startup would come out of your 15 % or whatever. So it was just a screw. But we constantly kept fighting to renegotiate that. And also we focused more on touring because that's something that we can control. We looked up to bands like the Grateful Dead and people that just focused on touring. Definitely.

21:43And so was that lifestyle of just constantly being on tour, I mean, I feel like it drives a lot of people crazy. Were you guys always on the same page on that? like let's just stay on the road as much as possible like was that something that it was easy to just agree on as far as the band yeah i think i think we all love it and you know we we just make sure now we get enough home time like everybody's married four of the five of us have multiple kids so you know we make sure we we get a lot of home time and stay rooted and you know don't run ourselves too ragged. How long will you go on tour out of time now?

22:24I mean I think I did the math once and maybe gone about a quarter of the year when you add it up but it's mainly like the summertime July August 20 good's good? Yeah we're really good now. And then we do our spring we rotate between one year we do 311 day which is our big kind of convention almost in Vegas where people come all over the world world we did that earlier this year right and then the following year would do a cruise yeah caribbean so we rotate between those like spring events definitely yeah i've seen a lot of people talking about the cruise that's pretty dope it's it's a lot of fun we're going to jamaica oh wow we went to jamaica once before but we keep rotating changing the the destinations up hell yeah what uh when it comes to going or how old are your kids at this point 16 15 11 okay so not as difficult to take off for a week or two or a month at a time yeah i mean it was harder when they were little because it would change so much you know what i mean so we want to have them visit more often and stuff like that but like now my my oldest she's just off with her friends and like she's practically has like this college kid yeah that's why everybody keeps trying to prepare me for because my kid's five and everybody's just telling me like yeah like by the time they're like 10 they want a lot less to do with you and you really got to get used to the fact that they care about their friends so much more than whatever they got going on family wise but that's healthy you know that they have those good social bonds it's it's better than having like a failure to launch where people never move out you know what i mean so i'm glad that all of all of my kids have you know strong social groups definitely um as the whole like i feel like the new metal bubble was kind of falling apart by when like i don't know 2003 whatever 2004 yeah it was like around 2000 is when it kind of hit its peak 99 2000 and yeah and then things changed and people moved on to like the killers and more other kind of and i I mean, you guys were kind of like overlapping with the nu metal scene or whatever.

24:42But did that feel like a big moment of change for you guys as the sort of sound changed around that time? I mean, I think we were always a little out of step with that. Like because I didn't relate with all the extreme anger. though we like a lot of energy and we think you know anger is a one of the many emotions an artist should express but like it was just so focused on that so when new metal was blowing up I was on to songs like flowing and amber and come original and I don't know it was just it we weren't trying to out hard everybody so you know we we just kind of like I said keep on the curiosity and happen to start you know people think of us as a 90s band but our biggest song was amber thus far which is you know early 2000s so it's it's been a a long steady thing for us right yeah i mean you guys just seem like very well adjusted like like this whole career like you guys seem like you were kind of ready for it and then once you got to the point in which the work was set out in front of you that you guys very much just kind of locked in and and did it yeah i and i think the fact that we have a really strong friendship bond yeah you know i i don't know how solo artists do it because when you don't have somebody that's like well slow down here like people can get out of control so having that kind of family where there's like a push and pull gas and breaks and kind of thing it really it's it's been really good for me so i know that you know other bands like they might say they're a band but they're just like one guy that's completely in control we're a true band like five equal democracy you know sometimes you got to be ready to not get your way right you know what i mean but you you do what's best for the group as a whole um and and sometimes that means getting outvoted but you got to be got to have some humility in there when did you guys first start to feel like okay we're not poor anymore because it sounds like even with a lot of your success as a late as a band on a label that that might not have necessarily been part of it like even throughout when you guys are big names like when do you start really feeling comfortable financially and does that change your drive to stay on the road and everything as a band?

27:17I remember holding out a brochure of a house in 1997. I was like, I'm buying this. And they were like, what? And I was like, yeah, we can get houses. I'm buying this house in Laurel Canyon. So that was a nice moment. But we never went too, too crazy. But yeah, that was a nice moment. Definitely. I mean, I've just known so many bands and rap groups over the years that are like the best of friends, thick as thieves. And then they start to get some money and then it just falls apart. All of a sudden the girlfriends get involved. They start having kids and that that kinship just like falls apart so quickly.

28:00And I feel like that is like the number one test. If you can handle being comfortable financially, because when you're broke, it's like, you know, you're relying on your bandmates. Like you all need each other to survive. Yeah. Yeah. no that that is a a transition that um can tear people apart they say you know failure is an orphan but success has many fathers meaning so that when like when shit gets good you have to share the credit with your bandmates you can't think well i did this it's we did this you know what i mean definitely and so you guys have never lost a member has there been there's been switch ups over the years nothing that's got to be extreme dudes we're one of the longest running original lineup bands in the world u2 is number one really okay um radiohead is a little bit ahead of us but and we're up in the top five de la soul used to be you know ahead of us until they they lost one um but so i'm of course there's bands that have been around way longer like the stones but they've had many different lineups we're through original lineup if your drummer or bassist or whatever said like listen i'm moving on in my life i can't do this anymore would that be an extreme struggle you want to think about i just love that it's us it's our it's our crew you know it's our squad right i mean you would have to move on but it would be really tough i I think like, you know, it would just, it would be kind of a waste of the potential and the community that you guys have built.

29:34If you weren't, if you didn't have to replace somebody, but I feel like, yeah, that's, that's gotta be really, that's gotta be tough. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you see a lot of bands that have kind of picked up the pieces and moved on because people love the music and, and more power to them. But I'm just glad that like we got our original crew. Definitely. What are the craziest moments in terms of who you've opened for or played with over the years? Whether like a long ass time ago or in more recent memory. Are there any examples that would just blow our minds? Opening for Kiss at Madison Square Garden was pretty weird.

30:12Wow. And they said that we got booed less than most of the openers do. Because like people just, even Slayer got booed at opening for Kiss. Wow. it's like one of the hardest audiences to to play for but yeah they just said about icp a lot too everybody gets booed excessively you never played the gathering of the juggalos no i i i saw them play at the house of blues back in the day but um no i haven't been to to the gathering but that's you know that's a cool similar to 311 day like a destination event um but like you mentioned how we could play with all these different bands and that same year when we opened for kiss we also did uh the warp tour which is punk rock we did the temples of boom tour which was cypress hill and far side and we did the horde tour which was hippie fest and jam fest and we're like we're the only band that could fit in with all three of those right i mean yeah totally i mean it just stands out so much like the so many bands from that era kind of got by on you know aggression and grief or just you know being disgruntled about the world you know and uh it stands out a lot that like i feel like the hip-hop world which is generally i think respectful and appreciative of uh you know uh reggae music and and funk and stuff like that that they were able to really look at you guys that's like all right these are some some white boys that we can really vibe with here yeah we we got you know some nice props from various hip-hop artists like when Chuck D said we were cool a lot to us oh yeah um but yeah it's you know we we acknowledge what a great debt we have to all these wonderful artists that have influenced us you know what I mean it's like we're we're grateful for for that inspiration and try and make that clear like you know we wouldn't we're all all artists are just standing on the shoulders of giants you know what i mean like you're you're taking your sum total of your listening experience and what drives your curiosity and then that comes out you know what i mean so it's uh it's appreciation not appropriation did you guys ever play with sublime yeah wow original lineup yeah back in the day although a couple times they didn't show up because different things happened right but yeah we we did do some shows with them and then of course lots of shows more recently with the more recent lineup and jacob bradley's son is just a totally sweetheart good friend yeah i feel like whatever space there was for a band like yours like was very much the the same area that they were kind of occupying before they unfortunately ended prematurely but i mean one of the greatest bands of all time absolutely bradley was such a gifted vocalist so yeah no that's that's a shame because i mean yeah i mean you guys would have been like the most obvious uh sort of pairing of bands to still be touring if they had uh been able to persevere but yeah i mean in their modern incarnation like do you uh like like the fans are still nuts about the the current version right because it's it's his son jacob's his son that had that fronts the band now yeah that's awesome i gotta see them at some point yeah no it's a great show we just played with them a few a couple months ago and i'm still with with bud and eric the original drummer and bass player so it's good to see yeah i mean they had a little bit more grit that you guys might not have had with the lyrics about stealing musical equipment during the riots and shit like that you know because for sure as a as a rap fan that endeared me to him a bit as a kid of just being like holy i cannot believe this band is talking about that yeah i suppose they're a little more gangster than us yeah a little bit long beach will do that too yeah definitely um i had to ask about this too because when i was seeing like the old flyers that you guys played with fugazi like way before you guys were big that was our very first show first show that's crazy yeah was opening for fugazi in omaha and they were they're so punk rock and down to earth like first of all they had a limit of five dollar tickets you can they never charge more than that right they didn't allow merch there were no fugazi shirts um and they would just call the local punk rocker in each city and say we need four bands to open and they would just let anybody play and we got that call so it was like a really like a perfect because people showed up ready to mush and go crazy and we just like exploded on that place wow yeah that's insane i mean so many of the things that they were uh really committed to seem very untenable and difficult in the modern music landscape like uh they wouldn't allow barcodes on their albums right yeah even when they were big keep track of like yeah like i don't know how that would sound scan like how do they when they tour now like i don't know do you do not accept payments via square or whatever i'm not sure what they're doing yeah i don't know what the hell they're doing you gotta tap to pay yeah like like their fans are the only fans on earth who have to still bring a fistful of 20s to buy merch or whatever yeah yeah that's crazy um okay so there was like a uh a urban legend i guess you could call it when i was in high school which is like 311 is secretly a racist reference it means kkk i never heard that yeah when did you first hear that and i think it's so fascinating because at that time And there was like no way to combat misinformation.

36:05Yeah. And so that actually played a little bit in a part in us blowing up because the media did pick that up. Like, you know, Rolling Stone. And fortunately, they said in there, like, 311 shirts got banned at our high school that we went to, Westside High School in Omaha. Wow. Because somebody there on the administration believed that, for people that don't know, the 11th letter is K. Right. KKK. And that didn't occur to you until you had had the band name for many years, I assume? No. It was just the police code for indecent exposure. Somebody got a ticket for skinny dipping and got arrested.

36:54And so we thought it was hilarious. And also it was kind of part of that Gen X motif of like being mysterious and just having a number. We were the first of like a lot of like numerically named bands that kind of. Well, we weren't the first like third base. We really like third base. 24-7 Spies is a good New England punk kind of rap band. But anyway, so that controversy did kind of end up helping us a little bit. So I was like, I'm going to send a fruit basket to the high school, to the principal of my high school. Do you think that rule was ever overturned? Yeah, it was. Because my brother went there.

37:39He was like, no, I'm wearing my 311 shirt. this does not mean that right you know the other vocalist is hispanic this is there's no truth to it this band is all about peace and love and unity like you cannot like we're not gonna like accept this yeah like that that rumor might have been a little bit more believable when it came to like you know some other bands that you guys might have played with and stuff but you guys are just like the least kkk coded band that you could ever think of yeah yeah for that rumor and also like The KKK is like an actual organization that if you guys were tapped in with them, it would probably be kind of easy to prove that.

38:17You probably would have played at the KKK picnic or something. I don't know. It would be the last gig we'd take. I feel like the KKK has been really weakened. I've heard they've basically been sued into oblivion. As they should be. Yeah, yeah. Whatever they've got to do to get them at the paint. Okay, so have you guys ever kind of taken a break from touring or has it been pretty much consistent over the years? One summer. Like when I said we bought houses in 97, then 98 we did not tour that summer. Other than that, every summer we go on tour. But during the pandemic, we needed to do live streaming as a way to stay connected with our fans because there was no touring in the summer of 2020.

39:04But other than that, yeah, we tour in the summer, but we make sure we get in breaks and, you know, stay healthy. Who's the average 311 fan, if you had to estimate? Well, I think there's – I've noticed that, you know, there's a lot of people, like, say, like, wish me a happy 40th birthday. Like, there's something about being around 10 years, a little more younger than us, that, like, we're kind of the prime age. But now there's a lot now the 90s are hot and there's a lot of youngsters that are really into wearing baggy jeans and listening to 90s music. So we're seeing a lot of younger high school kids come into our shows, which makes me like the coolest dad around because my daughter's friends are very into 311 now.

39:59Really? Yeah. Your daughter who is more concerned with her friends and not necessarily as concerned with her family life. So is that kind of a weird dynamic for her to realize? Like, oh, my dad is cool in a way that is very much unavoidable. Like a rock star is just a cool thing. It's hard to deny that. Yeah, well, they like it. They like to be able to go to the shows and hang out backstage. And, you know, we have a good house for hosting. So they have people over a lot. Yeah. I mean, parties and stuff. Yeah. Like, did you guys raise your kids around the music scene a lot? or because you know it's it's kind of weird for me my kid being five where it's like i would love to have her at rap shows and stuff but for the most part not necessarily the best environment especially considering her mom would have a heart attack if she you know smelled weed well that reminds me of a funny story because when my kids were pretty little and like somebody would drive past you know in a car smoking weed one of them was like it smells like daddy's band because because like you know it's just wafting from the the crowd yeah but um fortunately they're all like pretty level-headed and responsible and not into any anything too crazy but you know they knew the smell of weed yeah earlier than a lot of i was smoking weed in my back house the other day and my kid i thought she was already asleep and she kind of like ran to the back house and she was like dad like talking to me whatever like you know and then she's like why is it so warm in here and immediately in my brain i'm like oh my god her brain is like interpreting the smell of weed as it's warm because it wasn't warm and i'm just like i don't know maybe maybe the heater was on for a little bit or something i don't know i was like i'm just not going to be able to avoid this at some point at some point it's going to have to get a little bit more real or i'm gonna have to get a lot better at hiding it i guess yeah yeah um okay there so i was uh kind of tapping i was trying to find 311 adjacent controversies it's kind of dry glad you brought it up yeah i found a few over the years but uh did you own a private island at one point i did but what what i was um we can talk about that briefly that was that was a bit of a crazy move to do because um it got its ass handed to it when the year of katrina it got hit by four hurricanes oh wow so it was like it was pretty devastating um and this is like i started having kids i was like okay i can't have this like right you know so at when you got it what was the plan for it and i'm assuming it was like a pretty small piece of land or six acres okay had a nice big house on it it's i it's kind of in ruins now i've i've looked online and it's been like it's in disrepair which is really sad because it's a really special place kind of halfway between key west and marathon down in the lower keys um florida keys but um i i loved it just being able to like fish catch snapper and lobsters right off the dock and just the wildlife and stuff there was it was it was a cool time i i miss miss that i i love you know tropical vibes but when you asked about controversies you know i was listening to some no jumper episodes and i was like you know what i've got a first because you guys you guys deal with a lot of beefs right sure yeah i think i might be the first person that's never really had a beef.

43:39I've worked really hard to stay out of beefs. Wow. That's interesting. Now, do you just not have the personality for it where that's not enjoyable to you? I've been offended before. Right. I've just never clapped back because I don't want that to be the narrative. You know what I mean? Like, um, I, you know, I look up to artists like Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney you have these long careers where the music is the focus and I don't think Stevie Winder has ever had a beef but you know I mean it's definitely not what they're known for and so I think just um keeping in some spiritual tools of like being forgiving and like letting things go and just not feeding into to beefs as has served me well yeah it might not be the best thing for virality or whatever you know i mean obviously when kendrick and drake are beefing it's just like right just leads to so much attention but i think there's also a sense within hip-hop though that and and jay-z said as much fairly recently that as much as those things might court attention in the short term that's probably bad for hip-hop overall to have the fan base is so divided at this point it's it's very much like a trump and the democrats type vibe on twitter when you see the kendrick and the drake fans going at each other where it's just like i don't know if hip-hop's ever felt so divided and also you have to imagine that when these people are going through these beefs that the other guy is renting out so much space like living in the other guy's head rent free like i don't want that right so i know if if i like you know i was early on twitter and sometimes people will say something rude meant to get a reaction and i just never clapped back because like and then i'm just feeding into that yeah yeah that was always uh very difficult for me like i always was really kind of just jumping into the flames when it came to controversy and stuff like that but yeah like more often than not now i kind of just you know run the algorithm about any controversy, you know, what is the value to be gained from weighing in on this versus the peace of mind of not jumping in there.

45:56And I mean, doing a podcast, there's like different incentives because, you know, hopping on my Instagram story and ranting about something, it just doesn't really do anything for me. If I talk about some topic for an hour on the podcast, it's like, okay, this is kind of paying the bills by me weighing in on this topic, but But I just have a lot of respect for people who kind of had the foresight to avoid a lot of that. I even heard like Mr. Beast, he was talking about all the different kinds of content he's made over the years. And he's like, the one thing I've never done is the beef thing. He's like, I just don't, I never wanted to use that as a thing that would propel my channel forward.

46:34And I thought that was pretty impressive that he's somebody who's willing to do like essentially anything to make his content as viral as possible. But that's the thing he won't do. and I think that's pretty wise because it begets itself and it becomes this sort of snowball where people want to throw you in the mix in that regard and he's you're also inadvertently helping your enemy right so definitely um okay so there was a song by noise storm and in 2019 you guys were accused of essentially kind of copying the song now this is like more of an electronic style song and then you guys made like a rock song that is sort of uncannily similar how did that happen yeah so um somebody sent me a track to work with and i thought i thought it was my friend's track and then we kind of built a song around it and then once we realized when then we we credited the guy immediately so you know it turned into a collab oh okay so the person who sent you the song was from noise storm no it was another guy had sent me this song and so i i was just kind of like using it as a a template to write around right okay yeah and i didn't realize it was this other guy's so as soon as we we corrected it oh okay so yeah i mean that's what saves us to me too is that it seems like if you did have let's say somebody uh talk shit about you on social media you seem like more of the type to just you know call them up and say like hey let's Let's talk about it.

48:03Yeah. My bad. They're right. No, there's no. Okay. Yeah. Damn. Okay. Was that a little stressful at the time though? Was there like bad publicity associated with that? I mean, like even some of your hardcore fans would probably be like a little taken aback by that until they heard your version of events. Yeah. Um, I mean, I guess that's the good thing about having social media that you can, that I could just immediately say here. He's right. That's, you know, my bad. this has been corrected and the other artist you know saying yeah we worked it all out definitely do you guys collaborate with a lot of different artists or songwriters or stuff like that like is the music writing process like essentially what it was from the beginning or do you like to bring different people in yeah um sometimes we we have like um worked with some good producers who are also songwriters uh we just did a um a collab with this peruvian cumbia band we did a version of of amber that's like a legit peruvian cumbia dance style so that was a lot of fun we shot a video for with it with the with the band down there and when we were on tour in peru so we've done a few collabs um and then i'll i've done some guest spots on you know different reggae artists you know red gold green i just put out a song with them it's like a real cool band from dc oh that's dope how uh involved in that world are you listening to a lot of the sort of up and coming reggae and funk type bands that like that your fans probably also listen to or yeah we you know we cross paths we do a lot like we're doing the reggae rise up festival in oregon next month so we'll check out a lot of other bands and um you know we love we love hip-hop we love all kinds of music there's a guy down um named super dupes who ended up becoming like this huge producer working with rihanna and eminem and stuff and i was collaborating with him like in the early 2000s So I, to me, remaining teachable and learning from new collaborations is just something that's like I'm continuing my growth and education by doing that.

50:23But, you know, lately I've been just writing songs kind of on my own, reducing the collabs down a little bit. and then you know 311 we're looking to get back in the studio and and just kind of maybe having a more of an old school approach getting back into tape analog you know really you just like the the sound the warmth of it or yeah you know that i think there's a there's a magic to it that had kind of gotten lost a little lately with the the editing and stuff like that so we're looking looking forward to kind of a back to analog definitely do you feel like do you guys feel like a a catalog band or whatever like a band that's sort of getting by on your previous work or does it feel like there's still a lot of excitement from your fan base about your current output our our hardcore fans want to hear the newer stuff yeah and then you have more passive fans that are maybe like my daughter's friends that are they want to hear right and if you're playing a festival it's just gonna be a lot of people that want to hear something familiar and haven't listened to the newer records is that tricky when you're putting together the song list yeah you get we make a bespoke set list for every show we'll kind of have a have a band meeting after sound check and make a set list and certain fan uh certain settings we'll know we're going to be more hardcore fans that we want to dig a little deeper and more obscure cuts or then you've got 311 day where that's like the most hardcore fans so we'll dig way deep into the catalog for stuff that like we really have to like you know kind of relearn and stuff because we haven't played it in so long but um yeah you you kind of learn the learn you learn the audience and make it just right for them Could you imagine the band going on touring wise if you one day decided that you didn't really feel like you needed to put out more music, more new music?

52:29Would touring still be a logical decision? You know, I've heard of bands that have done that and they're like, people aren't paying attention to our new stuff. So we're just going to play the oldies. And I don't know. That's a bit of kind of admitting defeat that we're nowhere near ready to do. Right. Yeah. because it's like you're you're having fun making the music like why would you stop even if 90 of your set list is going to be old stuff i mean why wouldn't you keep it down yeah and you know i i respect that like when i go to see a a classic band like if it's something that i associate with a core memory i i want to hear older stuff but i'll also i'm cool with like peppered in some some newer stuff too to keep it from just being too routine definitely um okay so when i was looking for controversies or complaints i did find at least one fan saying that you guys have the same on stage banter between songs for the last 25 years true or false it's false but there are certain things that have become like catchphrases like i close every show with stay positive and love your life because that's something that so many people like get tattooed and have it as their their motto like to and to me something like that that's about gratitude you know loving your life is it bears repeating so but there there's a lot of change-ups between right when i read that i was like oh shit i'm really getting into the weeds here this is where I'm really getting into the nitty gritty here.

54:08Yeah. But I mean, the AI just makes it so easy too, that like when I'm, you know, I always just like browse through TikTok and YouTube, just kind of looking for like different threads to follow conversationally. But then with you guys at a certain point, I was like, okay, Chad GBT, tell me the top 20 311 adjacent controversies. And that was one of them. And at a certain point I realized like, oh, this is just pulling from the Reddit. And so then I spent a little time in the 311 Reddit. it and then i really started to feel like okay now i'm really kind of tapping in with the vibe of their their hardcore fans yeah you know one of the first bands that had a huge online community was the grateful dead and what people that were part of that said that it was a lot of complaining like there was something about when you're a super duper fan that you um that like And it wasn't necessarily complaining about the band, but just other things like the vending or the security at the shows.

55:09Or there's people that are new to the shows that don't understand what we're really doing there. And there's something about when you really deeply feel like you own a band. And we respect that, but you also have to just listen, but stay true to yourself. because you can drive yourself nuts trying to please every last person. Yeah. Like Reddit is just not a place for the happy-go-lucky fans that just show up and they have a few drinks and have the time of their life. You know, Reddit is for the people that want to pull this thing apart and really try to get down to the nitty-gritty. Yeah. Yeah.

55:48What's your attitude about people in the band being vocal about politics? because I noticed that there was a couple of different controversies that seemed like they didn't really necessarily amount to much, but like your drummer at one point said some stuff possibly supporting the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and then like your bassist at one point was critical of Trump. Is there like a policy band-wise that that's something that you guys prefer to stay out of? I would say that things got a little noisy during that one period that you're talking about. But that was that way in the country. And so I think 311 is kind of a microcosm of the country.

56:34There's varying opinions. So the fact that we can still have unity, even through varying opinions, is kind of like, I was like, we need to get through this difficult period because then that gives hope to whiter people. To me, that's what I could control. Like, hey, guys, let's focus on the music. I don't believe that my job as an artist is to tell people what to think about. I want to share my personal experience about what I'm going through, but I don't need to tell them what to think about politics. or if you have a message to get across would you rather do it in a way that is more artistic and not just like this is who you should vote for or this bill is one you should vote against you know because I feel like 311's message is positivity and unity and friendship and brotherhood there is more way more that we agree on which is about the unity and people coming together and and the the tolerance and the inclusion that everybody, you know, you can decide to focus on these things that we all agree on and funky music and, you know, what we, the chops and the instrumentation and stuff like that.

58:00We can focus on that or you can focus on wedge issues, you know, which is certain looking for things that you disagree about. So I feel like we came through all that. Yeah. And I mean, even the biggest artists in the world, for the most part, Taylor Swift, you know where she stands politically, but she's not mentioning it too much. She's put it out there, but she's not weighing in in the average election. Drake, he said things that allow you to understand that he's probably mostly a liberal, but he's not really jumping in that conversation. I mean, I think there's just a pervasive sense that as an artist, that's not really the best way to maintain your fan base.

58:45Because realistically in America, you know, if you make a polarizing statement, you're kind of isolating yourself against 50 % of the country. Yeah. And how much actual mind changing are you doing? doing just are you just alienating like so I want I want to stay focused on higher values of like the unity that you feel when you're sharing music together you know that's like a concert is like a extension of like a tribal dance that has been part of human development for 50 ,000 years you know what I mean like that that's that's something that we all are dedicating our life to of when you when you sharing music together that bond that you feel yeah so anything that goes against that i don't want to add too much to yeah i mean like what 311 stands for is kind of a i think like a necessary refuge probably for a lot of people from the sort of overall state of the country where it feels like social media has really kind of divided us against each other and you know a of times there'll be like viral posts that'll be like look at this video of you know a bunch of people at a concert or a bunch of people in college and in the 90s before social media became everything and there is kind of a sense that like a lot of people were quite a bit happier and getting along a lot better before this technology kind of gave us a way to see what everybody thinks and also amplifies the most aggressive stuff yeah algorithmically and people say things that they would never say to your face that's you know the the trolling that's an unfortunate side of it i mean when when like myspace and stuff first came out people were like wow everybody can like be connected and all be friends and nobody had really thought of like the other side of what's going to happen um but that's why i like when they added the like mute function because if somebody's really just trying to mess with me i can just i can just mute them you know what i mean they right they don't know but i don't i don't need to keep i don't need to feed into that but 311's fan base is is generally positive so it's yeah i think for anybody who's looking to cultivate an image of coolness or to have some aura associated with your name like the number one thing that you can do to facilitate that is pretty much to not be like jumping into the sewer of social media at this point you know like and and what makes me think about that too is when i see an interview with like an actor actress and they're they'll bring up some tiktok trend uh surrounding you know one of the characters that they've played and and they always have to deny any knowledge of this which seems very unlikely to me because it's just you know most people are on social media and looking at stuff but i think that there's a sense that for a serious artist you should not be spending time uh looking at you know memes about yourself that there's just something very uncool about that yeah yeah i remember when when google first you know talking to other people in the entertainment business when google first came up you know people like don't google yourself it will make you nuts do not do that so yeah there's now there's same philosophy goes towards like social media you can't you can't have your self-worth based on outside opinions because you know people are are gonna try to get a reaction and but you know back to what i was saying about the stay positive and love your life thing like i i just i love that But our band has been a refuge for people.

1:02:33Like they say, when I'm upset, I can listen to some 311 and it calms me down. Like that's like a higher calling, something that we really enjoy that. It may not be the latest viral moment or whatever, but it's still something that's just there, part of our fans' lives. Definitely. um okay so when you guys do these cruises how many people are typically on the cruise ship 3 ,000 3 ,000 wow and are you guys performing like every night uh we do like three or four shows okay um and then also we'd like take a photo with every person so it's like a five hour thing where they bring each cabin through to take pictures and wow we do a lot of different um i play basketball with some fans.

1:03:24I do like a name that tune where I'll play a little bit of a riff and they'll like a game show. And then there's lots of other artists on there. We had Arrested Development on the last one, which was super cool. Oh, that's sick. Wow. I never even thought about the fact that Arrested Development would still be out there doing their thing because they were all over the radio when I was like a young boy. They were transcendent. They were so good. I got to tap in on that. That sounds like a good thread to go down. Yeah. and we had souls of mischief you know nice yeah um and then um organized confusion the two guys um we've had we've had a lot of cool hip-hop artists on there hey that's sick yeah i mean it must be like a weird choice because on one hand these are your people but then on the other hand it's probably kind of uh overwhelming to be out and about with everybody because you're kind of larger than life to some of the people well there was they do a costume night we do a costume night and one night i dressed up as a ninja so i could go in there and just like be in amongst the people no one knew it was me because i'm wearing this like black oh yeah um so it was it was fun to be a fly on the wall and just everybody was like so positive they were like just high-fiving strangers and it was it was pretty cool thing to see that side of it wow yeah no i definitely would love to see you guys on tour again it sounds like you guys have like a unbelievable community that you've cultivated yeah definitely so what do you guys have coming up in the future it's like the same grind of touring and working on new music but is there anything that you feel like you want to accomplish uh before one day the band ends and and do you see it is there a definitive end at some point or would you want like okay knock on wood god forbid if something happened to you would you want the rest of the band to continue in some form i mean i want 311 to live on so in in whatever form um you know it's it's about a a mission to spread positivity that's kind of become a bigger than any one person and then yeah we're looking forward to summer tour with Dirty Heads it's a fun, we've toured with them before it's just like a kick ass evening out in the playing outside reggae music and then looking forward to getting into some new studio work and then the next cruise and balancing that all with like raising kids and I've got you know tech startups that I'm involved with so it's a full life oh that's cool what kind of tech startup stuff for you just general that's a passion of yours to just sort of chase different businesses yeah I would say um the latest thing is being a supporter of um RSL media which is um you there's been there was news about it last week where it's uh you know it's a piece of right now a lot of creatives in general are concerned about unfair ai use right because like they can just scrape your whole podcast and imitate you and your voice and this and that and everything but what how do you tell them no how do you there is no machine readable permission so what this group that i'm part of is setting a standard which is a piece of code like different standards or like a PDF or a JPEG or whatever.

1:07:00It's a standard that machines can read. So it's a piece of code that sets permissions of whether you are okay with AI using your data or not, or maybe it could be with terms. And because there are artists that say, yeah, you can recreate my voice for a license fee or whatever um so because right now there is no machine readable permission standard and so this has been and right now it's being embraced a lot by um by hollywood we've got people like george clooney and tom hakes and kate blanchett um that have signed on as supporters so um i I think it's really big for creatives like yourself, musicians, visual artists, because there's no way to tell AI what your permissions are until this.

1:07:58It's called RSL Media. Wow, that's really interesting. Could you ever see yourself utilizing AI with 311? I mean, I've been doing woodworking lately, and I've certainly asked chat GPT a lot like what grit sandpaper. So I do enjoy talking to my AI assistant, but no, I think it's really all about that, the human creativity, and that's what our group is about to set permissions because right now they're just taking everything. Yeah, no, totally. The other day I actually had an interesting AI experience where I was at some sort of like fair. It's like a kid-oriented fair with my daughter. And they had something, I think it was called Doggy World.