Blurring the lines is something that 311 does quite well. Since the debut album, Music, the Omaha-born quintet – vocalists Nick Hexum and SA Martinez, bassist P-nut, drummer Chad Sexton and guitarist Timothy J Mahoney — have created a home-brewed amalgam of funk, rock, reggae and hip-hop that has propelled them, slowly, but steadily, into the mainstream. A number of critic see, to be writing the band off as an “overnight sensation,” but what most people don’t realize is that 311 had two full-length albums under their belt — 1993’s Music and 1994’s Grassroots — before their self-titled 1995 album, dubbed “the blue album,” spawned the hits “Down” and “All Mixed Up.” In addition, they’ve worked hard at touring for the past four years to build themselves a strong, dedicated fanbase.
With their most recent release, Transistor, 311 is hoping that their fanbase will remain true to them. The 21-song album attempts to blur the lines even more by adding stronger elements of dub, reggae and pure pyschedelia into the creative mix. The first single off the album, “Transistor,” offers a pretty good foreshadowing of what the band has to offer with its dancehall drum beats and its hard rock riffs. As opposed to past 311 albums, Transistor offers a bit more of an eclectic view into the band’s creative, collective vision. From the haunting rock/reggae crafting of “Beautiful Disaster,” to the quasi-psychedelic groove of “No Control” to the dub feel of “Light Years,” it’s obvious that 311 has consciously chosen to both fill their palette with a wider variety of musical colors, and push those colors outside the lines.
THE ISLAND EAR recently caught up with 311 guitarist Timothy J Mahoney as he was gearing up to head out for the band’s tour in support of Transistor. Mahoney, along with the rest of 311, will be at Jones Beach with Fishbone and De La Soul on August 26.
What’s the reaction to Transistor been so far?
We’re just kind of waiting to see how the fans will interpret and like it. Our last album was more of a straightforward rock/hip-hop style, and Transistor is a little more “Experimental” for us. There’s also a lot more songs. Did you get to hear the full album yet?
Yes, I got an advance cassette copy, and I particularly like the dub characteristics that you pulled into the mix.
I’d say the biggest influence on the band right now is reggae and a lot of dub, so that’s why a little dub came through on the album. So hopefully people will get into that too. I’m glad you said that [laughs].
I thought it was a bit of a departure from some of the older stuff, but at the same time it’s got the same undertones.
They’re definitely 311 songs, but it’s definitely a departure from where we were on the last record. It’s been almost two years since we recorded– that’s the biggest break we’ve ever taken between records — and that’s another reason why there’s so many songs. We actually recorded 30 and them just put 21 on the record.
Any chance of those nine showing up somewhere else?
I would imagine they’ll show up somewhere. They’re all recorded and mixed and ready to be released. I don’t know if we’ll release them on a single or on a CD like we did with the home video — we haven’t made any solid plans yet.
The band was once quoted for saying “we’re tired of writing for other people,” and you wanted to write this album for yourselves.
[Laughs} Well, I wonder who said that? We always just wrote what we wanted to, in the hopes that our fans will be right there, enjoying it too. The number one thing with us is to write music that’s important to us, that we can really feel and enjoy playing all the time. So as long as we’re doing that, I think that everything stays in line and our fans, hopefully, will follow us through any weird turns we take. I’m really hoping that they’re going to like this new one.
Transistor seems to be a very eclectic collection of tunes. Was that a concious decision?
I think it definitely was. The last record, “the blue album,” was just kind of where we were at, at the time. It was more straightforward, short, hard-rockin’ songs, although there were elements of reggae and funk. This album is more in the direction of where the first record, Music, was or where Grassroots was; just kind of an anything goes attitude — whether it was to dub out a song, to use really weird effect, or to mix things through the guitar amp. So it was a concious decision in the sense that we didn’t want to be making any concious decisions. We just wanted to let it flow and let whatever happened happen. So I think it turned out good and our producer we worked with was our longtime sound man, Scott Ralston, so its was really nice and we had a good time. Now we’re ready to just get out and start playing the songs live. We just got back from a month in Europe and we were playing a lot of new material.
How well did it go over?
It went pretty good. But we’re just getting started over there, so a lot of people don’t really know us, so they probably couldn’t distigush between the old stuff and the new stuff. We opened for Primus who have really good fans that seemed to like us. We didn’t get bad responses anywhere. We also got good responses from the festivals that we played. The songs, just from playing them over a month, are starting to take on their own personalities live, so they should all translate very well on this tour.
What are some of your favorite tunes to play off the new disc?
Well, I’ve been enjoying playing them all. In rehersals, we’ve been playing through the record one day, and then the next day we’ll go backwards through the album, just to mix it up. Live, we’re playing about five songs a night from the new disc and we’re alternating which ones we play each night. We want to make sure that we’re playing new songs so fans can really check them out.
How does the writing process work with 311? There’s a lot of different elements involved, and I was wondering how you blend them all into a 311 song?
With this last record, there were a couple of songs that were collaberations, but for the most part, it was all individual song writing. Unless it’s Nick, because Nick writes both music and lyrics. Sometimes he’ll have a whole completed song that he’ll bring forth, but for the most part we learn the music and get the roadmap to the song and get all the parts together and then Nick and S.A. will work on the vocals for it. Once they get the vocals, depending on what they’re doing vocally, we might re-arrange the song to work with the vocals. Generally, it’s the music first and then we put the vocals and then we play with the arrangement and just take it from there.
Who are some of your major influences and can you see them coming out through the music?
Personally, I listen to a lot of great guitar players — Jerry Garcia, Carlos Santana, Hendrix, and I’m also a really big Phish fan — so I listen to a lot of “guitar rock” music. [But I also listen to] a lot of jazz and jazz guitar players, and a lot of reggae. I think for the band, reggae is probably one of our biggest influences, but everyone listens to everything from classical to jazz. But there are certain bands like Bad Brains and some of the hard rock like Helmet that everyone loves. So little bits of everything we listen to comes out. We don’t really have a straight ahead jazz songs but there are a lot of jazz chordings and jazz chord changes. As fae as dub, a little bit of dub comes through the production techniques. It’s really hard to make any specific comparisons there, but I think a lot of the jazz structures — and forfor Chad the dancehall reggae beats — shows that the one thing that everyone enjoys is combining the different elements of different music to create an unique song.
How has the band evolved since forming in 1990?
Hopefully. we’ve been growing each year. One of our goals is to continue to grow whether it’s individually as musicians or as a band, and in our communication with one another when we play and while writing songs. I think that we’ve definitely been growing ever since then. On our first record, we went on tour and hardly anybody knew is because we didn’t have any radio or MTV support. So over the years we’ve developed a fan base just from traveling. To me, that was one of the best things that we could have ever done and that has really strengthened us as a band, as players. Sp it was good that it’s been a slow, continuous growth. As long as we continue down that path, that’s what we’re excited about.
People say that bands are a product of their enviornment. 311 are from Nebraska, so are you a product of that enviornment?
When I think Nebraska, I think middle America, and like country music — [laughs] The cool thing about Omaha is that when we were playing there, there was a punk rock scene and a hard rock scene, but no one real stream music, so we were free to do what we wanted. We didn’t feel that we had to be punk rock and play punk rock songs all the time. I love punk rock, but it was nice there [in Omaha] because I used to work at a record store, and as long as you knew what to buy, you could always get cool music. If anything, it kind of helped us to break away and do something different. It helped us form in a way that was unique to us instead of being in the middle of a big scene. I guess I don’t know any other way. When we moved to Los Angeles, we had a fanbase in Omaha and that was about it. It was pretty intimidating out here and we weren’t really into trying to develop a fanbase out here because it’s just so immense, and there’s so many bands and so many places to play. So when we moved [to L.A.], we just kind of turned [the band] into a little commune and concentrated on music full time. We did play out at some clubs, but for the most part we were concentrating on writing music and working on songs. So I don’t really know any other scenes that the one in Omaha, and now I don’t really know that scene because I haven’t been back there in so long. But, there are a lot of unique sounding bands in Omaha.
I’m going to ask you this question and I want a completely honest answer… what’s with the f***ing critics and their aversion to you? I know you address it in “Transistor.”
[Laughs] I have no idea… Nick had a good quote about how ritics weren’t responsible for our sucess so they’ll never be able to take it away from us — that’s kind of attitude that we’ve adopted. It was frustrating at first because we saw a lot of bands that were coming out when we were, or after us, and getting all this attention. At first we were like “why don’t we get that attention?” But then over time we realized that it’s not that big of a deal. The only time I really have a problem is when people write things and it’s kind of obvious that they didn’t listen to it or they’re just writing things that aren’t about the music, so to speak. So [other than that], I’m not really bothered by critics, and I’ve kind of just adopted the attitude that they didn’t put us here so they’re not going to take anything away from us. And if anything else, I think that when our friends and our fans read a critic that’s baggin’ on us, I don’t think they take it to heart. I think maybe they look at it and think, “who cares what they think, I like the band.” But it’s cool because it’s a critic’s job to say what they think, so I don’t have a problem when anyone speaks their mind.
Did you find it frustrating that after all this time spend building a fanbase, “Down” and “All Mixed Up” hit, and people are jumping on it because radio started playing it? I mean there were tons of people who thought “the blue album” was your first disc.
It’s weird because “the blue album” has sold over 2 million now and the first two are just about at 500,000. So there’s a big difference between the amount of people who have the blue album as opposed to the first two. So a lot of people who only know that record, I’m sure there are a number of people who only know those two songs. It’s weird because “Down” was the third single off the third record and that finally broke out and opened the door for us on radio. “Transistor,” the first single that we released, is a pretty weird song as far as radio goes–
They’re playing the hell out of it here–
Are they? That makes me so happy. I really haven’t heard it at all.
It’s definitely getting a lot of play on the “rock” and “alternative” stations out here.
That’s cool. I was worried because I thought they might have gotten scared because of that little reggae bit at the end, and there’s a dancehall drumbeat. It’s tricky to find where the beat actually is in that tune because Chad’s drumline is so funky. So, it’s cool because we probably wouldn’t have been able to release that song to radio without the success of “Down” and “All Mixed Up.”
The next question kind of relates to that. Does it bother you that people can’t get passed that rock/rap connection and into the other styles?
It doesn’t bother me because we are kind of a rock style rap group in a sense, but I think hip-hop more and an influence just like jazz is an influence. For our singers, although I think on this album there’s a lot more sining, a lot more melodies– and I know that especially Nick was into that on this record — rap is just more of a vocal style for those guys. So the music is not rock style, but more style. Straight up hip-hop, unless it’s like The Roots — who are a great band — it’s usually programmed music. So I don’t want people to think that we’re trying to be these white rappers from Nebraska. It’s just an influence. I’m not bothered by the people who can’t get over it. Hopefully, if anything, what some of the influences [in our music] might do is get a kid to go out and buy a Bob Marley album who’s never heard Bob Marley before.
Why do you think it took so long for 311 to break into the “mainstream?”
I don’t know… It’s really weird. I think that maybe some of the older albums might have had songs, but I don’t know. It’s kind of weird to watch the whole commercial media event. When “Down” started to take off as a single, you could kind of see the gears of the media machine start to work. New York and L.A. starts to play you, then some smaller markets see that they’re doing it so they start to play you — it seems like everything’s tied into everything, so once it starts churning it just takes off. We’re happy that the radio and MTV are playing us because they go places that we can’t take the band to travel, (i,e) a lot of smaller cities. We really want to try to get our music in there I know just being from Omaha, which is the biggest city in Nebraska but is still a small city, that bands would come through there but anywhere else west of Omaha was dead. We’ve never even played western Nebraska! That’s why radio and MTV are good. When I was growing up in Omaha we had MTV but we didn’t have a good radio station, so I think a lot of radio stations are just in the more majot markets but MTV goes to everybody that’s got a cable box. So it’s a good avenue. As for our videos, all the directors that we worked with are artists and they’re cool, so it’s always interesting to see what they do with the song.
Do you have any advice for young bands who are coming up on their local scenes?
I just say “just keep on keepin’ on.” As long as you’re always challenging yourself and writing music that means something to you, that’s the most important thing. If you keep doing that, hopefully it’s just a matter of time before something happens. There are a lot of record companies who were smart enough to get into unique music. Phish is a great example. I don’t ever see them on MTV and I hardly ever hear them on the radio, but they have a huge, huge fanbase and they’re a real successful band. So as long as you keep on keepin’ on, you’re going to be successful.
So what does the future hold for 311?
Well, we’re going to travel for a while and play. Hopefully we’ll het to go to Austrailia and Japan in the beginning of ’98. We haven’t been there yet so we’re going to set forth to conquer the world. We’re going to get back in and write music again sometime next year for sure. We’re definitely not going to have a long break as last time. Our goal is to put an album out a year, so we’re hoping to get one in ’98 and one in ’99 and so on…
311 will be playing Jones Beach on August 26.
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