The Breedlove family is really excited to announce the addition of Nick Hexum, from the band 311, to our signature artist program. We recently had the pleasure to visit with Nick for an exclusive artist interview to discuss the new 311 album, the songwriting process, his thoughts on how technology is changing the industry and more. The new album titled MOSAIC will hit the stands June 23rd, featuring 17 new songs. In addition, 311’s summer tour will hit 40 summer stops between June – and August.
Breedlove: Thank you so much for taking some time to chat with us. We really appreciate it. Are you on the road right now?
Nick: I'm home. Topanga, California. Which is between Malibu and Santa Monica, in the enclave perfect for musicians.
I've been here almost five years, and before that I was in Laurel Canyon, which is the other L.A. Hippy enclave for musicians. I was there for 15 years, but that's in the middle of the Hollywood Hills. Much prefer to be out in the country.
Breedlove: Well, thanks for chatting. Let’s talk about the new album?
Nick: This is the exciting time when the album is done, and we've released a few tracks and the fan base is salivating for the album. And June 23rd it comes out. Mosaic is our twelfth album. We feel it's the step forward that we've been needing to make. It's an update of our sound, and there's just been a real outflow of creativity, and morale within the band is really high. Everyone's really on the same page with what we're doing, and that's an exciting space to be in.
Breedlove: Well, congratulations. I'm sure once you get to this phase, after all that hard work and time in the studio, and writing, I'm sure it's a huge release, and probably really awesome to see it all come to fruition.
When you say this album feels like “it's the step forward,” do you mean stylistically? From a songwriting perspective? What is it about this new album that’s created this “real outflow of creativity.”
Nick: Well, it all starts with the songwriting. The tunes. The words. The melodies. The chords. For me, you have to have a song that is going to hold up on just sitting down with an acoustic guitar. If you need production to dress something up, that's not going to work. It's not going to have legs. It's not going to stand the test of time with yourself, and your listeners. So for me, it goes back to, all the songs start on this album with just sitting down with an acoustic guitar. No, I can't say one hundred percent. Let me rephrase that. Most of the songs start with an acoustic guitar. Another song might be built on just a badass rift, or a reggae rap that might have, you know, songs gestate different ways. But the majority of them is sitting down eyeball-to-eyeball with a songwriting partner. Each guy has an acoustic guitar. It just kind of hammered out. You start strumming some chords. You sing a melody. You have a title. I think that's important.
What we needed to accomplish was important in the later phases too, meaning production, the arrangement, to have something that sounds more influenced by what’s going on today. Then you've got to not go too crazy so all of a sudden you're sounding like the latest EDM group. You can't do that, because people love the rootsieness, and the humanness of 311. They like to hear the signature tone of P-Nut's fingers on the bass, and Tim's effect on his guitar and just the way he, the way his hands make it sound. You've got to really have the signature stuff, but then you want to take a step forward too.
So there are more modern elements that include builds. In a lot of modern music there's build and release, and drops, which is usually an instrumental break where you just let the music go for a second. That's something we've employed on multiple songs on this album where, I can't think of a time where we've had a drop as a chorus to a song. But for us, where most people say “drops,” that's usually where it's just some grinding keyboard sound. For us, it's guitar based. It's always guitar based. Because there's just a humanness that comes through. That's the long answer, anyhow. We wanted to take a step forward.
Breedlove: If we can step back just a tiny bit. When it comes to the songwriting… is this a collaborative process? What does the songwriting process look like?
Nick: As we go on, it becomes more and more collaborative. I think when you're first starting out, you have so much stuff to say, that you just get in front of a piece of paper and it all just comes pouring out. I might have completed songs on my own more, and then brought them to the guys. But at a certain point, when you start getting into your twelfth album, I like to talk stuff out. So yes, it's very collaborative where I'll, for example, say, “I got a title: Too Much To Think.” It's a great play on words, because everybody knows the phrase, “too much to drink,” but then when you think about “too much to think,” I got so much on my mind. It just immediately conjures a story behind it. So sitting there with John Feldman, who was the producer on about five of our songs, it was at the very tail end of the album we decided to go do a co-write with Feldy, and that was one of the songs that came out of it. I like doing that more and more.
I also like expanding the crew of people that we write songs with. I'll have writing dates where if I know a guy writes a cool style, I'll have it set up through management, “Hey, let's get together and just hammer out some stuff and see if it works.” You've got to work towards freshness at this stage of your career when you're getting into your twelfth album. A very easy way to do that is to write with new people. Because I'm learning. Every time I write with somebody, I'm picking their brain, and watching their toolbox and being influenced by them. That's one way that I really was able to expand my songwriting toolkit was to start writing with different people. I started out about five years ago writing more with others, and it's really opened my horizons.
Breedlove: Lyrically, or stylistically, when you view this album from a storytelling standpoint, is there a common theme within this album or is it just a representation of a lot of different themes?
Nick: You know, I think we always just want to come from the heart, and talk about what we're feeling, what we're going through. When my managers asked me to write a overview of the album, I feel like there was a theme of, in modern life there's a trend towards alienation and people feeling separate. Yet, we all really crave that connection. It's working against the natural entropy that technology, and human progression, and everybody gets less and less connected to each other. Yet we still crave it. A band like 311 is about remaking that connection, and to feel that unity. Humans crave to relate, and that's why we get into relationships. “Relate” is the key, is the root word of relationships. We all want that. That's why people have clubs, and get married. Because they don't want to feel alone. But some people find themselves trapped in aloneness, and it's hard to break out. I kind of touch on that theme in a bunch of songs throughout the album.
Breedlove: On that topic of technology, I'd love to pick your brain a little bit. This is your twelfth album. Being in the music scene for so long, you've seen so many changes, and technology has so much to do with that, of course. How do you see the music industry changing because of technology? I know that's a broad, very open-ended question.
Nick: In the early days, 311 was viral before there was the internet. That took a long time, which was us going out on tour, playing at some crappy bar, and then they would all tell their friends. Then the next time we came through, it would be packed. It really just created such a buzz, but it was actual word-of-mouth, or people writing letters, it was very slow. But that allowed us to build our foundation out of stone rather than sand. Because we had to put in so much time in building that relationship.
It helped us develop our chops. Like when the Beatles were stuck in Hamburg at the little club in the basement and they played there ten thousand hours, that's what the slow roll, the lack of technology made it so we had to go out and do that, and live on the road. That's made us into the musicians that we are today. Then the other element that needs to be discussed is the rise of piracy, and everybody deciding to share music. That completely changed everything, but it maybe affected 311 less than other bands because we always decided to focus on touring with The Grateful Dead as our heroes of how to run a business. Allow taping, encourage that type of thing. But now today, there are great upsides to technology as far as being able to reach people all over the place. I grew up in Omaha, and there was no internet, and there was one little punk rock record store downtown that I would have my mom drive me down there to get the latest record. That was very difficult to find, a record by The Specials, or music that wasn't widely available.
Now we can reach people all over the world instantly. That also provides a democratization of culture, where you don't necessarily have to have a record deal. There's no gatekeepers anymore. A lot of people just launch a career without a record deal. So that's really good. People can start from anywhere by just making videos. I definitely think we would have been all over having a YouTube channel, or whatever. I mean, we have a YouTube channel now, but it's not how we made it. If we started out today, I'm sure we would take advantage of that sort of technology. It was kind of fortunate for us that we had to do it the other way, because it led us to where we are today.
Breedlove: You've touched on a number of answers to this next question that I'd like to ask. Creating your twelfth album, having seen what you've seen, learned everything that you guys have learned over the years, what is different now? What affords you the luxury of taking your music to a higher level now? You talked about having access to a bunch of writers and their toolboxes. Is there anything that really sticks out, and that really resonates for you now, that really allows you to take your music to a higher level?
Nick: I just think that we're fortunate to have this thirst to progress. We still have a lot of ambition. If a band loses it's hunger, it shows. I'm very happy that we're extremely fired up. And, we're Midwestern guys that have a pretty hard work ethic, so we're ready to put in the time, rehearse a lot, hash out songs a lot. There is a real earnest fire to continue to progress.
Breedlove: I think you partly answered the last question I am going to ask. Do have any advice for young or aspiring musicians?
Nick: Well, I had a lot of people tell me that a hybrid music band coming out of Omaha, Nebraska was never going to make it. First of all, you have to be ready to not take no for an answer, and be resilient, and hear no, but carry on and believe in yourself. I used to be a smart ass and people would say, “What advice do you have to somebody that is thinking about getting into the music business?” And I would say, “Give up!” Because if you could be talked out by me, or any other person, it's never going to work, because it's such a crowded space. Everybody wants to do it.
Even today, when the financial side of it is completely slashed, there's still tons of people buying guitars, and wanting to do it, because it's such a, it's the best job in the world to have. We call it playing music, because we're “playing.” It's like, it's play. It's not an actual job. It's something that we would do for a hobby anyway. But you have to be ready to work hard and build a fan-base from the ground up. Some guy I might meet would be, “Yeah, we got this cool band. Can we open for you? You know, we haven't really developed a following.” I'm like, No, man. You've got to build a following on your own, and then if it makes sense, because you're going to bring some people to our show, then you can, we can talk about getting you on the bill. But you can't expect some big break, because someone does you a favor. No. It's not going to work that way. You have to play live all the time. New music all the time. Just keep grinding at it, because there really are no short cuts that work.
Breedlove: Nick, that's great advice. I really appreciate you taking some time to chat with us. We're really excited to hear the full new album. And additionally, just really excited to have you on board as Breedlove player. We really appreciate it.
Nick: Happy to do it. I look forward to hopefully seeing you guys when I'm up there.
