311 embracing “cool nostalgia” with full-album shows on fall tour

311 embracing “cool nostalgia” with full-album shows on fall tour
ABC Audio

As part of their current fall tour, 311 will playing a number of full-album shows in select cities, during which they’ll be performing one of their first six albums in its entirety. For a band that’s known for experimenting with their set lists, the full-album shows will give you the opportunity to hear that one song you’ve been dying for them to play.

“Certain people are, like, ‘I love this one song that they don’t play very much, but if I go to that album show, they have to play it,'” frontman Nick Hexum tells ABC Audio. “So it’s just a way to have a cool nostalgia and really just concentrate on one era for that particular show.”

That nostalgia isn’t just for the fans, either. Hexum is looking forward to revisiting some of 311’s earlier material, especially their 1993 debut, Music, and the “experimentation” of its follow-up, 1994’s Grassroots.

“There’s always gonna be a special place for Music, for our first album,” Hexum says. “It was just so much energy to those songs and to those shows.”

311 will play Music and Grassroots at New York City on October 1 and 2, respectively. Fittingly, that era of the band was deeply tied to the City That Never Sleeps — they loved playing the now-defunct NYC venue Wetlands so much that they named it in a lyric on the Grassroots song “Silver.”

“There’s a lot of history that we have with the city of New York and those albums in particular and those times,” says vocalist/turntablist Doug “SA” Martinez. “Just so much fun over the years that we’ve had there.” 

Here are 311’s other full-album shows:

10/22 — Chicago, 311
10/23 — Chicago, Transistor
11/11 — Los Angeles, Soundsystem
11/12 — Los Angeles, From Chaos

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