As rock band 311 gears up for their fall 2023 tour with AWOLNATION and Blame My Youth starting this September, we were lucky enough to have lead vocal and rhythm guitarist Nick Hexum come on down to the Setlist.fm studio and talk about some of his favorite concert experiences!
Enjoy the latest episode of Marquee Memories as Nick shares stories about The Clash, Prince, and Arrested Development:
The Clash
"In seventh grade, I had a friend who had an older brother and he had all The Clash albums. I was just so blown away by the energy and the rebellion, and then when I heard they were coming to town in Omaha, I was like, in total disbelief. My friend's mom took us down there and we made our own outfits, got some of our dads' like, dress shirts and tore 'em up and wrote the names of various Clash song like "Police & Thieves", "Hate & War", and Joe Strummer came out with a blonde mohawk and ripped into "London Calling" at the most deafening sound. I mean, and, my knees went weak."
"So it was pretty cool to have my own like, sort of Beatlemania moment where I was overcome with like, excitement to finally see this person who I'd been like, worshiping."
Prince
"311's first real tour was 1993. We played the Cabaret Metro in Chicago. They were like, we gotta be outta here because Prince is coming and he's gonna perform a secret show, and I got to stay and watch the Prince set. It had to have been like two or three hours. He did some songs by himself on the piano, and he would like, tease a song. If it was like a really sexy song, he would like play it just a little bit. He was like, no, I'm trying not to do that anymore. Prince has always been a huge influence. What a talent to really be so good at so many different things. Guitar, songwriting, singing, performance, keyboards, bass, like, everything."
Arrested Development
"So on the last 311 cruise, we had Arrested Development join us. It was the talk of the boat, how incredible their show was. It was just so joyous and on point. The musicianship and the dancing and just the emotion of it. Everyone was just blown away. It was like, tear-jerking how much joy was in their music."
"If you wanna keep being inspired, you keep changing what you listen to and who you're playing with and that'll keep making the music fresh."
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Click here for more information about 311's upcoming tour dates where you can some Marquee Memories of your own!
