311’s Nick Hexum – HuffPost 9.23.13

Mike Ragogna: What is your advice for new artists? I know it’s a little tricky these days.

Nick Hexum: Yeah, the mechanics of distributing your music are so different now. You can launch just from a viral video. In a way, we didn’t really need a major label just to get started in the beginning. That’s really only just to get the records out. We ended up doing it just through touring. I suppose the one constant between now and then is just work on your live show and work on building up a local following wherever you are. We were in Omaha and building up a big following there was what lead to us getting a deal. We did move out to LA, but then we went back to Omaha to showcase for the label because we wanted them to see us in front of our home audience. So it doesn’t matter where you’re from, just build up a big following and then you can just expand from there. The industry’s changed so much to where if you can’t cut it live, you’re not going to have a chance because it all comes back to playing live. That’s something that cannot be pirated, that live experience of watching somebody create. That’s also what inspired me to do the quintet, because there’s going to be a lot of improvisation, a lot of unscripted moments, so people can actually see us make it up as we go. I’m getting really into watching a lot of jam bands and seeing how they interact with each other and the audience and just going higher and higher. So I always say it’s all about the live setting.