George Clanton & Nick Hexum INTERVIEW

just wait get the third one down before you make that joke all right let me let me get a formal intro out here for the youtube channel and then we'll actually go hey everyone anthony fantano here internet's busiest music nerd hope you're doing well and it is time for a conversation an interview with nick hexham and george clanton who have made some wonderful music together recently that we will discuss and anything else that comes up in the midst of this conversation too how are you guys doing great thanks for having me good good thanks for coming through george is uh a lot less enthused but um let's see if we can get some uh uh some answers out of him specifically this one because i mean i've i've interviewed your ass before if it wasn't for nick i would not have you back so you know let's let's just thank him and thank you let's just get that out of the way but the last time i talked to you um we we had a pretty uh deep and in-depth conversation about a lot of things like the mindset and ideology behind your music behind vaporwaves some of your biggest musical influences and the one that stood out to me and to a lot of people who watched the interview was that you were just so like you were just such a die hard like totally unironic just 311 fan and that was something that just stood out to a lot of people it stood out to me certainly and in the time since that interview you've clearly made this connection uh to not only nick but other members of the band i assume and now you're collaborating on music together together you've just dropped this record like how did we get from there to here fill it fill in that gap for me i was probably already like talking to nick at that time and and so you were hiding you were hiding that from me yes yes i had to oh just like what we were talking about before you're always hiding something you know in the music and if you if you're a dazzler like i am you've got to hide things so that you can dazzle people at just the perfect moment got it but uh it was the question how did we get to this point i mean well okay well that now that the cat's out of the bag and you've talked about you know you basically being besties with nick for probably much longer than i've been aware still you know how how did we reach point a to point b to where we're actually getting together collaborating making music together so like it was two years ago now wasn't it just right yeah yeah yeah tell the story you came to a show well you told the story last time so i was like i'll do it i'll do it this nick's a better tour tori stellar nick is better at talking than i am so i like to let him take whatever but um yeah i uh i think that i think specifically what it was like i'm always kind of you know talking about 311 a little bit uh on twitter or whatever but there was a pretty big like somebody asked me like what my favorite what my first concert was on this like kind of uh public access tv show in brooklyn that i was on and i said that i went to my first real concert was a 311 concert and i talked about how i really liked 311 and like you said it was good music to chill with your bros too good music to chill with hang with the boys yeah and uh they liked that and then um you know so people on nick's camp saw that because they were just listening to my music and um shared it with nick and then nick liked it and then i came to i got some backstage passes some cool vip backstage passes still in my scrapbook and i uh and uh met nick nick said after the show and we took a cool photo um compared heights and nick was like by the way he's like the only person that's taller than me in the music business he won by the way go on yeah he's a tall guy and snoop dogg right say about the same snoop i don't know i can't remember that's cool i've never been back to i haven't been back to back with snoop in a long time so but uh yeah peanut our bass player is taller than me he's about your height so in case he's watching i just have to be honest that i'm not the tallest person 311. anyway go on all right he wouldn't like that but i said uh or nick was just about to like say okay well nice meeting you i gotta go now um send me some music uh you know i'd like to i'd love to play guitar on it and i was like okay you're awesome but really deep in my heart thought that he was just being nice because i do the same kind of thing to people sometimes and be insincere i mean yeah and uh but it turns out nick is is uh seemingly incapable of being insincere and uh texted me and said hey i'm serious about the guitar thing so i sent him some music and he sends me back something with guitar on it but not only guitar but a little bit of vocals on there and it just uh blew me away and uh you know then it became my primary focus um and that very first song was called to paying a state of mind which is just like a um i live in topanga and it's just like a mindset i'm wearing my topanga state of mind shirt tonight and it but his his his track just evokes such a like uh ethereal but um nostalgic kind of i think you're pretty great siri just got activated um but uh he thinks you're great yeah let's need that more in my life but anyway yeah that was the first time we did was to paying a state of mind and then it would just have been super easy we were just sending stuff back and forth and um it was just really fun and easy and exciting for me to get into his totally unique process which is total auto didact like he just works through experimentation and a ton of tinkering and just absorbing his way of making music and just a lot of fun for me to get the timeline straight were you aware of george's music before he started kind of openly like you know claiming 311 as first concert greatest band of all time my favorite band my life would have never been the same without 311. no i mean i was i had a crash course in vaporwave and george clanton is like as soon as i heard about him i mean i just was like i'll just check that out but then i was like well this is this is cool this is reminds me of a certain time that almost never was but it feels nostalgic but um it's just it's futuristic and retro at the same time yeah george and i have had similar conversations about his music where it feels like a past that while also being the future that never quite had occurred or or something i mean the way that him and i have talked about it it sort of feels like something that's placed in the late 90s early 2000s like when computers were first starting to you know become a more commercially available and it was like oh man the future is going to be really exciting and and then it's just like oh just facebook's collecting our data and you know that's just basically like where it ended up going like beyond that you know what other sort of first impressions did you have from from george's music you know anything that sort of goes beyond just kind of the nostalgic vibe of it um his way of of twisting sounds with saturation and time stretching to make it sound super analogy and and lo-fi um but still crisp enough to give you that energy um so i i would pick his brain on what plug-in did you use for this how did you get this like this and he would tell me and then i would forget and you know to to move it beyond a musical realm for just a little bit because george is the person who he is i mean you know what were your first impressions of of george just as as a person he's a bit of you know he's kind of an eclectic fellow an eclectic soul uh super smiley and positive energy like i like what george was saying earlier about nick is incapable of being insincere like i don't i don't click with people who are trying to be like super cool and reserved i'm like i start i coin the term excitable ones because i get excited and i show it and i like genuine people and he was that's what he is super genuine and and positive and not like standoffish at all and you know once you guys had collaborated on that track or you know sort of came up with to paying a state of mind um beyond that like where did the collaboration take you was this did it continue to be this sort of file exchange type of thing or did you guys bring it together in person yeah after that backstage meeting i didn't see him in person again until or many many months later mostly it was just emailing back and forth so it was um it was definitely not a way i was used to working and that's what that's what i i love is to break up old patterns like we were talking before the show started about i was telling george to order a different type of burrito and not eat the same one each time not a chance got a little offended but anyway i i just love switching up the process that i'm working in and so doing it remotely like that and adding stuff back and forth and i would send him like a mumble where i was just it was just nonsense like scat scene and then he would sometimes use that in the final track i was like like okay that's cool we can run into that in there doesn't it sounds good whatever sounds good i you know i uh yeah i love it george george i want to ask you just just straight up um is this the record of the summer i i wish that this was the summer that's appropriate for this record you know like i i this record wasn't really made for this summer i guess it was made for whatever specific particular summer yeah uh so no you know i think that the record for this summer would sound much more um gritty well this isn't a kind of like how you escapist album yeah well well i was going to say kind of like how your music is sort of based on a past or a future that that never was this is kind of like a almost like a summer that never was bulls-eye you know i'm not i've never been good at um sort of being like on the cusp of whatever's happening in music or art or culture or the world you know i'm definitely like you know i started making chillwave after pitchfork brutally murdered it you know like years after it was already too late um so you know i just kind of rely on not even really making this album for you know there was released a lot of singles before this album came out so not even really making this album to be like for right now but everything that i make i'm thinking about well what's this going to sound like years from now and i think that you know people might especially like people who don't like george clinton fans who don't like 311 and and 311 fans who don't like george clanton like you know the people who say i thought it said george clinton got excited there's there's something on this record for them too you'd say well i i think that as time goes on when they realize that this album isn't doesn't have anything to do with like 311 not making music or george clanton not making music it's just going to um you know blossom for them too you know when people aren't being like why isn't why isn't this a new you know i want more rocking stuff but you'll be glad that you have this in the end something different a different flavor burrito yeah i mean there was something that you just said that kind of stood out to me because while this record is very much indebted to chill wave i think a little bit more than than slide i would say and it's super summery in tone um it it still feels like even though you you have that shift and and nick obviously plays the role that he does there still is as you said that huge note of escapism to it and it's like you're giving your audience another world to kind of exist in you know just kind of another place to kind of be in um you know how much thought kind of goes into that is is there also just like kind of an element of being high to this record too like obviously you have the dogs on the front get ready to light up the bong and everything but uh like how deep do those layers go is it just like chilling with your bros getting high with some dog babes or is it like this entire like you know mental escape to exist in for the time that the record is playing i mean we actually go ahead please okay we had we had a conversation about when the world started going to hell in a handbasket like is this appropriate to put out this sort of escapism album that's not really um that was written before all this like you know tension and racial reckoning that's going on and this all this fear and like and we just said well we we it's it's done and we don't want it we didn't want to sit on it so but we did have a conversation about well it does feel a little like out of step but maybe people are ready for a little miniature vacation and that's what songs can be is take i mean even though we're kind of stuck at home and we're not doing our normal summer vacations and that kind of thing maybe you know sitting out on your porch and just taking in the sunset listening this music is like perfect for this summer yeah i mean it certainly feels like it's almost in in a way like a an emotional band-aid inadvertently you know for everything that's happening now to an extent um you know i want to ask you guys because you're such different personalities it seems from just you know talking to both of you so far and you both come from different realms of the music world and you've both been successful respectively in different eras of the music world i mean what have been some of the biggest takeaways and things kind of gained from working with one another i mean i imagine nick would have tons of experience to sort of bring to the table while george has this scrambled up smiley personality and and head where he he's sort of uh i don't know george to me sort of sees the world through childlike eyes in a way you know it's a but but give me some further insight into what you guys are kind of bringing to each other personally and artistically coming together there was some times when i would pictured him like because he would give send me mix like number 27 or something like that that i pictured he was just like slamming his head on the keyboard like if something's not work sometimes he would just be like super finding it but other times he'd be like i just had to revert and go back like 15 versions ago because something wasn't working and he's just all like going by feel and um but for me it was more like um he would send me a track and i would just put it on probably have like sports on or something like that but on mute and then just play guitar while i'm listening to his track and my hands would just start finding something finding a melody and um and then i would pretty much just go to the studio and demo it the next day and send it to him and then so for me it was more of a first draft thing and like i said he got into like draft number 30 and stuff like that so um but i you know i told him after after i sent him that first track to paying a state of mind and he just kept cracking me up with the wording of things that he was saying to me and i was like i'm just so glad i i got um in into your delightfully weird vibe and i didn't know if he was going to be offended but that's always how it's been to me that he just goes he does his own thing and that's nice to see you know what i mean he's not a he's not an imitator he's just being super genuine yeah i mean sort of like to the ethos that you were speaking of earlier it seems almost like reaching out collaborating with george and taking this risk is is sort of like your own way of switching things up artistically creating a glitch in your own matrix and you know meanwhile george is just still getting the same burrito and and maybe maybe he'll sort of you know take that to heart one day and he'll throw a wrench in the works and get it he's gonna remember this conversation next time he's standing outside the burrito stand i know it he will he will and he'll actively ignore it that's so true i mean um the other you know most of the other options it's like well do you want the bacon or do you want the chorizo and i go well i'll have potato again i don't want cactus so i'm going to get the potato the cactus makes your teeth squeal uh you know what i'm talking about squeaky teeth it's like when your hair is too clean and you you squeaky clean yeah anyway uh i think all that stuff that nick was talking about version number 30 and version number 15 and all that that's got to do more with ineptitude than anything you know it's just like if i knew what i wanted to happen you know if i knew or if i knew how to uh you know do the thing the correct way there would only be a few versions so you know nick is sending me a version or two uh you know he knows what he's doing he goes um you know when nick says he means it and you know that's the one and you know for me i'm like i don't know and and um i'm not i you know i don't know music theory and i don't know how to make chords with my hands or anything like that everything is kind of accidental and a lot of things like driving a song driving in my car was one of the last songs to be finished on the album and it like that was a tough one for me to and then in the end it was like well i'm using a uh you know i'm using a um a fake macintosh that has a lot of computer errors and the project got corrupted and part of the project getting corrupted is one of the synthesizers switched its preset without me fiddling with it and it sounded ten times better and i go okay well there it goes so you know it takes me a long time to make music because even random fate uh is is one of the tools that must be utilized in order to make something good i think that i've got more patience and focus than any amount of talent or i'm a good curator of accidental problems thank you for going into your process george i i mean that was that was more than you've given me before and i and i love it um i want to tell you guys really quickly that you can throw some of your own questions for george and nick into the chat or direct them at our mod soir and uh we'll be reading them at least some of them out to them in a few moments i have a few more questions that i want to ask them myself but get your questions thrown out there get them ready speak your mind on your own questions so i can sort of relay them and i want to ask you guys you know sort of something about music business related something that i've spoken on recently and kind of grabbed my attention as far as like a headline and i think um this will be interesting to hear from both of you i'd love to hear both of your own perspectives separately here because george in his own right is um kind of the perfect picture of the modern musician and that he's wearing a lot of different hats and uh he's his own promoter and producer and songwriter and simultaneously is like label head 100 electronica very entrepreneurial in his own right um festival yeah has his own festival i mean kind of you know doing everything and nick comes from a very different era of the music industry we're business wise in terms of sales tours i mean everything operated far differently and recently the spotify ceo has been quoted as saying hey coming out with a record every three or four years that's not it's not doable you know if you want to make money or be successful or enjoy life or i guess not worry about starving to death it's it's not enough you know it's a do you sort of like vibe with that sentiment is this just kind of the new normal is that just the way things are or is this kind of spotify in their ceo trying to justify an exploitative business model that musicians should be trying to reject i don't know i mean i hadn't really thought of that i mean i know you just gotta go kind of go by feel um that you can't just be like well it's thursday i have to put out a song no matter whether it's good or not you have to kind of the muse pays off is generous with you more sometimes more than others you know what i mean like sometimes ideas are you're you're in a flow state and other times it's just like well i'm just gonna do something else now and wait till the ideas just start building up so um i don't know i wouldn't base my creative output on you know what a streaming service guy said but but yeah i mean cycles have gotten way faster than they used to be but like when 311 first started out we put out our first record in 93 our second record in 94 and our third record in 95 and then toured on that for an extra and then it was a two years until our next record so um but you know that was that was what felt right at the time we were just so excited and you have so many ideas that like so much energy at that age and now for me i have three daughters and different things that wouldn't make that possible to put out that many records you know you are voyager and then now with george plan yeah what's next here you know that's what's so fun is just waiting to see how things unfold but certainly looking forward to getting back out on the road and you know missing we had a really nice tour plan to be out there with incubus this summer and um but life had other plans so just gotta roll with the punches and make the best of it and trying to make this like a really special you know good old days type time for me and the kids like it's just it's just been us together and doing fun different things that we've never done you know board games and cooking weird things and playing stuff outside so just got to make the best of it and george i mean you're the one who's uh essentially you know coming up during this paradigm i mean you've is this wise in terms of music i mean this this is sort of the world that you have started in i mean do you feel like yourself need to be coming out with something every year every other year you i mean you're always working on something it's it seems i mean is this just sort of the way things are or you know do you feel like there's something to kind of be i don't know cringed at in terms of that statement this insistence that musicians need to be kind of working their fingers to the bone in order to just kind of make ends meet well i mean he's just speaking the truth i think the problem is is that you know people feel as though he is in control of the future because he's you know theoretically like saying you're getting paid this fraction of a cent and he has the power to change it you know theoretically uh i think it's you know not in defense of him you know i think it's more complicated than that it's i think that the most compelling argument is well how if it's if you can't afford to pay musicians anymore then how are you paying joe rogan you know a gazillion dollars to sign an exclusivity deal sure um so that just kind of you know you feel sorry you feel like well i understand you got to run a business and a lot of people are getting spotify for free and that's nice and also i get to benefit from it because a lot of people are hearing my music uh who otherwise wouldn't because of the ease of access like when i was a kid i had the 95 311 cd uh and i but i only had like seven other cds and i just listened to seven cds in the radio and that was it i didn't have access to all the music in the um well you're right or in in particularly somebody who's as underground as as i am um i think you know part of the new paradigm is that well a lot more underground artists are are being discovered maybe it's a little bit harder to um make money uh or be successful but at the same time you know maybe um for the people who take their their fate into their own hands which i identify as maybe it's a little bit easier for a sort of middle class of musicians to exist in in a timer that was you know maybe that was not as possible earlier in history you know um and i see myself as that it's like well you know when you're growing up everybody says oh you can't be a musician you know you'll never make it what are the chances it's such a fraction of a pr you know everybody wants to be a celebrity or whatever it is you'll never make it you know that's not a real job um and that's you know what i was told by everybody you know that's what everybody i'm sure that nick heard the same thing many times and stubbornness pulls you through um but i i think that that's you know the other side of the coin is i think that that's less true today um i think if making it is you know making a you know being able to provide for a family um then maybe you can you know maybe more more people than ever uh can make it uh you just have to work your ass off uh that's the way that i feel so i've always got my hand in some kind of cookie jar anthony uh you know to answer your question obviously i don't i'm not like constantly um releasing a ton of music because like nick said the muse you know you have to be there in the right place at the right time you can't force it uh you can't just make bad music to to to make a buck because then it just cancels itself out but you can at any moment you know design a t-shirt and put your t-shirt out or decide that you're going to put more effort into your record label and put other people's music try to teach try to teach other people what you've learned and try to help them make become part of the middle class you know the musician middle class and um you know start we're streaming on twitch uh every thursday at uh 8 p.m eastern uh you know give us give us the url as well please uh it's 100 backslash 100 100 electronica yes this week we're having tv girl on speaking of ancient chillwave history tv girl is you know my neighbors close friends of mine and uh the main singer gentleman from tv girls coming on this week but anyway i digress anthony fantano uh you know i think that spotify is not where i make my most money i have to hustle um but spotify you know i think in some ways in many ways it helps me hustle i've got i think that that's where i'm getting my most plays you can look up my songs on youtube and i'm i i'm not [ __ ] on youtube but i've got you know millions of plays on spotify so i have to attribute that to you know the ease of access and the radio function or whatever it is i'm not getting a lot of playlists but people seem to be enjoying my music on spotify and we just you just have to try your best to kind of turn that into die-hards who want to join your patreon or buy a t-shirt to to try to to try to make a living yeah i mean to me it seems like as as long as you're willing to be creative and come up with your own revenue streams on the fly i mean all the most obvious and industry connected ones are probably not going to pay out the most because they require the least amount of creativity to buy into you know okay yeah sure just get my music up on this platform that everybody is on but as long as you're willing to be industrious and as you say you know sort of take your own future in your own hands and you know sort of come up with what exactly people are going to be buying into rather than just kind of going along with what makes the most sense marketing wise then uh you know sky could be the limit um you know as as far as the twitch channel and and other things i mean before we move on to a few fan questions do you want to update us any further on sort of the 100 electronica empire because it does seem to have expanded at least a little bit since the last time we had a conversation i mean it seems like you guys are getting more ambitious in terms of artists on the label content you're putting out ways that you're trying to expand the whole thing yeah i mean i since we spoke uh in your neck of the woods on that interview i think that i was kind of doing almost like a proto um 100 percent we we now have a uh a festival called 100 electronicon um which is you know tongue-in-cheek kind of like everything that i do play on comic-con right um and uh we were doing a 100 electronica tour and that's how i ended up in your area um and that was a success we took that idea and kind of well let's get everybody on the label under one roof and then kind of expand it to this other kind of vaporwave and vaporwave adjacent group of people and do the kind of the first vapor wave like in in live person festival and that was a big success we were we did two last year we were supposed to really slam dunk very good slam dunk this year um but obviously the virus effed us up but you know i'm pretty proud about you know kind of we're selling more records and more t-shirts than we ever have before we've got kind of a new you know a new kind of stan uh a new kind of fandom that's kind of following along with everything and i'm the thing that i guess that i'm most proud of is that you know i kind of say well okay here's here's the rule book um here's how you can be uh essentially unknown vaporwave artist and quit your job uh you know here's start a patreon i'm not going to give it all away because you know i've got to be cut in somehow to give away all the secrets but uh you know so you're starting you're starting a consulting gig on the side on top of it i mean in the modern era what what's a label to do you know i think we're more like more than a record label of the old times we're more like a i keep saying we're more like a skate team you know we've got our thrasher shirt uh and uh you know we sponsor artists and there's no there's no uh contracts you know or anything and i think that you know i think that the sad side of you know what's so upsetting about and what got that conversation started with spotify is like well you can't just be an artist anymore you know you have to have a certain amount of business acumen and those things just do not you know i'm blessed to be born under the capricorn moon or some [ __ ] i don't know i'll have to have to ask my beyonce uh but you know so uh you have to have a business acumen and be you know a creative person and pull those two things together you can't just be kind of like a you know the airhead that i come across i'm also kind of a business savant of some some description you know and i think nick is actually a big inspiration because he's being modest over there but you know nick has a his own empire you know i have a 311 license plate holder and they have the 311 cbd uh stuff and 311 you know it's like who do you want to get your weed from you know well [ __ ] 311's got it figured out you know so you know they've got he's got his hand he's a he's a business playboy himself he 311 has their own festival their own cruise all these things and so i kind of look to that and i say well i see a ton actually a ton of parallels between our fandom not insofar as their taste but insofar as the way that 311 interacts with their fans and being like showing them love and being like really kind of accepting of all different kinds of people you know you can be yourself and there's just the positivity and i feel like that's what i want to stand for so i look up to nick in that way and i feel like that's kind of the community that you know if i've built a community that's the com that's what i think that's what i see when i look at who's showing up at our shows and our festival and who's in our chat room and stuff you know it's like i'm really proud of that and i think that they feel like this kind of inclusive vibe then that's just a wanting to be more like 311 you know all right well we'll try to i was holding back some tears on that on the end of that answer um so let me ask a few fan questions here um this this person wants to know let me let me see uh cloud yes cloud city wants to know what this release do i think or do you think vaporwave is bound to break through uh the mainstream more and i i guess to extend off that do you think vaporwave and you know sort of the chill wave stuff that you've been uh working with on this record does that have mainstream viability or do you think that can sort of come back in a way because as you sort of said earlier because when you sort of started in on it pitchfork had kind of already killed it you know i don't think that this is a mainstream album uh and i don't know it depends on what you're telling me you you don't though you don't i mean i mean i don't know that it i mean what's mainstream is 100 gex mainstream i mean it's it's true but you know it's not not to like pigeonhole you here or anything but like if people can get into the dreamy neo-psych blissful vibes of like a tame impala record like why couldn't they enjoy this sort of you know with the same kind of mass consumption sort of thing well um you know reach i i think is one thing and uh you know just kind of like this it would be like i don't know i just didn't i don't think that either me or nick i don't want to put words into his mouth but like i don't think that we really approach this to make a mainstream album this is definitely just something that we like did and had fun doing and you know if uh you know i don't even think that you know 311 is like mainstream like that i guess i'm just you know what's mainstream is taylor swift mainstream where it's like you know what i'm saying so i guess it depends on how i think it'll make it more mainstream and i don't think that this is kind of like definitely the die hard vapor heads are going to say this is not vaporwave you know this this this has you know about as much to do with vaporwave as sly does it's definitely inspired by kind of existing in that realm for so long but i don't personally don't want to be yeah i don't want to be pigeonholed by any genre confines like i've never i just i feel like that's just boring and you know i think if genre didn't exist and we wouldn't have like house music or like you know break beat hardcore is like my favorite you know like like jungle it's like my favorite type of music like i can always put that on and i guess without genre you wouldn't have that and i wouldn't be able to just type jungle into youtube and be happy every time um but like i don't you know i i feel like the shit's all over the place so i don't know i'm definitely getting off topic will it make it more mainstream [ __ ] i hope so i don't know you know um i personally i take offense you i think 311 is pretty mainstream i remember how omnipresent those hits were back in the day i had the 1995 tape and the red hot chili peppers tape and the raging s machine tape and you know i had all those tapes and the weird al bad hair day tape and the coolio tape and the biggie tape i had all those tapes so well obviously i didn't mean to say you know 311 is uh you know a secret band or anything but i'm just trying to think like when you when i'm thinking about mainstream i'm thinking about how like people say that rihanna like one of the things that people in vaporwave say a lot is that rihanna kind of took vaporwave for a year and used like a lot of these stylistic things i think there was like a vmas performance and so i'm thinking like you know is this going to kind of i don't know i think that vaporwave and its stylings have already kind of been milked for their kind of popular culture references that they can be used on the you know to kind of be like the cool new thing i think that everybody's kind of already seen what vaporwave has to offer as kind of like a visual style and i guess that that's why i'm trying to branch out and redefine it and try to explore ways that vaporwave can kind of morph other elements of music but i think that i think a vaporwave more is kind of like it's just like an underground movement i think we're definitely strengthening that underground movement people say vaporwave is dead they that's just people who nobody likes their music anymore say that like if vaporwave was dead then you know i wouldn't have 2 000 records you know stacked up shipping out today you know what i'm saying like go [ __ ] yourself vaporwave is just like you just you just gave up so um you know i think that there's i think vaporwave is going to be stronger you know i think of it like it's like a new punk thing when you asked about you know what was our intentions did we think it was gonna do this or that like for me i try and stay out of results and just focus on having a purely creative from the heart follow the muse serve the song type of attitude when i'm making the music and then stay out of like oh no begging for praise you know what i mean like it's of course we all like to be acknowledged and stuff like that but um i just know that we did our best on these songs when we did them and then stay out of the results and just sort of let the cards fall where they may because like we were talking about earlier with the the rise of the internet ooh trippy um that you know it of course democratization of music is a good thing because it allows for more working-class heroes like george that's like a one-man operation um but then it also is this like instant feedback of like okay now i'm gonna see what this person and this person and this person thinks of what i did so i just it could drive you crazy so i just seem like you know stay out of that you know just use the internet but not too much no i i love how you just kind of phrased that and you're you're one of the few people who's been like industry connected successful in the industry for a long time and has actually acknowledged the democratization of you know sort of music and opinions and acknowledged it as a good thing um in most cases and i'm sure you're well aware like uh people who already kind of established in a way absolutely hate it and have nothing but sort of higher for for that but um this next question goes to you nick eric beggs asks if the aesthetics of this record and sort of the musical world and background that george comes from those sounds those vibes those styles um is that anything that you would be interested in incorporating in a future 311 album or anything like that yeah i mean that reminds me of what we were talking about a minute ago being trapped in a genre like um i always just want to break out of patterns and i remember when we first got started for some reason everyone would be like 311. isn't that a ska band and i'd be like no that might maybe part of one song was ska but um so yeah i always like to broaden the palette and um [Music] you know the i think there was some dreamy and ethereal parts like uh there's a song called mind spin on the um sound system album and guy i love it is all this swishing swirling sort of pad keyboards and like long dreamy guitar notes and stuff like that so maybe that was a little vapor wavy right there like back in 1998 or nine whenever we made that but um but yeah influences come in and out of our life and you just have to be like open to it like just follow the muse wherever it leads co-signed that that second half of mind spin is [ __ ] it's like [ __ ] amazing i i love it i i just yeah i mean and if people say that you know we you know if anybody thinks that like we don't go together or like this doesn't sound like 311 you know which those comments are less frequent than i thought that they were going to be but you know we get them and like nick says he doesn't read the internet i need to take a page out of his book because i am glue somebody says something bad to me i'm like you're wrong and here's why you know i'm i'm in there so uh last time we had a discussion we talked about that too yeah yeah and you're like zen on it too you know people are like anthony fantano it was really [ __ ] up how you killed all those people and says they're just like well it happens every time i just have to let it just let it happen you know so i had this crazy thought this morning i have to share when i was jogging i realized that i i'm gonna date myself right now when i was uh in 1984 i got a commodore 64. and it had the like the movie war games where you put the phone on the cradle to do a dial up modem and we would connect to these bulletin boards so i have been on the internet since 1984 and i've never gotten into uh like i've never trolled somebody i've never gotten to an argument with somebody on line um it's just something that i i yeah there's things i want to say sometimes i get my feelings hurt like anybody else but it's just not good for you to do um so i've been on the internet for a really long time but i just never i never want to get into the trolling zone because it's it's a pretty sad place to see people [ __ ] hearing about what's going on and just to say from my own personal experience i mean you know i've i've trolled people back and gotten into internet arguments and stuff and yeah and there was sort of like a point in the existence of the the platform where you know that might have been like a you know funny little community thing to say oh you know you dunked on somebody which you know might even be sort of something that you're feeling a little bit now but like once it moves beyond that there's just too much attention on everything that you say in everything that you do especially if it's a negative thing and even if it is sort of funny and it is sort of something that maybe like your hardcore audience might like get or might think is kind of cheeky like you can't depend on everybody to get it you know what i mean like to some people who are maybe a little bit more outside a little bit more casual it may just look like mean or like you're fighting and not always the best look yeah burning someone is not a good way to bond even though it does create bonds when like yeah it's us two against that guy but it's not a a long-term good way to bond there's so much tribalism and you know team choosing going on and i just want to not fuel that at all all right um luke dog asks uh this is a 311 question we have nick first of all a happy anniversary to the transistor album uh what is a memorable moment in recording uh that album that we may not know already so um transistor was the album where we had just come off the blue album self-titled album we um and put out in 95 and then um and it was a very compact album that was like um all rockers mostly uh not a ton of diversity and then and then we got embraced but we got a blood split upon him tv and that's where all of a sudden our shows got way way bro yeah buzz clips like holy [ __ ] like today it's like is it on the pla is it on the spotify playlist are you doing well on youtube back then it was like did he get a buzz clip and everyone watching right now is like what the [ __ ] a buzz clip [Laughter] because they put this little like 15 second um buzz clip trailer before letting you know this is something special this is what everyone's talking about so once we got anointed with that then you know things changed a lot and like where we're talking about with fan feedback a ton of people is like 311 sold out just because i was like we haven't changed our process we're still making our own unique hybrid blend of music and just because more people are into it doesn't inherently make us sellouts but anyway that that was the dialogue of the time but then for on transistor we were like let's just go freaky let's go as many many different directions as we can and it was the time of like trip hop and massive attack and tricky and portis head and so there was a lot of and we were super into king tubby um and the dance hall of the day which was like um chaba ranks and stuff like that so a lot of different directions at once of course the hard rock and heavy rifts were in there but um and the funk and like so we that was a a time of just let us go as in many don't worry about how it's going to be live because that's why the blue album was like let's make them all songs that are going to be kick-ass live and then we didn't worry about that in transistor and then when it came out it was poorly received but then after a while people got into it and now it's a lot of 311 fans favorite album but a lot of people are like this is soft these guys lost it they used to be cool blah blah blah and um you know it's done because we we felt really good about the album but and that so that's kind of why i what i was saying earlier about developing it well i hope you like it but if not it's okay i know i did my best at the time because you have to develop a bit of a thicker skin or you're going to go crazy 30 years into the music business yeah it's it almost makes me kind of reflect because i just remember how big like that sellout narrative used to be back in the day especially if as you have just described like you've changed your sound like even if that sound change wasn't to a super obvious commercial end which obviously is not the case for that record and and even if you don't sort of see that commercial success immediately after like the conversation still goes to oh you sold out oh it changed you're a sellout and and meanwhile these days it's almost like you know unheard of do not have four or five or six different genres or like subgenres breached on a new pop artist's you know uh hit record and i mean is is is that inspiring or interesting to you in any way to sort of see a lot of new records stylistically be a lot more or a lot less homogeneous in in tone and sound and style because it seems like back in the day you kind of needed to have a sound and focus on that sound and the moment you deviate from that sound your fans are going to be pissed and it seems like i don't know maybe newer younger fans are a bit more open to artists you know branching out into different styles maybe i don't know yeah i i think that uh more more randomness is allowed it's cool to hear how like there's you know guitars and hip-hop these days and a lot of different cross-genre bringing in edm elements and stuff like that and you know i just like trying new different things together but um you know it's it's it's a never-ending journey as long as you realize that there's new things to combine um and new things to explore then it's it's a never-ending journey george did you just sniff that water just give it a sniff uh it's water now i wanted to see if like what percentage water it was and it didn't smell like water so i'm not going to drink it's melted ice got it i it didn't smell like it was going to be good i just that well that's that's actually a smart move give it a sniff before you drink it and if it doesn't smell good if it doesn't pass the smell test just give it up put it down yeah i mean i don't know i don't know i was i thought that you were paying attention to something else and i could just smell my water i can see everything you're doing on screen but um enrique uh wants to know what's what's your favorite daw to use this person wants to know your favorite daw we're talking about each of us i'm approaching this guy sure sure i'm um like i was talking about my computer kind of being ancient and like thrown together and screwing up all the time i'm still in logic nine which hasn't been updated in eight years and just i everybody tells me oh you know logic x logic 10 is amazing uh you know there's and it's the same thing but to me it's not the same thing i try to mess with it and just moving like the play button from from the bottom to the top is enough to piss me off i'm just hardcoded you know i'm gonna eat the same burrito over and every kind of guy you know i i can appreciate that i i did not move off of final cut 7 until there was a an update where uh it just wasn't allowed it ceased to open it didn't open anymore just it would not open so i i didn't leave final cut 7 until then exactly i'm on high sierra uh so i can't because that's the that's the newest and it and it's even it wasn't made to run on high sierra so it's unstable yeah um but like i was on sierra or i was on mavericks until like last year and then they were like we're not going to support google anymore and i was like our chrome i mean you know the browser and so i updated the high sierra and i was like well maybe i can like keep you know keep my email for an another couple of years um but yeah i mean it's been a nightmare never once you get something going never upgrade i think i'll be using this computer for the rest of my life from you know as though it's like a tape deck or something like i'll always record music on it it's got all my you know i got all my tricks on one computer you don't want to you don't want to go and try to make you be creative and then be forced to try to figure something out um when you know exactly what you want to do it's going to harsh it's going to harsh the mel bro especially when you're you're talking about um is is the same computer that you know the file got corrupted and then it gave you the the scent the synth that and that that [ __ ] happens all the time okay all right well it's it's also inadvertently like your writing partner as well it's the ghost in the machine yeah it is indeed every album that i've ever done has been i've kept the same hard drive and just keep i just keep cloning it to like now i've got a four terabyte hard drive and then another four terabyte hard drive as overflow that i just keep cloning it so i'm i have all of my projects and everything from 2006 as far back as 2006 and in various states of corruption let me ask you guys before we wrap things up where do we go from here essentially will you be collaborating more in the future kind of going your own separate ways for a little while i mean is there going to be more solo work from george more 311 stuff more collaborative singles you know let us know what to look out for what to expect in the immediate future well we've got a secret appearance coming up that we can't quite announce yet um but and we were we were supposed to do his um his festival in new york but that was of course canceled so i was really looking forward to that so i could definitely once they have shows again get into performing um with for this you know side project as well because george's fans are um super energetic and it was a really good vibe i when he did his la version of i did like an unannounced appearance and rocked a couple songs with him and the place it was it was a lot of energy it was really cool um and you know a younger um demographic than what we usually have so it was cool it was more like the club shows of old that i was used to in on our days coming up so likely to do that again whispered right here he says oh i have i haven't felt that way and you know i haven't that was an interesting you know exp the club shows an interesting experience i haven't felt that way in a while you know and i remember the 311 fans were commenting on the video like if i was five feet away from nick hexa performing i would die that's cool but the funny thing is is i was out there like setting up my gear and my pedalboard and tweaking things and to and like nobody realized because it was his people and nobody had any idea that hey that's the guy that's on george's new music so i could have just been some like gray-haired roadie as far as they were concerned it's like when the kardashians go to cleveland you know so to make you understand it anthony no oh i i yes thank you for linking it to the kardashians because that's that's actually the lens through which i view every stone yeah right that's where we relate exactly yeah that's that's our that's our thing um so beyond the uh super secret uh live thing that uh uh is coming down the pipe very soon that we can't give too many details about uh you know anything else artistically going on with you or 100 electronica you know around the corner that you can sort of give people a heads up about uh well your boy matt watson um has kind of written a uh a screenplay for a music video that i meant to just twist nick's arm into doing but you know we don't we don't know i told him i said you need to to like get this figured out i can't present this [ __ ] weed idea to to nick hacksome we have to have something serious for him i i you know that's that's that's that's exactly how you should talk to him and treat him just say get this the [ __ ] out of my face listen he's out that he needs he needs a little bit of uh you know manhandling you know he likes a tough a strong hand matt watson nick not you this this this other whatever and that's you you're you're the iron fist yes yes we've we've uh we've created this really fruitful relationship over the past few weeks lives five minutes from me and uh we've we've struck enough a a nice little friendship but uh yeah you know i've been while i've been working on this collab album i've been working on a few songs so yeah i've got the new george clanton record about half done probably gonna fart out a a tide you over single a little you know a little a little ways down the road here pretty soon not too far but not too soon and um try to i really want to kind of um you know get that out and it takes me so goddamn long to make music i just you know i want to hunker down and get that out but you know i didn't really get a chance to answer like you know what it was some the question was like something like well what do you snick you know you know nick what have you gotten from this and george what have you gotten and yeah it's answer it as you please one of those things was i've never really collaborated with anyone before and i if we were in the same room i mean thankfully we started this project living on two opposite coasts and i moved to la shortly thereafter but if we were in the same room i would it's just not possible um the way that i it you know i have to wait for my computer to [ __ ] up and finish the song for me uh like i was saying uh and and just tweak little things until something pops in my mind and the moon has to be in the right position in the sky and all these different things have to be just so so it's got to be the 64th draft and all that stuff exactly and i've never thought that i could collab and it took nick kind of to say uh you know like um i couldn't turn that down could i so you can i had to figure out how to make it work and this really did work for me and i got the confidence now like if i can collab with nick exum you know i can collab with anybody so i'm like you know and gene dawson's dms being like let's set it off and uh he says tell anthony fentana hello for me yeah oh tell him hi back and and i could i could see the confidence i mean the way that you're approaching matt watson you're like get this you know get this out of here fix this do this if you know do you know he's easy to strengthen do you know who i am i've worked with nick hexson like you know that's the way he treats me i don't think that he realizes his uh his ultimate youtube power you know he's like oh my george wow and you know he's uh well you know what what i love about matt watson is he he does have a massive youtube dick he has a huge youtube dick but he views his uh you know his uh his music video directorial you know um contributions as sort of like you know him starting a a new seed you know he's he's trying to grow that from the ground up in in its own way and you know he's not trying to approach it you know like um you know i'm the youtube guy i've got a big youtube you know take me seriously as a music you know as a music video director because i got a big youtube you know he he wants he wants his uh his ideas to speak for themselves you know not yeah yeah not his reputation so you know if if uh you know he's he's approaching it in a humble way and that's that's respectable well you guys have been great thank you very much for you know shedding a lot of light on this collaboration and shedding further light on yourselves and everything that you guys uh did together and talking to us about music life and everything beyond you two have been great and and you two have been my first double interview so yeah this is the first time i've talked to two people at one time so you know a lot of firsts for all of us this is a bit it's gone swimmingly oh thank you and i just i just real quick want to give a shout out to all the 311 fans people they may not know that we have a multi-part series called uh 30 years of 311 coming out on 311.com where it's kind of like a documentary multi-part series and we're going to be streaming some vintage concerts that have never been put out before um and a bunch of cool stuff that you know so we can virtually celebrate our 30-year anniversary unable we were planning on doing 50 shows in 50 states as a way to celebrate can't do that um but we're going to do the best we can so we miss our people george's face right now is the face of every 311 fan watching this she's like yes that's for all that concert footage george is just biting his lip and smiling he's so [ __ ] psyched you know i maybe i missed it but i'm trying to show the enlarged to show detail three to negative gemini you know the girl that lives in my house yeah we're gonna put that out too okay i saw and you know i saw the only one time it was played anyway good times good times well you guys have a good one thanks so much all right you too all right

Channel: fantano

Views: 27,178

Keywords: george clanton, nick hexum, 311, music, musician, interview, pop, rock, electronicon, live, stream, anthony fantano, needle drop, collab

Id: WSG7lDTo41E

Length: 64min 53sec (3893 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 06 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

This was a good interview. In case you don't watch the whole thing, Nick gives a couple 311 updates right at the end:

• They are going to be having 30 year celebration streams with old concert footage never before released and documentary stuff
• They are going to be releasing etsd3 but he didn't say when