Welcome back excitable nation! Another Monday is upon us and that means it’s time to recognize another member of the positivity posse. This week we feature Mr. Dave Coultas!

Dave’s love for 311 goes back to the year 1994 when a friend of his, who lived in Nebraska and went to high school with the guys, told him to go see the band because he knew Dave would like their music. Low and behold his friend was right. “It blew my mind and I was hooked instantly.”

Just the other day, on August 15th, Dave celebrated his 25th live show in Salt Lake City, which is where the picture above was taken. Of the 25 shows, it’s the cruise in 2013 that Dave says truly changed his life. “I had never really done anything like that up to that point in my life! The fun I had on that boat was unmatched and when I came back the positivity lasted for months! I also felt so confident that I asked Brooke DaSilva out and we’ve been together ever since!” Dave and Brooke have been happily in a relationship for almost a year and a half now. Dave said, “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else but with her because we’re soul-mates.”

Dave is born, raised, and still residing in Portland, Oregon (he currently lives in North Portland).  During the winter of 94 he lived in Park City, Utah. Currently Dave works for Toyota Motor Sales and just celebrated 19 years with the company. A single father of a 10 year old special needs son named Ewan, Dave says that he has learned a ton from him over the years and continues to do so on a daily basis. He also has an 11 year old Staffordshire Terrier named Jango, loves the Portland Trailblazers and Kansas City Chiefs, and is a self-proclaimed “major Star Wars geek.” He even has a tattoo of Boba Fett somewhere on his body (location not disclosed! Haha).

His beard is what Dave says most people say sticks out in their minds when they hear his name or think about him, but that isn’t the sole thing making him unique. He mentioned that he can literally talk to anyone because he is very laid back and easy going. “I always tell people that I could have fun at an insurance seminar, hahaha.” Dave is also a huge fan of professional wrestling, but when not watching that he’s additionally is a “mega fan” of Seinfeld.

When not jamming out to 311, some other musical interests in his life are The Grateful Dead, Phish, Beastie Boys, Swollen Members, Jurassic 5, Bad Brains, Cake, Fishbone, RHCP, Black Sabbath, Snot, Hieroglyphics, and Del the Funky Homosapien.

Dave loved The Grateful Dead enough to follow them around for years. His favorite 311 song is “Off Beat Bare Ass” and he says he relates to a lot of the lyrics because of his travels with the dead. It’s just the song that hits home for him. “I also get pretty fired up when horrible criminals are released to make room for someone who has sold marijuana. It just touches all the right buttons for me and it is also my favorite 311 song!” One of his favorite quotes though comes from “Paradise:”  “Music’s what I need to keep my sanity.”

Dave has just one thing to ask the band: “After all these years what keeps 311 going?” Feel free to answer guys if you are reading! 🙂

His message to all of those who love 311 as much as he does:

“If I could give a message to all the fans reading this it would be what I’ve always done myself which is be yourself. No matter what anybody thinks. I’ve been the same guy since I was 18 and I try to practice kindness and positivity as much as possible with the hopes that karma brings it back around. And it has for me in my life. Treat people the way you want to be treated I guess. I know for sure that it’s always not going to be positive and will be bumpy but keep a level head and move forward towards the positive. It’s worked for me so far.”

——

That’s all for this week’s spotlight folks! Thank you to Dave for taking part in this fun and to all of you excitables who keep coming back and reading! It’s an honor to be able to write about all of you awesome people each week. Until we meet again….”It’s time to get down, boots to the ground!”

Much love – The Runt

We meet again my excitable friends! Right about now you might be looking at the photo above and thinking many things. I can assure you, this weeks fan spotlight is as interesting as the photo! Let’s not delay and get to it. It’s time to meet Mr. Patrick Hillin!

Let’s travel back in time to Patrick’s high school days. He and his “brother from another mother and fellow 311 junkie” Dan Millican were playing what they like to call the “sit up” game. “Basically, we had to sit up on a futon and the first one to lean back lost and got punched.”  As they started this game, Dan put on the Grassroots album to listen to as they played. Patrick had never heard the CD before. After a few bong hits and a couple of songs in, he turned and looked at Dan. “I look over and I’m mesmerized because he knows every fucking lyric, even the SA lyrics, and he’s just steady sitting there singing and rapping along. This goes on for almost the entire CD, him lost in the music, me lost in his singing the music (remember the bong rips). All of a sudden he looks over at me and says, dude what the fuck! How long have you been sitting back?!”  Patrick then got punched (a few times) and the two of them laughed for what he said felt like hours. That’s when Patrick says he became a real fan of 311.

Patrick’s show tally sits at 17, which includes 12 regular shows, 311 Day 2010 & 2014, and the third 311 cruise. It was hard to choose his favorite, however he said it hands down is the cruise. “Being able to be there with Jeremy Rawlings and Dan Millican, who are my brothers for LIFE, was incredible. Then of course there were three 311 shows, Rebelution, my introduction to Bad Rabbits, getting chocolate wasted in a banana suit off of non-stop soft serve ice cream, pizza sammys, no means yes and yes means anal, all of the wonderful people I met, free beer day, and of course the most amazing part: Getting to high five and take a picture with 311, dream come true. Every time I look at that picture I get pumped! It really captured the level of excitement running through all of our veins, truly amazing.”

“Omaha Stylee” is the song Patrick says he loves the most, but not for any sentimental reason or anything. “To me, that’s just raw 311, pure energy, throwing out MAD props to their (grass)roots and going hard in the process. That’s what it’s all about.” His favorite lyrics however come from “Freak Out” – “To all my friends, it’s not the end, the earth has not swallowed me yet.”

Some people live in one place their whole life. Others move around and Patrick is one of them. Born in Dallas, Texas, he lived there until he was 6, and then headed west. He has lived in Thousand Oaks, California, Tucson, Arizona, Washington, D.C., and then finally he returned back to his place of birth. If he had to pick one place that was his favorite stomping grounds, it would be Tucson. “Yeah it’s hot but there’s no humidity, the mountains and wildlife are amazing, tons of good golf, and monsoon season in the summer is fantastic. Every night in the summer, around the same time, the storm clouds come rolling in over the mountains and it POURS for about 2 hours with some kick ass lighting storms, and then it’s done. After that it’s nice and cool outside and the sweet smell of the desert makes you never want to go back inside. So yeah, Arizona was my favorite.”

To fund his 311 addiction, Patrick draws civil and structural plans for commercial construction projects. As he said, he gets paid to sit around and draw all day. “I have been fortunate enough to have my name on a lot of big projects in the greater DFW area. It’s pretty great to pour months of hard work into a project on paper and then a year later be driving down the road and see it constructed. Other than that it’s all the same old stuff: work hard to play hard, love everyone always, don’t be a dick.”

Patrick was asked what makes him unique, and he said he can’t think of anything. However something you may not know about him, which I believe makes him unique, is that his 4 front teeth are all fake as the result of a bike accident when he was 12. “I went right over the handle bars and face planted hahaha. I woke up in the hospital with one front tooth missing and now all four up front are fake.” Patricks guilty pleasure lately is something different that some of us (like me) would not be able to handle. “Lately, for whatever reason, I’ve been eating a lot of sardines, right out of the can. I have no clue why I ever started doing this, but it’s been going on for about 3 weeks now and I can’t get enough. Sardines.”

Patrick would like to give a shout out to 311 and deliver this message to them: “You guys are my musical heroes, I fucking love you, but will you please play some Skynard?”

As for his message to all of you in the universe of 311 fandom:

“You look good out there **slaps butt** good game, keep that shit up.”

——-

Thank you, thank you, thank you for reading again folks. Without you, I would be nothing. Each and every spotlight thanks you as well! Leave some love in the comments if you feel inclined. Until next time…”Life’s a bowl of punch, go ahead and spike it.”

Much love! -The Runt

Hello my excitable friends! I hope you had an excellent weekend full of positivity. Here we gather again to read another fan spotlight. This week we feature a fabulous lovely lady, Miss Vanessa Holliday!

It was Vanessa’s friend in middle school who got her loving 311. Her friends older brother would drive them around to activities before they had their licenses. “He was constantly blasting 311! I have to admit that at first I wasn’t really into them, haha. But they grew on me pretty quickly!”

With her show tally right around the 75 mark, I’d say her love for them grew tremendously! She doesn’t know the exact number but she has held on to all of her ticket stubs over the years. Picking her favorite show though she says is a tough one. “Transistor is my favorite album by far, so Pow Wow was an amazing experience event-wise, but the back-to-back Orange Peel shows in Asheville, North Carolina in 2009 still always stand out to me as my favorite regular shows to date.”

Vanessa has the title of her favorite song, “Time is Precious,” tattooed on her ribcage in her parents handwriting, so you can tell it holds a special place in her heart. “I definitely feel that this is one of their more lyrically mature songs and it’s one of my absolute favorites!”  She also LOVES the song “Galaxy” off Transistor. “I don’t think any other song comes close to it in a live setting!”

The Washington, D.C. area is where Vanessa has lived all of her life, minus when she was attending Virginia Tech and living in the mountains of southwest Virginia. She funds her 311 habit by working as an outside sales representative selling datacenter IT to the Army. Her residence is about to change though when she moves to Denver, Colorado, where she got a house with her awesome boyfriend, whom she met through 311! “Should be an exciting new experience!”

What else is Vanessa into? Well she loves classic rock and says Led Zeppelin is her favorite band from that genre. She also loves blasting hip hop music in the car and can get into pretty much anything except top 40 pop and country. Her guilty pleasure is reality T.V. and she calls herself a “reality T.V. junkie of epic proportions.”  “All the bad shows are on my DVR including (but not limited to) Dance Moms, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Bad Girls Club, Real Housewives…and many, many more!”

Vanessa prides herself on being physically fit and she is very active. “I love lifting weights and striving for excellence in all aspects of fitness. I also have a guilty obsession with Zumba, so I try to attend a class at least once a week!”

The other love in her life besides her boyfriend and 311 is her miniature turtle Yoda! She bought him at a beach store in Myrtle Beach for a dollar and was told he’d only live about 6 months. Six years later and he’s still with her! “He’s surprisingly pretty active and it’s fun to watch him splash around in his tank!”

Vanessa’s love for 311 has brought her a ton of fun over the years, helped her find love and also a ton of friends! Her message to them is this:

“Thanks for all the awesome memories and experiences I’ve had over the years as a result of traveling for your shows!  I’ve met all my closest friends as a result of being a fan of this band, and I’m very grateful for that…now if I could just get some of those friends to actually live in the same timezone as me, everything would be perfect haha.”

And to all of you out there loving 311 as well:

“See y’all in Jamaica ;-)”

—–

That my friends is Vanessa! I hope you all adored her story! So Denver excitables, make sure you give her a warm welcome once she gets there and if you see her on the cruise, make sure you say hello!

Until next week my friends, keep livin’ & rockin’!

Much love! – The Runt

Hey hey hey there my fellow 311 fans! Happy August to you all! Time to embrace the new month and week with the new fan spotlight! This week we have not one but TWO people in the spotlight! Now you may be wondering just why these two chose to do their spotlight together. Well it’s because without 311 they wouldn’t have met and fallen in love! Meet Zack & Diane Freeman!

Let’s begin with how the two of them fell in love with the band. Zack first heard 311 when the blue album came out, but really got into them when his friend Ryan told him to listen to Soundsystem. Ryan also told Zack how the band was all about spreading positivity and unity in their music. “I was mindblown and the music just spoke to me like it never had before.”  Zack then went and saw the band live on New Years Eve 1999/2000 when they opened for Red Hot Chili Peppers. “This was only my second concert I had been to and we were in the front of the stands and I loved it! So when they were going to play the House of Blues in Los Angeles on 1/30/2000 I was there! That was my first pit show and the show that made me the fan for life that I am today!”

Diane discovered the band in 2000 when her boyfriend at the time played Grassroots for her. Until then she only knew the songs that were played on the radio and she wasn’t really into that style at the time. Grassroots was different for her though and she was drawn to their musicianship, sound, and the change in the songs. “Instant fan drawn by their skill and message. And then I saw them live! Mind blown. That show ended up being a life changer for me.”

It really was a life changer for Diane and inevitably Zack. After that show Diane wore her Grassroots shirt to work the next day, pushing the boundaries of casual Friday because she was just so excitable from the show. It caught a guys attention and he asked her, “You like 311?” She replied, “I LOVE 311!”  In case you haven’t figured it out, the guy was Zack. Here is what happened next: “About a year later we started talking at a friend’s new years party. 311 came up and we spent the party talking about what their music means to us. That started our friendship in 2003 we started dating in 2005 and we married  in 2013. I love that I have been able to share 311 with my family and friends and turned most into fans by getting their ticket and taking them to shows!”

Diane and Zack got engaged at 311 Day 2012 (see photo below). So naturally, 311 Day events are very special to them! They were at the most recent one in New Orleans and said it was amazing because of the people they met that they know they’ll be lifelong friends with. Zack and Diane both said their all time favorite shows are a toss up between this event and the island show on the second cruise. Neither one have kept an accurate count of exactly how many shows they’ve seen, but Diane knows she is at 50 at least and Zack is somewhere between 60-65.

What song was the lovely couples first dance at their wedding to? Why 311’s “Two Drops in the Ocean” of course! Zack listed that song as one of his top 3 favorites, followed by “Uncalm” (which he loves because of the energy, rhythm, and beat along with the lyrics) and “Let the Cards Fall” (because of the musical structure and message of laying it all down and being real).  Diane said “Jupiter” is the song that really speaks to her. “No matter what goes wrong, there is always something in our lives to be grateful for.”  She also mentioned that a new favorite is “Tranquility” as it helped her develop a newfound peace in handling the death of her brother who passed away a year and a half ago.

Both Diane and Zack work for a bank, which is where they met and also how they fund their 311 habit! They were both born in California, although Zack spent a brief period as a child in Arizona. Then his parents divorced and he moved back to Cali. Diane credits her brothers for her love of music and she said her niece claims she is a “music encyclopedia.”  Zack says that Diane is awesome at going to 311 shows because she has a knack for planning their 311 adventures! When not on one of these fantastic adventures you can find Zack lounging in his recliner listening to vinyl, while Diane watches her guilty pleasure, which is any of the real housewives shows! Zack also loves to play guitar and he is in a band named Secret ‘Stache. He also has a ticket stub from the 311 show in Vegas that was scheduled for September 11, 2001. For obvious reasons, that show never occurred, but he is hoping to one day have the stub signed by the guys.

Each of them have lyrics that mean something special to them. For Zack those are, “It’s alright to feel good, it’s alright for nothing to be wrong, the deepest dream you have could be tomorrows song” and “Can you hear the void I describe, what can I say vacancy sounds like.”  Diane’s favorites include, “You gotta keep on climbing the hill cause if you think you’ll make it you will” and “Savor the sun, but when the clouds come make animals.”  They also share a favorite quote, that every 311 fan love, “Stay positive and love your life!”

It’s obvious that without 311 these two love birds might not have ever had the connection that made them realize they were meant for each other. They each have a message to the band they’d like to relay.

Diane: “Thank you! For creating the music that has become the soundtrack of my life, and for putting together such epic events. Because of 311 I have had vacations I only dreamed about and have met the most amazing excitable friends!”

Zack: “Thank you for being a band that inspires me every day musically and personally to continue to be real and spread Positivity, Love, Unity, and Respect.”

They also have personal messages for all of the awesome people out in excitable nation:

Zack: “Becoming a part of the 311 familia has been one of the most rewarding and unbelievable experiences of my life. Please continue to be the most peaceful, loving, united, and respectful people I’ve ever met so that we may hopefully bring some joy and positivity to this broken world.”

Diane: “Thank you we are an amazing community/ familia. Lets keep living and rockin!”

——

How cute is this couple? Hope you all enjoyed their joint story and learning how 311 brought them love! Leave them some love in the comments if you feel so inclined! Thanks to all for reading another spotlight, it makes me and the featured people feel all warm inside knowing that you do!

Much love! – The Runt