Hello again Excitable nation! Welcome to another edition of the 311 fan spotlight. This week let’s meet Jerad Davis!

It was when Jerad first got his drivers permit and he drove to Best Buy with a friend who proceeded to tell him to buy the blue album. “Their unique sound and live shows are what really turned me on to them.”

For show count, Jerad went back and added them up and surprised himself by finding out he’s only been to 41. However 22 of them have been since 2020 when he really started to travel to shows. “My first show was 2/24/1996 at Roy Wikins Hall in St. Paul, MN.  Had gone to see Cypress Hill.  The Pharcyde and 311 opened for them.  311 opened with Homebrew and the crowd rushed the stage.  I lost a shoe and ended up going up to the balcony as I was just blown away by the energy.  Watching the crowd bounce up and down as one organism was absolutely amazing! This is when I fell in love with 311!”

Jerad said it’s too tough to pick just one favorite show or event. He obviously loved his first show…but he also mentioned 311 Day 2020 being incredible for so many reasons. “I met in person for the first time some of my best friends to this day and the fact the band played half of their catalogue over 3 days and 6 sets.  So eerie leaving Vegas because the world had just shut down from COVID.  Then Red Rocks 2021 was a blast! I was there with so many close friends and made new ones.  The venue alone is worth it.  The Halloween show at The Stanley Hotel in 2021 where they filmed parts of The Shining was memorable.  Dressed as Alice from Alice in Wonderland that night! The album shows in Chicago and L.A. were epic as well.  Watching the Transistor set with my friends and the energy of the Blue album show is something I’ll never forget! Lastly, my first 311 Cruise this year was incredible. The sail away show was probably my favorite! Hearing Visit on the boat was magical!”

One of Jerad’s favorite songs is “Born to Live” because it has a very personal meaning to him. “It’s a miracle that I’m alive. I was diagnosed with liver and kidney failure.   I was in the ICU for 60 days and was told I probably wouldn’t make it out.  I have since had both transplants.”

Some lyrics that resonate with Jerad include: “About time to give up on the same old stuff I’m stuck on. And just say that it went wrong and move along,” “You got to keep on climbing the hill. Cause if you think you’ll make it you will’,’ and “It’s been a wild ride, I wouldn’t change a minute.”

Jerad grew up in Apple Valley, Minnesota, about 15 minutes south of Minneapolis. He has lived in and around this area his entire life and attended the University of Minnesota. He first really started getting into music by listening to what his father was listening to. “Started out with The Doors, Led Zepplin, and Pink Floyd.  What can I say, my dad has great taste in music.  My first concert was Tom Petty with one of my sisters the summer of 1995 when I was 15.  It was the start of my concert addiction.  In high school my friends and I went to many shows.  Some memorable ones were Rage against the Machine, Beastie Boys, Tribe Called Quest, Fugees, Cypress Hill, and of course 311! My favorite part of going to shows (especially traveling) is all the friends I get to meet up with.  It’s become more about the friendships and hanging out then the shows themselves.  They are just an added bonus.”

Fun fact about Jerad is that he checked himself out of the ICU to go see 311 one time. “It was against doctors orders.  I went back to the hospital after the show.  I was told that I might not have much longer to live and if I was going to die, I wanted to see my favorite band one last time.”

Jerad has a very unique relationship with his dad and it’s more of a friendship rather than a father/son bond. “He is one of my best friends.  We spend a lot of time together and I am able to share anything with him.  We go to a lot of sporting events together and watch a lot of movies and shows.  All my friends get along with my dad.  He can talk to them for hours while I don’t say too much.  Lol.  He understands my love for 311 and traveling to shows.”

Guilty pleasure for Jerad is custom framing artwork. “I have over 40 custom framed concert posters and art prints.  I think the frames are art into and of themselves.  I feel they greatly add the overall aesthetic of the piece of art. Most of them are concert attended posters. I’ve definitely slowed down on collecting over the last year as it’s not a cheap hobby and I only have so much wall space!”

Another band that is at the top of Jerad’s playlist right now is Slightly Stoopid. “They are so much fun to see live!  I’ll be seeing them in August at Red Rocks where they’re playing two nights in a row.  Also, a big Stick Figure and Dirty Heads fan.  I’ll be seeing them at Fiddlers Green in Denver next month.”

To 311, Jerad would like to send this message: ” Thank you for all the music, live shows, and the friendships I’ve made because of you guys”

Now here is his message to all his fellow 311 fans out there:

“Slow down, life’s not a race.  Don’t take everything so seriously. Quality over quantity.”

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Thank you Jerad for sharing your 311 story with us all! And of course, my sincere gratitude to all the readers of this little blog. Now go have an amazing week. Sending good vibes to you all!

Much Love – The Runt

Hello again my friends in 311 nation! Welcome to the latest edition of the 311 fan spotlight. Let’s meet Matthew Wissman!

Matthew grew up in the middle of nowhere in Kansas, without access to cable and MTV. However his best friend in middle school circa 1996 saw the video for “Down” and bought the blue album on CD. “He was always hearing stuff before I could so I should really thank him for introducing me to this incredible band (and Sublime, RHCP, 2Pac, so much more). I bought the Blue Album shortly after and bumped it for a few years.”

Matthew said he stopped listening to 311 as he got into heavier music. Then in 2005-2006 he started again while trying to earn the affections of a girl who was super into 311. “She let me borrow her 311 Day 2004 DVD and I was automatically hooked all over again. I owned their Greatest Hits album and always enjoyed 311, but I was totally blown away by that live DVD and the rest of their catalog. I got kinda played by the girl, but it’s okay, because she re-introduced me to the greatest band in the land and I’ve got zero regrets about that!  I think we’ve all heard somebody say, “oh wow!  311 is way more metal than I ever thought!” and I am definitely one of those metal heads who got hooked on 311 and their infectious grooves, and they’ve been my favorite band in the world ever since. I listen to everything now, but 311 is and always will have the music and the lyrics that speak to me beyond anything else.”

Show count for Matthew just hit 30 on this years 311 Cruise. His first show was June 29, 2007, on a day that he said would change his life forever. It was in Kansas City, Missouri, at the Westport Block Party. “Matisyahu was the opener that tour and it was an AWESOME SHOW!!  They played What Was I Thinking?, Random, Wake Your Mind Up, Purpose, Silver, Freeze Time, Tribute, Nix Hex, Omaha Stylee, Who’s Got the Herb?, and Feels So Good at my first show!!  Wish I could go back and do it again! Now I kick myself for all those years where I said “311 isn’t metal enough for me.”  What a dumb ass!!”

As for favorite event, Matt chose the 311 cruise of 2019 as one of the highlights of his entire life. “I got on with the help of fellow Kansan and current Vegas resident, Chris Binder.  I met him at a Wichita show in 2018, mentioned how badly I wanted to get on the boat, and he set me up with a few others who were looking for a third roomie. I roomed with my now spirit brother and sister, Maurice Kemp and Gretchen Brock, and it truly was one of the most magical, spiritual, emotional weeks of my entire life. I love those two with every bit of my being and we are forever friends for life. This last cruise was special as I got to be the one to bring a 1^st Timer on the boat, and my week with roomie Joshua Zeck and friends was awesome. Being able to see others experience the boat magic as I have is an unforgettable experience. Nothing beats Costume Night!! Finally, 311 Day 2020 Night 2 was unforgettable. It was my only night on the floor, and I completely lost my mind. Everything from the stage to the lights to the Freeze Time alien was just incredible. I remember walking out to the casino floor wondering WTF just happened. I was in awe.”

As for song that means the most to him, Matthew said it’s hard to really choose just one. However “Golden Sunlight” is one that came to mind. “Lyrically, I always thought it was the best song on Uplifter, but now that I have my own 18-month old daughter it really, really hits home.  I can remember seeing it at 311 Day 2020 on the floor and just bawling my eyes out because my wife and I had just found out we were pregnant after trying for a long time.  It’s a special song for sure.”

Of course, some of his favorite lyrics also come from that song: “Sweetheart, I’ve been bothered, A golden sun lit path I’ve been after, Grass hills, wild flowers, Sharp road trails for a daughter, I want to be her father, I want to hear her laughter, Under meteor showers the dogs will howl at the midnight hour.” He also love these lyrics: “Don’t you know that the devil he’s in me and God she is too. My yin hates my yang but what the hell ya gonna do? I choose a rocky ass path but that’s how I like it. Life’s a bowl of punch go ahead and spike it!”

Matthew was born and has lived most of his life in Topeka, Kansas. He grew up in a musical household and while his mom grew up in a very religious household, she never pushed religion on them. “She was a choir singer through college and loved to sing with us kiddos in the car. My dad was an old-school hippie who got drafted in ’69 and held a deep hatred for the government and authoritative peoples thereafter (HA!). Music from the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s were very popular in my home. I can recall my dad blasting psychedelic rock like Country Joe & the Fish and just wondering who this crazy man was that I called ‘Dad’. My mom was into bands like Fleetwood Mac, the Carpenters, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, folk music, stuff like that.”

Matt had an uncle who passed away when he was hitting a pivotal point in his life where music was becoming very important, and he inherited his CD collection of over 300 albums, spanning every decade and music genre. “He was the kind of guy who would go to Hastings and just buy ten random cds at a time because he loved music.  That was the first time I ever listened to bands like Black Sabbath and Pink Floyd. But he also had an incredible collection of 90’s alternative albums and that just expanded my mind even further.”

When Matthew was just 14, his parents split up and he lived with his dad. “Rebellion and teenage angst were major themes in my household, so it was only natural that I would do my best to find that kind of music.  Ska, punk, metal, thrash, death — if it was heavy enough to let me blow off some steam, I was listening. By the time I was 16, a great friend of mine was working for Pipeline Productions out of Lawrence, KS, and we were going to all the free shows we wanted.  System of a Down & Clutch on the Toxicity tour.  FREE.  Slayer & Hatebreed.  FREE.  Robert Plant and .moe.  FREE.  We were going to a show every week and it was truly the beginning of my musical adventures. To be 16 and have that kind of access to music is something I’ll always appreciate. I was living the young, wild, and free lifestyle and it was fantastic.”

As an adult, Matthew said he funds his 311 habit through a government job. “It pays the bills and allows me to travel enough to make it worth it. I train judges, clerks, and other court staff how to use their case management system and work Help Desk.  Nothing too exciting, but I’ve received an excellent view of how the entire court system in Kansas works, so I guess that’s cool. Not as cool as talking about 311 though.  Back to that!”

Guilty pleasure for Matt is 80’s synth-pop. “I love it.  It’s fun to dance and sing to with lots of catchy licks and rhythms.  Bands like Erasure, ABBA, Flock of Seagulls, etc.” As for other music, Matthew said he tries to give everything a chance and expand his musical horizons as much as possible. “With that said, the bands/artists I’m into change with the wind. Right now, I’m really into triphop and lowfi hip hop music.  Bands or artists that have been around for quite awhile that I’m only now discovering, like Thievery Corporation, Zero 6, Dope Lemon, Massive Attack, Groove Armada, Lemon Jelly, Nightmares on Wax, etc. I am really enjoying music without lyrics. I also like to tap into the roots of other popular bands that I enjoy.  Nick Hexum was greatly inspired by the Clash, and I realized one day that outside of their popular songs, I really didn’t know much from the Clash’s catalog.  I dove in and can now say the Clash is one of my all-time favorite bands. My favorite album is Sandinista! They are incredible!  The English Beat is another band I never checked out and now I’m a huge fan. Other bands I’ve thoroughly enjoyed lately include Pigeons Playing Ping Pong, Spoon, Khruangbin, Father John Misty, the Olympians, St. Paul & the Broken Bones, Leon Bridges, Chris Stapleton, Thundercat, Lake Street Dive, Trip the Witch, Little Feat, Perpetual Groove, the Wood Brothers, North Mississippi Allstars, FKJ….the list goes on and on and on.  I LOVE MUSIC!!”

Matthew said every time he gets in front of 311 he tends to freeze up and the only words he really can ever get out are “Thank you for everything.” “That’s good enough for me.”

Now here are his words to all his fellow 311 fans out there:

“I’ve met the best friends in the world through this band and their music. I truly appreciate anybody and everybody who’s given me the time of day at a show or online. Your friendships are near and dear to my heart.  Thank you for reading about me!”

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Big thanks to Matthew for sharing his 311 story! Of course, kudos as always to the supporters of this blog each week. Have an amazing week and sending you all positive vibes.

Much Love – The Runt

Welcome back my friends in 311 nation! A new week is upon us and that means it’s time for the next edition of the 311 fan spotlight. This week, let’s get introduced to Joshua Zeck!

According to Joshua, the nineties were the best time for live music and in Lawrence, Kansas, they had a radio station called The Lazer (105.9 KLZR) that broke a ton of bands from that decade. “The live music scene in Lawrence, back then was absolutely insane, everyone from that era, big and small, came through. 311 used to travel to all the college towns all over the Midwest, repeatedly in the early 90’s, and had a lot of love for Lawrence and KC. At the Lawrence NHQ show at the Granada in January of 2014, Nick told us that if it were not for KU, that 311 would have never happened, as his parents met in Lawrence in the 1960’s. Nicks dad Terry earned his Ph.D in from KU in 1968. After my first two live shows, I was hooked! I was astonished at how many people, mainly girls, knew all the lyrics! The energy, the style of music, how fucking cool they all looked on stage rocking out!”

The next time Joshua sees 311 live, he will be at show number 50. His first was in Lawrence, Kansas, in August of 1995. “

Jayhawk Music Festival at Clinton Lake. It was so damn hot and humid. The Urge opened, Tripping Daisy and Rev Horton Heat were there with some local bands as well. 311 was the headliner as Blue had just been released a little of a month before, and KLZR had been playing Down, Don’t Stay Home, and All Mixed Up for months. By the time 311 came on the sun had gone down, and I can remember Nick climbing up a giant lighting truss and doing a Nestea plunge into the crowd! When I did the meet & great at the KC show in 2014, I brought my ticket stub from that show, and they all signed it. A few of them remembered it well; Chad says “Wasn’t that in a big field and hot as fuck?” I mentioned Nick’s Nestea plunge, and Nick replies,” I was so high that day!” Mama Joan, P-Nut’s Mom, has as story about this day. She says she showed up with a lawn chair, to which they were not going to let her in as they were not allowed. She tells them, “If this chair doesn’t come with me, 311 doesn’t play.” We all know how that ended up! After a few more years, The Jayhawk Music Festival turned into the Wakarusa Festival, and was eventually moved to Arkansas.  My second show was the last show of the 95’ tour in Kansas City, Kansas at Memorial Hall, an absolutely insane set-list. The 3^rd show was June 6^th, 1996, at Sandstone Amphitheatre where parts of ETSD were filmed. 4^th was the 1997 “Transistour” at Sandstone.”

In 2015 Joshua started traveling outside of Lawrence and Kansas City to see 311. Of all the shows he has seen, it was tough to pick a favorite. Some that really stood out to him were the 25th anniversary show at Sokul in Omaha, Ogden onm 4/20/18, Red Rocks 2021, and his first cruise in March of this year. However as for the one that took the top spot, it was his first 311 Day in Vegas 2020. “I embarked on this journey with by close friends Cory Johnson and Nathan Araujo. It is a whole other story on how we even decided to go as none of us were supposed to have made the trip.  Cory met his eventual bride-to-be, Laura, the first night in Vegas, and I had the privilege of being a groomsman in their wedding in November 2022 in Long Beach. I also got to meet some very close virtual friends in person for the first time and put faces with FB names! Watching Vegas shut down day by day was interesting as well.”

There are many songs that mean a great deal to Joshua. While not his favorite song of all time, “Too Much Too Fast” means the most to him. “Uplifter was released at a time in my life where so many of the tracks resonated with my current situation. Another reason to rate 311 Day 2020 as #1 since this was the only time I have heard it live.”

As with most fans, there are many lyrics that resonate with Joshua. Some of these are: “Fending off the foes that try to shut us down, Like the warrior souls we are we never give in. We spend our lives learning, if you like learning, life is large,” “Always know that you gotta grow, so honestly, it’s best that you know, Who you are as you go rolling through,” and “Now I’m ready to turn the page on yesterdays and forgive them now I’m willing to disengage to seize the day and move on.”

Dodge City, Kansas, is where Joshua was born in 1976 and then in 1982 he moved to Greensburg. He graduated high school in 1994 and moved to Lawrence the day after graduation. Aside from a few years in Missouri while working for Wal-Mart, he has lived in Wellsville, Kansas, just south of Lawrence for 23 years. “I have four daughters, my oldest is 25, and my youngest is about to turn 17. I have a grandson, Emmett, who is almost a year and a half, and I cannot wait to watch and help him grow. I have been with my wife Jessica for 21 years. I have 5 indoor cats, 3 girls and 2 brothers, they are my loves! For just over three years, I have been working for the State of Kansas as a Food Safety Inspector for all kinds of food establishments. I get to work in Lawrence, my favorite city in the world! Prior to this, I spent 30 years working in retail, food service and restaurants.”

Something people may not know about Joshua is that he was raised solely by his mother and didn’t grow up in a musical household. “Music other than religious or some Roy Orbison, it was literally considered the devil! I can remember hiding in my closet with a small transistor radio, trying to find something, anything to listen to! My house was a super strict religious one, and when I became a teenager and got beyond what crappy songs were on the radio in SW Kansas, my life changed immensely. I was introduced to all sorts of albums, artists, songs, and ways of thinking from many sources. My first real musical love was gangster rap, particularly NWA and Eazy (I was giving a copy of a copy of Eazy-Duz-It on cassette in 7^th grade) and others like Too Short. I then fell into KRS-One and BDP, Public Enemy, Tribe Called Quest. I believe that this early love for rap, hip-hop and hard rock (the first cassette I ever bought was Whitesnake S/T) is what primed me for my love of 311. Our saving grace in the small town of 1800 was Randall’s Electronics. They had catalogues of any types of music you could dream of, and they would order us whatever we wanted. As you can imagine, I never put any musical restrictions on any of my daughters.”

Something that makes Joshua unique is that he’s a great storyteller, both written and verbally. “I also have an amazing memory. I am very good with names, faces, and events.” Guilty pleasure for him is collecting 311 memorabilia, focusing mostly on 90’s items and also 90’s platinum and gold records. “I love finding things others need for their collections, like first show posters/flyers, or other things that are special for all sorts of reasons.”

Joshua also has a guilty pleasure band called Carolina Liar. Aside from them and 311, he can be found cranking tunes from Magic City Hippies, Stick Figure, and Alific. “I have also been listening to a lot of heavy 90’s stuff as of late.”

To 311, Joshua would like to say: “When do we get to hear all the music Tim and Chad have stashed somewhere????? I envision vaults of free-style jams somewhere!”

Now here is his message to all the other 311 fans in the universe:

“I encourage everyone to Read the Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. It was recommended by a high school friend and then gifted to me by Destiny Delgado last September. It has been a life changer for me, chilled me out and has been very enlightening. I have gotten over myself a bit, and that has been a wonderful thing. 

It’s been a wild ride…I have found some of my closest friends thru this band and community. 

Much love to my boys Cory J, Nathan A, Matt W, Maurice K, Jason R, Jerad D.

Much love to all my 311 friends all over Michael & Levi S, Michael S, Jared H, Mars, Brandon S, Ryan S, Brian E, Patrick H, Matt K, Gerald, Mark L, Ryan B, Darin S, Greg R, Todd S, The Aarons, John G, John M, Lauren M, Terri S, Destiny D, Anne E, Emily R, Carolyn U, Selena C, Laura S, Gretchen B., Matt A., and Andrea L.

Peace to all the rest of you! I’m not gonna waste life being hateful!”

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Thank you so much to Joshua for sharing his story with the world! As always, my eternal gratitude for the supporters of this blog each post. Hope you all have an amazing week!

Much Love – The Runt