311’s S.A. Martinez on their NPR Tiny Desk Concert, Knotfest, and Saturday’s 4/20 Grinders KC show

311. // photo credit Chris Phelps

Over the past 30 years, Omaha’s 311 have traded in reggae-laced grooves, hard rock riffs, and hip hop vibes to bring multiple generations together in the spirit of nodding your head and rocking the hell out. They’ve gone from underground heroes to alt-rock radio staples and just last month, saw themselves elevated to the rarefied position of playing one of NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts–naturally, released on March 11.

Since their inception, 311 has regularly played Lawrence and Kansas City, and they return to KC this Saturday, April 20, to play a show at Grinders KC as part of a celebration presented by Illicit & From The Earth. We spoke by phone with 311 turntablist and vocalist S.A. Martinez ahead of the show about the band’s connection to the weed-smoking holiday that is 4/20 and their connection to KC.

The Pitch: Do you find that 311 gets more asks for shows on 4/20 or March 11?

S.A. Martinez: I don’t really think we’ve gotten a lot of 4/20 dates through the years. I think we’ve done Red Rocks on occasion on that date. I don’t think it was a 4/20 day, but we did a Amsterdam High Times party once. But overall? Yeah, not really. It’s kind of funny.

Would you consider yourself a weed-friendly band? I mean, you did record “Who’s Got the Herb?” years back.

Well, it’s always been associated with the band. You know, it’s just something that we’ve always lived with, pretty much from the, the inception. I mean, High Times Magazine–are they even still around? Well, back in the day, they were cheerleaders of the band and gave us reviews, interviewed us. We kind of relied on publications such as those to promote the band.

And yeah, we were more than willing to be the weed poster boys for a minute. It’s nothing that I don’t think anyone wants to own, but yeah, it’s been a an association of the band, I guess you could say.

The band has gone through several different eras in the course of its history. I feel of your early history was in Kansas City and Lawrence because you were just up the road. What were those early years like for you playing in and around here?

Well, it was, it was a really cool scene. The Bottleneck–a lot of great memories and running through the Midwest was our stomping ground, so to speak, from Springfield to KC and like you say, it was many eras we’ve traversed. It was a time and place and great to have cut our teeth in that mix and still be around to talk about it.

But yeah, a lot of fun. I mean, those were always fun club shows and, and, and memories. And, you know, back then it was oftentimes I think we were probably touring with the Urge from St. Louis. So, you know, it was just a potent vibe and one that doesn’t really exist any longer, you know?

How did playing those club shows at the Bottleneck and places like that to a ton of rowdy college students with bands like the Urge help you hone your chops?

Well, I mean, we were all pushing one another. You can’t not deliver a great show if you feel passion about what you do, if you have just witnessed the Urge put on a barn-burner of a show. It was nothing but just fire night after night and back in those days we were touring probably nine months out of the year. It was just rinse and repeat night after night and in our early twenties, we’ve got the vigor and the stamina to pull something like that off. I can’t even imagine trying to do nine months out of the year now. That’s not happening.

What is your touring schedule like these days, as you are all elder statesmen?

Mostly anymore it’s relegated to a summer touring season, which is par for the course for any touring act. I mean, that’s when people are wanting to go out and see concerts. Oftentimes it’s in an outdoor amphitheater setting. It lends itself to do some touring mostly in the summer.

Now we’re gonna be entering into some one-off dates. The 4/20 date in Kansas City’s a perfect example of that. We’ve got a few others sprinkled in the spring but yeah, the heavy lifting is typically in the summer. So we’ll be doing a summer run as well but yeah, we don’t really take any time off. We took 1998 off and then obviously Covid forced everyone off but we’re pretty active.

We’re speaking about a month after your NPR Tiny Desk Concert came out and that has become a big deal. I mean, just this past weekend, they did a parody about the Tiny Desk on SNL. What was it like to get asked and then what was the experience like for you all playing in that environment?

Well, I mean, I was aware of that series. I don’t really watch a lot of online music content. I typically just kind of stream music throughout the day, but I don’t really watch like live performances, but I did know of the Tiny Desk phenomena and and you know, as it is, one of the the NPR DJs, Lakshmi Singh, is a huge 311 fan actually, but she wasn’t there in the office that day.

Actually, I’m friends with her younger brother. We’re actually pretty tight, Jay and I, but I don’t think she knew that we were performing, ’cause like Jay was like, “Why are you guys even there?” I’m like, “Tiny Desk? Why else would we be at NPR?”

It was super cool. Like, I mean, I’ve listened to NPR–gosh, I don’t think I’ve never not listened to NPR, so going there was super-cool. Seeing the Tiny Desk set up, speaking to the people that put it all together–very cool. The young woman who introduced had been a fan of the band and so that was cool, seeing what it meant to have us there for her.

I dig it. I need to watch more of the Tiny Desk performances.

Watching that performance reminded me of the fact that, when I’ve seen you in over the last five or six years versus having seen you in the ’90s when I was in high school and stuff is that your flow has changed over the years. Why has your live delivery changed over the years? What’s led to that?

Well, I mean, if you’re referencing Tiny Desk, I probably was not as animated. When you do that, the vocals are mic’d for the studio, but we’re not hearing them in the room, so to speak, just coming out of the vocalist’s mouth, so that performance is an anomaly because we’re all outside of our comfort zone, so to speak. What we’re used to doing, you know what I’m saying?

But I mean, yeah, sure, we all change through our lives and as far as being a performer, your performances will definitely alter and shift as time goes by. I’m sure I do things, I deliver lines differently than I probably did in the past. But also, you get more comfortable with what you’re doing with songs, et cetera, and you add something, you take something away, you inflect a little differently, you add a little different harmony or whatever.

They kind of grow on their own. I think that’s something though, any performer that has been a performer for a minute will attest to, so I don’t think it’s anything specific to what we do.

I guess that the fun part of being a band for 30-plus years is that your songs get to change and evolve in performance. Is there a particular song that you really enjoy the way it’s changed over the years, in terms of live performances?

That’s interesting. Well, I don’t know. I mean, you’re so inside it, you don’t really even notice the change, you know what I mean? I’m sure if I were to think about it some more, I could–well, I know for example, when we do “I’ll Be Here A While,” I change a vocal line in that song, which has become something that I like to do in that song, but I’m trying to think if overall, there’s one song in particular.

I don’t know. It’s such a tough question to answer, honestly. Like I said, you’re so inside it, it’s hard to take yourself away and be like, “Oh yeah, that has changed over the years.”

311. // photo credit Nick Spacek

Even your stage setup changes from tour to tour, in terms of what it looks like and all of that. Is it fun for you all to get to redo what the backgrounds are going to look like? I’m thinking of when 311 did that tour with Dirty Heads and it looked like you were playing in the middle of the cosmos.

Oh, cool. Well, yeah. I mean, we have an a killer production team. Our lighting design person has been with us–I mean, we were essentially his first gig and this guy has gone on to do the Oscars, the Super Bowl. He does a lot of big productions now, but he always comes back to us because he loves us, gives us a great deal, but he’ll design ur production backdrop, our lighting design. We might make suggestions, but typically, we’re very comfortable with letting him put it together again.

He knows the band. He loves the band. That’s big, right? Someone that loves working with you. They’re going to swing for the fences. He always brings it. You mentioned March 11. We just did our big 311 day and he really just elevated the show again like he always does with the production.

You mentioned your summer tours, but this is a one-off and I’m curious as to whether set lists change for one-off shows versus like a tour?

It might. Now, this is a 4/20 show. We might try to make it weed-specific and play the weed song. I don’t know. We’ll put it together that day. But it’s tricky to put, together and you try to keep everyone in mind that’s coming to see the show and you have to take yourself out of it, too, because there’s something you might like that might not work.

I’ll tell you a quick story. We did Knotfest in Mexico some years back. There’s tons of heavy bands. We hadn’t been to Mexico in a minute, though, so keep that in mind. We’re talking about that and P-Nut was like, “Man, we can’t play ‘Amber.’ Do you guys hear that out there?” and he was referencing all the heaviness.

He was adamant we don’t play “Amber,” and it was like a debate back and forth: “We haven’t been here in a long time, that’s one of our biggest hits,” etc., blah, blah, blah, so we ended up not playing “Amber.” So, the main headliner that night, I think, was Evanescence, and they did not go on because something happened with their set. They had to pull the plug.

So, everyone comes to our stage, and we were the headliner on the second stage and it’s a mass of people. We do our set, we don’t play “Amber,” and it’s probably the first time we haven’t played “Amber” in many, many shows, and as we’re leaving the stage, what’s the crowd chanting?

They’re chanting “Amber.” They wanted us to play it, but it didn’t get played. So, as much as we might not want to play a particular song, sometimes you need to play the songs that people expect you to play or they expect to hear.

311 plays at Grinders KC on Saturday, April 20, with Joey Cool, KCeMO, and more. Details on that show here.