311: Five Fun Facts About Their New Album, 'Full Bloom'

311 are heading our way this week to grace the blockbuster lineup of Good Things Festival, as well as play a trio of headlining sideshows in Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney. The platinum-certified Nebraskan rock act will be coming with their newly released album Full Bloom, which just landed in October.

Ahead of their live rampage across Australia’s East Coast, 311 bassist P-Nut sat down with Music Feeds to run us through five fun facts about the band’s freshly-minted LP. Read his words down below before you see them hit the stage this week!

311 – ‘Need Somebody’

1. Linkin Park Connection

Full Bloom was produced by Colin Brittain, who at the time was keeping one of the world’s greatest secrets from us in the fact that he is playing drums for Linkin Park. So, while he had to know at that point, it wasn’t that long ago, it was like a year or two years ago that we were working with him. I just think that it’s hilarious. We had no idea that that was going on at all. The fact that he’s such a good drummer and now we’re trying to tour together, it’s just such a funny thing. You never know what’s going to happen!

2. Photographer To The Stars

And then fun fact number two is making the You’re Going To Get It video, we did it with Brian Smith, who did our Five Of Everything video as well. He’s a still photographer for the stars. Not that that’s the biggest deal, but the thing is, it’s such a high platform that he works on normally and a high caliber of artists. When he dips down into our area, we’re really thrilled to work with him. I think it came up with really great results. He also did a lot of the press stills for us on this most recent run and we did it all in one day. It’s so much fun working with friends in the industry who have climbed the ladder to places we could have never thought. That’s Brian Smith. He’s a badass.

3. COVID Origins

This is our COVID album, so it took longer than ever. This is the longest break in between albums that we’ve ever done and it’s kind of funny, it’s only 10 songs. It’s funny because it’s a short album and yet we’ve had so long to work on it, but that’s how it goes. We wanted to keep it short and sweet. That’s kind of one of our superpowers.

4. Loyal Team

We worked with longtime producer, Scotch Ralston, who also does live sound for us. He’s done every show for us ever since he got back in the camp, about 10 or so years ago. He’ll be coming to Australia with us too! And I mean: this is the guy who produced the Transistor album and co-produced pretty much everything we’ve ever done. We met him two weeks into moving to Los Angeles in February of 1992 and he was working at a studio called Cherokee where the Jackson Five recorded and stuff like that. And we just kind of professionally linked and fell in love with each other and have been almost inseparable. There was a little bit of a break where he broke off and produced other bands and toured with other bands. That’s a healthy thing to do. But he came back, and he’s a wizard and a weirdo. We used to live together, so I can call him whatever I want because I know! But he’ll be behind the deck doing the volume decisions. And I think it’s a really cool thing that we’ve had someone like that, not just the band that’s been together for this long.

5. Camaraderie

And lastly, the fact that we’ve been together for so long is definitely a fun fact here. You can’t fake that connection that we have when we record and when we write. And as we’re progressing the songbook, we’re also trying to show growth. It’s a fun thing to do with people you’ve worked with for so long. It really is.