311 Day a three-day party topped by marathon concert

Nick Hexum was reminded just how bat poo crazy some of his band's fans can be when it comes to new material when one of them hacked his email account awhile back.

But, hey, at least the guy confessed.

Half a decade after the fact.

"There was a time when all of our demos of the songs that we were working on got leaked, and we could not figure out how this happened for so long," the 311 singer/guitarist recalls. "That was back in like '05. Seven years later, we get this long letter from a fan explaining, 'OK, I'm the one. I guessed Nick's email password. I hacked in. I found the filesharing stuff that was intended for the band only.'

"It was crazy," he continues. "In his letter, he was like, 'I only gave them to two people.' And of course, they only gave them to two people, and the next thing you know, it's everywhere. It was irritating at the time, but it's a happy problem to have. We'd much rather have fanatics than not."

This weekend, said fanatics will swarm Vegas for 311 Day, a biennial bash capped by a marathon concert where the band has been know to play upward of five hours.

Now in its sixth go-round, 311 Day first came to Vegas in 2010, after stints in New Orleans and Memphis. This time, it's expanding to three days, with a fan party at The Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel today, followed by a two-night stand by the rap-rock-reggae hybridists at the MGM Grand Garden arena on Saturday and Sunday.

The shows are like a family reunion of sorts, with fans traveling from all 50 states and two dozen other countries, Hexum estimates, to see 311 perform a mix of rarities, deep album cuts, covers and more with outsize production values that the band has spent the past four months planning.

They've been rehearsing three days a week, all through February, relearning tunes that, in some instances, they'd all but forgotten.

"There were songs that I hadn't listened to in so long that it was kind of like hearing them for the first time," Hexum says. "That's the cool thing of being in a band is that you'll have documented so many little ideas that, maybe at the time we didn't think really connected, but now brushing them off, we find that it's like a little hidden gem, and through fan demand, we'll revive those songs. It's definitely a trip to look back at so many years of music."

They get plenty of help in this process from 311 die-hards who meticulously track and catalog every show the band plays, compiling set lists and advocating for what they want to hear live, with Hexum corresponding with fans via Twitter and soliciting plenty of feedback.

"They're so organized that they'll hold polls and deliver the results to us," Hexum says. "There were all these votes for one song and votes for another song and we take that into consideration. And then there's stuff that probably no one would have thought of that maybe a band member came up with. There's so many rare instrumentals and stuff that's leaked out either deliberately or accidentally that we have to cull through depending on where our musical tastes are right now."

Still, plenty of acts have rabid audiences, so what makes a band like 311, which hit its sales peak in 1995 with its self-titled third disc, which sold more than 3 million copies, able to pull off an event like this?

Most likely, a lot of it has to do with the vibe of their shows, which is familial and buoyant, sometimes in inverse proportion to the bruising nature of some of the band's repertoire, which can be hard hitting at times, laid back and jovial at others.

311 has long stood in stark contrast to many of the other acts who came to prominence by blending hip-hop beats and rhymes with a rock guitar crunch, especially during the dour nu metal boom of the mid- to late-'90s, in that there was never any menace to it.

"Our very first single was called 'Do You Right,' and when we were recording it, our guitarist goes, 'Man, it's like a happy slam dance song,' " Hexum recalls. "I actually say that to introduce the song, pretty much every time we've played it for the past 20 years, because I realize that it is a unique thing, that it's a really hard rockin' song, but it's just got kind of a joyous vibe to it. That's our niche, that's where we're different. It doesn't need to be destructive to rock really hard. You can make heavy music without that angry message."

As such, their concerts have always been defined by an infectious, feel good energy, more in line with the come-as-you-are atmosphere of the jam band scene, and like bands of that ilk, 311 has largely made its living on the road with fans who travel right along with the band.

"I think it started out of necessity," Hexum says of 311's forever-full tour itinerary. "When we got going, this hybrid music that became really common after us, combining rap and rock and reggae and all these different things, there was no radio format to support that at all. It was still the time of grunge. There were a couple of hybrid bands out there -- Faith No More had a hit, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers were going strong -- but other than that, we were basically blackballed on radio, at first. So we realized that we needed to get out there and live on the road."

That living has been good to them: In 2013, the group will celebrate 25 years together.

It's been quite an endurance test -- the same of which could be said of this weekend.

"Because it's spread in two nights, we have the physical ability to make it the longest one ever," Hexum says of this year's 311 Day festivities. "There's going to be surprises in everything. We're testing our limits."

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476.