Photo by Pamela Littky

3OH!3: Boys Just Want to Have Fun

By Jeannette Madden
Staff Writer

3OH!3, one of the best live acts in the business, is swinging through Fargo on November 6 during their headlining “Solid Gold” tour. Performing at The Venue at the Hub in support of their newest release “Streets of Gold,” 3OH!3 (named after their Boulder, Colorado area code) features Nathaniel “Nat” Motte and Sean Foreman, both models with the Ford Modeling Agency, making what they like to call “loud, distorted, electronic-pop music” and just having a lot of fun.

High Plains Reader: How was it starting out in Boulder? I don’t hear about a lot of bands starting there.

Nat Motte: There’s always been kind of a big, I guess jam band tradition in Boulder. I don’t know, we were students but we also got to see a great deal on underground hip hop shows. There’re a lot of cool venues and a lot of touring acts coming through so we were exposed to a lot of cool music. And then, these days with the power of the internet and disseminating your music over that, it doesn’t really matter where you’re from. Anyone from anywhere can have their music heard so it’s cool. It [Boulder] is a great place to grow up and it’s a great place to be…

HPR: Are you still based there?

Nat: I am, yeah, I live there. Sean actually lives in New York.

HPR: Tell me about who has influenced 3OH!3.

Nat: For us it’s a little hard to trace because we were raised on such a wide variety of music. We listen to a lot of different kinds but I don’t know, I think when it came to making beats, making our own music, there was things like Nine Inch Nails and a lot of new kind of rap that came out in the early 2000’s that was pretty influential. I think more than anything it’s sitting down and making the music that comes naturally and that’s fun to make. I think a lot of times you don’t really think about it too much and you just do what feels right.

HPR: And, what’s your writing process? How do you create your music?

Nat: It changes like every time, which I think is really healthy, actually. If you had the same life every song you’d probably end up writing the same song every time. I do all the instrumental work and sometimes we collaborate with other producers for that. Sean does the lion’s share of the lyrical writing but we both write lyrics and I think when we’re at our best we’re in the studio creating the instrumental song as we create the lyrics of the song. We go back and forth off of each other and even if we’re writing a serious song it’s still fun and that’s the most important thing.
HPR: You use different producers on different songs, correct?

Nat: Yep, we do.

HPR: Why do you do that? Most artists I talk to use one or two producers for everything.

Nat: We’ll do it differently. Sometimes, we’ll co-write with a producer. Like with this new album we sought out Greg Kurstin because we were huge fans of his work and then our friend, Benny Blanco, who we had worked with before. I think it’s all just about having variety and we’re interested in making a lot of different types of music, a lot of different sounding songs. We don’t make the same song twelve or fifteen times on a record. So, it’s always fun working with different people because you learn new things that you wouldn’t necessarily do, and the brunt of our record we work with producer Matt Squire. We’ll write the tracks and bring them into him and me and him will go over it and find the best place for the tracks. There’s something to be said for working with the same person but also having some variety.

HPR: I remember when you came through Minneapolis/St. Paul last year and you played a little hard rock place in downtown St. Paul. Now, it seems like your emphasis is more on pop. Do you think that’s true or does it play more into what you were just saying about every song being different?

Nat: You know, I think by necessity a lot of times you fall into categorizing stuff. For us, the object of our music has always been to have as many people as we can hear it and to have fun doing it. We really don’t discriminate in terms of where our fans come from and if there’s “pop bands” that come to our shows and like it then that’s awesome. We played a couple full years on the Warped Tour, which is more an alternative rock/rock kind of outlet and I think obviously, the pop realm is a little bit bigger so when you have a certain amount of success you get dumped in there. But for us, it’s more important to reach as many people as we can and honestly, we don’t really care where we’re lumped in.

HPR: How did you guys get together with Ke$ha and do you have any other collaborations coming up?

Nat: We met Ke$ha when we were working on My First Kiss like two years ago, I think. We had written part and we wanted a girl to do the response and the producer we were working with at that time knew her and was working on developing her stuff and thought she would be a great fit. She came in and sang the part that we had and we got to know her and eventually she wanted to work on her own stuff. As far as future collaborations, I don’t know. We’re both super-duper busy and the time we have is few and far between but yeah, we’ll see. It’s always a possibility.

HPR: You do sound like you are really busy. How do you set your priorities and how do you make it all work?

Nat: [Laughs]. One day at a time, I think. We’re very involved in planning our careers and trying to stay ahead. Obviously our priorities are our own personal happiness and our families and our friends and making sure everyone’s happy and at the same time, trying to be successful, have a lot of fun and hopefully make some music that’s good.

HPR: Did you expect 3OH!3 to come this far or make it this big?

Nat: No, by no means. For me, especially, it’s a hobby that became a career. Every step has revealed another place that we can go. It was like “we can make a studio-worthy CD” and then it was like “we can go tour for two months’. It’s been eye-opening along the whole way.

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If You Go

[Editor’s Note: EVENT IS SOLD OUT]

What: 3OH!3
Where: The Venue at The Hub
When: Sat, Nov 6
Info: 701.232.6767