Redefining an Area Code - 3Oh!3 and the Creation of a Cult Phenomenon

A gangly, pale-faced twenty-something paces with anticipation backstage at Denver’s Fillmore Auditorium. Between plunging his hands in and out of his pockets, 3Oh!3’s Nathaniel Motte adjusts, and then readjusts, the white cotton towel that’s wrapped around his neck. In between fidgets, he has neurotically unscrewed the caps of around twenty bottles of water, making sure each is ready for the instant he or his bandmate might need to chug some refreshment. Sean Foreman, the other half of Boulder’s emerging rap sensation, stands silently against a dimly lit hallway, watching tonight’s opener, a wanna-be female rapper named Lanz, finish up her less-than-memorable set.

3Oh!3 appear a bit nervous. The Fillmore, when sold out, fills to a standing capacity of 3,600 people, and is a daunting venue for many a national touring act. Forget, for a moment, the crystalline chandeliers that hang over the hardwood floors, making the venue itself look almost palatial. Disregard the photo-booth near the bar that is flashing visages of hip-hop legends TuPac and the Notorious BIG. Nevermind that ninety percent of the crowd is there to see Snoop Doggy Dog, tonight’s headliner. Keep in mind however, that this is the first time Motte and Foreman have ever played the Fillmore, and that their usual crowd of tattooed twenty-somethings, who normally come out in supportive droves, are nowhere to be seen. Peppered throughout the urban crowd are tiny collections of teenagers who occasionally hold up 3Oh!3’s mock gang sign (which is created by pressing together the index fingers and thumbs of both hands, creating an “O”, and then splaying one’s remaining three fingers out on both hands), but tonight those packs are far and few between.


 This isn’t the usual 3Oh!3 crowd. There are too many questioning faces and perplexed looks. Most of the Snoop obsessed audience has no idea what they’re about to experience. However, for those handful of kids who paid $35 to support their favorite local band, the opening notes of “Dance With Me” stir them into a frenzy. By the third song, 3Oh!3’s watershed anthem “Chokechain”, a mosh pit opens up on the left hand side of the stage. A moon-faced kid catches an elbow to his face and is sent sprawling. By the time security breaks up the action, Motte and Foreman look settled in and at almost at home.

BIGGER THAN BOULDER

We’ve planned to meet at Beach Park in Boulder, on the rainy Labor Day before 3Oh!3’s Fillmore performance. Motte explains that Foreman is running a bit late, but assures me that he should be here in the next few minutes. As Motte and I make small talk, Foreman rolls up on a scooter, quickly honking the horn acknowledging that he, in fact, sees us. Motte encourages him to drive up over the curb and into the park, and for a brief moment, it looks as if he may be considering it. Instead, Foreman flips a u-turn, and properly parks across the street. The look on my face must say it all: I’m a bit disappointed that he doesn’t rev that four-stroke engine, hop the curb, and start doing doughnuts. “He’d get in trouble,” Motte says in response. “It’s his girlfriend’s.”


 Over the past year, Foreman’s face has seen numerous styles of facial hair, but today he’s fully bearded, looking like the love child of Jeanine Garofalo and Grizzly Adams. Around his neck he’s wearing a compass that Motte quickly questions. “It’s so I don’t get lost,” says Foreman, which is perplexing because he’s lived in Boulder all his life. I’m about to ask what he means when Foreman holds it up just long enough for me to realize that the compass itself is broken. Like the origin of the band and it’s members, the medallion is completely tongue in cheek.


 Nathaniel Motte and Sean Foreman are obvious friends. The duo first caught wind of each other as high schoolers in Boulder where they both honed their skills in the area’s underground hip-hop scene. They didn’t actually meet until 4 years ago, when a fortunate union of fate and science found them both in a physics class at CU. They started collaborating immediately, writing songs in Foreman’s cat fur infested basement where Motte would set up his turntables and Foreman would freestyle over the eclectic beats. The two began to work together more often, coming up with “Say Dem Up” and “Neatfreak 47”, two staples of their current live act. “Nat produces all of the beats and I write the lyrics,” explains Foreman, “but it’s organic. If I don’t like something I’ll let Nat know, although, I’m usually wrong.”


 Since those basement days, the band’s genre bending sound has evolved into an almost unclassifiable fusion of rap, punk, and electronica. The music spills from a single turntable Motte sets up just offstage as the duo performs choreographed dance moves, taking up quite a bit of the sprawling Fillmore stage. Motte shakes so violently that at times he looks like an epileptic head banging at a Metallica concert. Foreman, on the other side of the stage, stops, drops to the ground, and begins to breakdance. Their energy is so infectious that by “Holler Till You Pass Out”, the band’s last song, there is a noticeable bounce to the crowd that wasn’t there before. Motte, noticing the change, jumps from the stage and stands up on the security fence, holding his microphone out to an audience that eagerly raps along. Half-an-hour ago Motte and Foreman looked intimidated by their surroundings, novices in the presence of hip-hop stardom, but as Motte hovers over the crowd they have just won over, 3Oh!3 look like rock stars.

BREAKING BIG

The Denver music scene today is reminiscent of Austin, Texas in the mid 90’s; a period that saw the emergence of the ever influential Spoon and the long overdue national recognition of the Butthole Surfers. As the self-proclaimed “Music Capital of the World” began to dry up in the early part of 2001, a result of .com millionaires buying up music venues and turning them into low overhead college bars, industry executives began looking elsewhere for new talent. Local Denver acts such as Born In The Flood, Nathan and Stephen, The Flobots, and The life there is... are beginning to turn corporate heads, but none as fast as 3Oh!3. The frenzy that surrounds their local shows is impossible to ignore. Since they first appeared in 2006, they’ve sold out the Fox Theater in Boulder the last three times they’ve headlined, and the duo now draw an average of six to seven hundred people at each venue they play. “At this point, there really is no telling how far they’ll go. They control their own destiny,” says Mike Barsch of Soda Jerk Productions, who has booked 10 shows for the band. “Personally, I think they put on one hell of a concert.”
 “It’s flattering,” says Foreman of the immediate success the band has seen. “It started as a basement creation, a sort of Frankenstein-ian monster. We never had any aspirations when we made those first couple of tracks together.”


“People give us a lot of static for having a younger fan base,” says Motte. “But these are the kids that show up and buy two t-shirts and a CD, then rip them apart going nuts, sweating, and dancing up in the front. It’s great to be supported by an audience like that, regardless of what anyone says.”


The impact the band has had on the Colorado scene has been staggering. Sarah Finger, booking agent for The Fox recalls the band’s first gig in 2006 when, an hour before the concert the theater had only sold 6 tickets. “We were all a little worried,” says Finger. But as door time crept closer, the ticket office found themselves swarmed with kids, and suddenly more than three-hundred tickets were gone. “That big of a walk-up doesn’t happen very often,” explains Finger. “I think my mouth was wide open in astonishment the whole night.”


 The typical 3Oh!3 crowd is a difficult one to categorize, something the band is very proud of. A majority of the audience is the emo “scene kid”, clad in skin tight jeans, and hair mussed in such a way to make it look as if it didn’t take some serious time to style. Then there’s a handful of people just like me, the Boulder music aficionado, the college graduate, the guy who has never outgrown his love of hip-hop or the underground local music scene. We rally together, the scenester and myself, to pay homage to two minds who are creating a style of music that has never been heard before. Together, we bounce to Motte’s beats, and scream rap Foreman’s lyrics, trying desperately to hold onto a band we know is too important to keep secret for long.