The Movement’s latest single, the celestial “So Cool,” notably features Nick Hexum on guest vocals. Hexum, of course, fronts reggae-rock pioneers, 311, who, after releasing their debut album, Music, in 1993, have grown to become bona fide rock stars, selling well over 10 million albums and amassing over 1.5 billion streams globally.

While The Movement has played some festivals with 311 and even opened for them a few times, collaborating with their singer marks a new level of achievement along their constant upward trajectory. “The fact that Nick is on this tune is completely mind blowing to me,” said Josh Swain, The Movement’s lead singer and guitarist, during our recent conversation on A Conversation in Dub, the podcast hosted by my Rootfire colleagues James Pasqua and Mark Raimondi. “I’ve been listening to 311 since I was in high school, and they’re one of my biggest influences. I really learned a lot about harmony through Nick and S.A. (Martinez, 311’s second vocalist and turntablist.) It just seemed like those are the kind of celebrity musicians that you feel like you’ll never meet, you know…they’re just too big.”

According to Swain, the genesis of their latest single came from drummer Gary Dread, who wrote the riddim for the track, as he often does. “He writes like a hundred riddims a day. I think he’s on like his 400th record right now,” the singer joked, referencing Dread’s prolific musical output as both a contributor to The Movement as well as a solo artist. Then, more seriously, he continued, “He writes like 10 songs a day and he’s always just sending us riddims. This one really struck me. It’s got a really cool line. And what I’ll usually do is I’ll, I’ll take that and put it into Ableton and kind of arrange it in like a more song structure or write some lyrics and melody to it.”

Swain said they recorded the track in Boston with live instrumentation, making a few tweaks to it, and when it was all said and done, they left a verse open. He couldn’t recall precisely who mentioned it first, but they all agreed that they could envision Nick Hexum on the track. “It’s got kind of a cosmic theme to it, you know? It’s got a cool groove, almost like sort of ‘Amber’-ish in a way, and it felt like it might be something that…it was a long shot, but we thought we’d throw it out there.”

Photo by Alicia Hauff

So The Movement sent the tune over to Hexum and, to their surprise, he agreed to do it.  Swain was thrilled.  “It’s such a trip because, he is singing the chorus with me and saying words that I wrote, you know what I mean? It’s not just like he wrote a separate verse. He’s actually saying things that I actually wrote.”

As I told Swain during our conversation on the podcast, to me the song speaks to a strong connection with another human, probably romantic, but maybe not necessarily. Ultimately, my main takeaway from the song was “the phenomenon of how two souls find each other in this vast experience of life.”

“I think that’s a cool take because that wasn’t necessarily the original thing,” Swain responded, adding, “And I think that’s what Nick kind of took from it too, which is great. Nick added that element with his lyrics.”

Hexum sings:

If I close my eyes I see your face

Every shadow every light the sa-ame place

From the abyss through space and time

Against all odds our paths a-li-i-ign

And in the dark there was a spark

Who woulda though eventually

It would connect our hearts

We come from the same dark place

Play-ay-ay-ace

Thirteen billion years til now

We came to inhabit this place

And it all seems so unlikely

A chance we should not waste

Let’s make the most out of this time

Despite Hexum’s take, Swain revealed that the original inspiration of the song arose as he was sitting at his desk, gazing out his window into his back yard “with the birds and the trees swaying in the wind and, you know, at night seeing the stars, and kind of tripping out on nature really.”

Photo by Joey Evans.

Continuing, he said, “It was gonna be like, ‘So Cool’ and in parentheses it was gonna say, ‘A Love Letter to Earth.’” So, really, it’s like me writing to the earth, almost like a love letter.  And like how we’re the same thing, you know?”

Swain then sang a verse: “We come from the same dark place, a ways away, out in outer space, but it’s hard to say, underneath it we’re all the same thing, we’ve both just been part of the one, always.”

“So, it comes back to this kind of feeling…it’s a pretty well-known theory and it’s kind of what I’ve been leaning towards as a philosophy of life that everything is just one thing, and that separation is really just an illusion. And so we have these egos and our brains separate things by, okay, those molecules are over here, these molecules are over here, this has consciousness, this doesn’t, da da da. But, potentially everything is really just one thing and…potentially everything is just God. So everything is just one thing, right?  And I was writing about how the earth and everything that I was looking at out of the window, you know, we’re all just the same thing, and we’re all just one. And how that’s so cool…”

Knowing that Swain had been inspired by an appreciation for the earth and his own deep, metaphysical ruminations, really elevates the song for me.

Moving beyond the lyrical inspiration, A Conversation in Dub podcast host James Pasqua asked Swain, “Did you already have the guitar solo before you knew Nick Hexum was going be singing on there? Or was it kind of inspired by the fact that it’s a 311ish song?”

Swain responded that is was either Nick or Tim Mahoney, 311 lead guitarist. “He didn’t specify, but I, I’m pretty sure it’s Nick,” Swain said.  “He sent over the vocals, and then he sent over that little solo at the end and we’re like, ‘Yeaaah, that’s nice!’’

Then, after a beat, Swain kidded, “Yeah, that’s Nick. I don’t think I can solo that good.”

To listen to the full interview with Joshua Swain, check out A Conversation in Dub podcast!