In a stuffy San Diego garage plastered with music posters, a band stands on a ragged Persian rug in front of a cell phone stand.
The guitarist and lead singer/songwriter, JP Houle, introduces them behind a curtain of blond hair.
“We are Slacker and we make—”
“VELVET WORMS!” drummer Sam Hockday interrupts from behind his kit.
Slacker detonates into the track “Velvet Worms.” Bassist Avery Nelson bangs her head with the beat, her hair obscuring her face while Houle’s strange, insect-infused lyrics echo through the garage.
With nobody in the audience, this performance is for Instagram, an easy way for a small band like Slacker to promote itself.
The raucous punk track was the lead single to the band’s debut album “Act Natural,” released last month.
And now, Slacker is getting ready to kick off a prize for any local band: a monthlong residency at The Casbah. They’ll be there every Tuesday through the end of the year — December 9, 16, 23, and 30.
The band was founded in 2022 by Hockaday and Houle in their early days as San Diego State University students. Hockaday was attending a radio club meeting in hopes of finding fellow music lovers after transferring to SDSU. He spotted Houle in a Nirvana shirt.
“I don’t remember who talked to who first, but I liked the Nirvana shirt and he asked if I wanted to be in a band,” Hockaday said.
Hockaday could play drums and Houle had a few songs he had been working out on his guitar. The two started jamming and hanging out, but never found a consistent rhythm with their band.
After going through about six different bandmates, the duo was backing local pop act Avery Cochrane in October 2023, alongside a bassist named Avery Nelson.
“I showed up to rehearsal and Sam was playing drums and JP was playing guitar,” Nelson said. “After the rehearsal they were like, ‘Do you want to help us record some original songs?’”
Nelson agreed and Houle’s songwriting vessel, Slacker, was fully formed.
However, the trio almost immediately ran into problems. They needed a place to practice, and the logistics of the noise and small living spaces in college made it impractical.
But there was a solution on the horizon. Hockaday was serving as editor for the Daily Aztec’s arts section, a job he interviewed for specifically in hopes of using the newsroom as a rehearsal space after hours.
Once he got his kit to the newsroom, they started rehearsing there every Tuesday night, jamming into the early mornings.
The band gained traction among their peers, playing house shows around SDSU and accepting every gig they could get. Their audience steadily grew, as rainy backyards gave way to small venues, including a show at the Soda Bar.
But they still needed to get into the studio. Houle had three songs he wanted to record. One was “Velvet Worms,” which is featured on the new album. That track displays the grit of a SoCal punk band, but the rest of the record has little to do with punk — or any one genre, really.
“I call it post-grunge,” Hockaday said.
“I just say alternative,” bassist Avery Nelson said.
“I say whatever I heard [Hockaday and Nelson] say last,” Houle said.
A friend’s dad came up with the word “scrop” — meaning dirty and grimy, according to Houle. But their sound is more a testament to diverse influences that include funk, blues, and grunge.
Their “scrop” sound is fueled by Houle’s prolific songwriting. The three songs he felt were good enough to record had been culled from a Google Drive archive of about 50 demos he had written. The band doesn’t write during its rehearsal time; it sifts through Houle’s catalog to find standouts that they could work up and record.
“We have the opposite problem of a lot of bands,” Nelson said.
Earlier this year, the band took a batch of 20-plus songs to Big Fish Recording Studio in Encinitas to record with producer Skyler Deci. They ended up cutting their prospective recordings in half, saving the rest for a subsequent album.
Jordan Krimston, drummer of Band Argument — another standout local act — mixed the record for Slacker.
“They have a lot of depth,” Krimston said. “I’m a huge fan of the acoustic tracks and ‘Tuesday Newsday,’ their rock opera-esque track.”
“Tuesday Newsday” is written and sung by Nelson and is a borderline parody, detailing Nelson’s day leading up to Slacker’s Tuesday newsroom rehearsals in the band’s early days.
“I thought it was so funny. I didn’t think it was going to end up on the album, but it’s kind of awesome that it did,” Nelson said.
The band’s Casbah residency landing on Tuesday nights wasn’t intentional, despite the band growing into itself with those Tuesday night jam sessions. That was just when the venue was available.
The four December gigs will all act as album release shows, but they’ll also vary the setlist based on the other bands playing each night, showcasing a sonic diversity that’ll make some nights more punk-rock and other nights poppier.
Despite gathering an audience around San Diego and certain corners of the rest of the world, the band remains unsigned and without management. Nelson takes on the managerial load, which includes booking shows, posting on social media and other promotional responsibilities.
Slacker is combating the online landscape of the music industry as well. It’s easier than ever to push their music out on a platform where it can be heard, yet relentless social media posting is tiresome.
“It’s soul-sucking.” Nelson said “It takes away so much of the art to have to bare your soul on the internet.”
They have yet to make much money from this endeavor. Any money they get out of the music goes back into it, paying for merch, recording, and other expenses.
“This is like for better, for worse, whether people like it or not, everything I have been for like the past decade,” Houle said.
After the Casbah residency, they are heading up the coast on a short tour throughout California to promote “Act Natural.”
Want more insights? Join Working Title - our career elevating newsletter and get the future of work delivered weekly.
