Stephen Malkmus

Early years

Stephen Malkmus was born in Santa Monica, California, to Mary and Stephen Malkmus, Sr. His father was a property and casualty insurance agent. When Stephen Jr. was 8, the family moved north to Stockton, where he attended Carpinteria's Cate School and Lodi's Tokay High School. As a teenager, Malkmus worked various jobs, including painting house numbers on street curbs and "flipping burgers or whatever" at a country club. At age 16, he spent the night in jail after consuming alcohol, urinating in the bushes, and walking on the roofs of several residential homes. Later, he was placed on probation for underage drinking, and was also expelled from school "for going to a party in the woods where people were taking mushrooms. I didn’t take them, but some guy narc’d on me."

Malkmus learned the guitar by playing along to Jimi Hendrix's recording of "Purple Haze". During high school, he played in several Stockton-based punk bands: Bag O Bones, The Straw Dogs, and Crisis Alert. After graduation, Malkmus followed in his father's footsteps by attending the University of Virginia, where he majored in history and was a disc jockey for the college radio station WTJU. During this time, Malkmus met fellow WTJU DJs David Berman (who would later front the Silver Jews) and James McNew (of Yo La Tengo). In the late 1980s, he was employed as a security guard at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, along with Berman and Bob Nastanovich.

Career

Malkmus formed Pavement with Scott Kannberg (aka Spiral Stairs) while he was living in Stockton during the 1980s. Their first album, Slanted & Enchanted, was released to critical acclaim, and the band continued to receive attention for subsequent releases. Pavement, and Malkmus in particular, was hailed as spearheading the underground indie movement of the 1990s. Malkmus briefly appears as a singer in a coffee shop in the 1997 theatrical film Sweethearts with Janeane Garofalo. In 2001, following the 1999 dissolution of the band, Malkmus released his first self-titled solo album. He also was a member of rock group Silver Jews along with poet/lyricist David Berman. In early 1999 Stephen Malkmus participated in a Sonic Youth side project called Kim's Bedroom that included bassist/vocalist Kim Gordon, guitarist/vocalist Thurston Moore, Chicago avant-garde veteran Jim O'Rourke, and renowned Japanese drummer Ikue Mori; they never released an album, but did play a few live shows. Malkmus is currently frontman of The Jicks.

On May 23, 2003 in Milwaukee, while touring with his new band The Jicks, Malkmus opened the show by saying, "This is off our first record." The band then proceeded to play an evening's worth of Pavement songs, marking the second time Malkmus had played any of his previous band's songs since their 1999 breakup, the first was on April 22, 2002 in São Paulo, Brazil, where he played "In The Mouth a Desert".

In 2007, Malkmus provided 3 songs to the Todd Haynes' film I'm Not There, based on the life of Bob Dylan. He contributed on the songs "Ballad of a Thin Man", "Can't Leave Her Behind" and "Maggie's Farm". Malkmus has admitted that he was never "really a really big fan of Dylan," but noted that his involvement with the film had made him listen "to him again a little closer."

Malkmus's fourth studio album with The Jicks, Real Emotional Trash, was released in March 2008.

Pavement reunited in March 2010 and have since embarked on a world tour.

In August 2011 he released his fifth studio album with The Jicks, Mirror Traffic. He played the album Ege Bamyasi, originally by the band Can, in its entirety on December 1, 2012 at WEEK-END Festival in Cologne, Germany. A recording of this performance was released as a limited-edition live album on Record Store Day 2013.

Malkmus's sixth studio album with the Jicks, Wig Out at Jagbags, was released on January 7, 2014.

In 2016, Malkmus scored the soundtrack to the Netflix series Flaked, which stars Arrested Development's Will Arnett.

Personal life

Malkmus moved to Portland, Oregon, where he met his wife, Jessica Jackson Hutchins. The couple have two children: daughters Lottie (born 2004) and Sunday (born 2007). In 2011, before the release of Mirror Traffic, Malkmus and his family moved to Berlin. By the release of Wig Out at Jagbags in 2014, however, the family had moved back to Portland.

Malkmus is a sports fan, supports Hull City Football Club and is known to play golf and tennis; he also plays second base for the Portland-based Disjecta softball team.

Equipment

Malkmus currently plays a Fender Stratocaster and a Guild S-100. Other guitars used are a 1960s Fender Jazzmaster that can be traced back to the Brighten The Corners era, a Gibson Les Paul Goldtop, and a Fender Stratocaster that was his guitar of choice during the majority of his time with Pavement. He used a Gibson SG with Pavement during the Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain era. For the 2010 Pavement reunion tour he used his Stratocaster extensively. During his 2011 tour in support of Mirror Traffic he played a Guild S-100. He has also played a Danelectro Silvertone (Sears model dating to 1962 or 1963) for one-off solo shows.

Typically, he uses an Orange Retro 50 head through a 1970s Marshall 4x12 cabinet when playing live, though he has used various other Orange, Marshall and Fender amps, including a vintage Silverface Twin Reverb during the early Pavement years, an Orange OR120 during later Pavement years, and a single channel Orange AD30 with the Jicks. Malkmus's other confirmed (though not constant) gear includes: Z.Vex Fuzz Factory, Diamond J-Drive, Line 6 DL4 Delay Modeler, T-Rex Replica, Lovetone Big Cheese, Lovetone Meatball, BOSS TU-2, DigiTech Whammy, Crowther HotCake and Pro Co RAT.

With Pavement

See also Pavement discography.

Singles and EPs

Albums

With The Crust Brothers

Albums

* Although the Jicks are not credited within the title, the album Stephen Malkmus is in fact a Jicks recording. Initially, Malkmus simply wanted to call his post-Pavement band the Jicks with no mention of his name, but Matador records resisted the idea and released the album as Stephen Malkmus, although the word "Jicks" is printed both on the CD itself, and on the inner sleeve of the vinyl pressing.

** Similarly, while Face the Truth is technically Stephen Malkmus's only true solo affair, the Jicks do provide instrumentation on nearly every song, and "& The Jicks" is visible on the back of the album artwork.

Singles

Compilations and collaborations

Miscellaneous

Music videos