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Punk | Rock

BAND BIO Favorite Restaurant(s): Lil Debbie's Previous Bands: Swim Herschel Swim, Swim Pigs, 401K, Sourpuss Formed (when/where): San Francisco, 1996 Influences: Motley Crue, Johnny Cash, the Pixies

For those of us who have longed for a proper heir to the great heavy metal and punk of the eighties Slender can only be seen as a gift sent directly from the rock gods above. Since their inception in 1996, they have forged new ground in unlikely places, infusing their catchy pop sensibilities with hard and heavy metal--emerging as something wholly their own.

The quartet consists of Rod Damnit (lead singer and official band hellraiser), Kent Carter on bass, Joe Martinez on drums and the guitar slinging Clint Grubb. The band claims that all of their musical compositions (with the exception of the occasional cover) are channeled directly from the immortal, departed soul of Canadian talent impresario and semi-professional hand model Manny Knipplewicz.

The idea for Slender was long coming. In the early 90s, Kent and Rod played together in the legendary ska band Swim Herschel Swim while they were students in Provo, UT. After 3 years, the Swim project peaked out. Rod got married and went into advertising while Kent forged ahead with two new groups, an acid jazz trio called the Swim Pigs and an Elvis Costello-inspired group called Nectar. Hoping to make it in a bigger music scene, Nectar soon brought Kent to San Francisco. The band played on for a few months but personality conflicts within the band proved too taxing and Nectar broke up. With his band experience and music degree, Kent went to work as an engineer at Spark Studios. During his tenure there, he recorded, among others, Hip-Hop acts B Legit, E-40 and Suga-T.

Meanwhile, Rod and his wife decided to leave Salt Lake City and follow a job opportunity in San Francisco. Rod and Kent hung out together and started talking about doing music again. Late in 1995, they went to see No Doubt, old friends from their ska days, in concert. No Doubt was just about to break out with the Top 40 "Tragic Kingdom" album, and seeing the show really motivated the two to get their act together and start a new project. Unlike ska, though, they decided to go for something heavier and angrier than Swim Hershel Swim.

Soon afterward, Kent and Rod put out an ad in the Bay Guardian to begin auditioning for the band. The original idea was to do up tempo hard rock punk with a horn section. They interviewed several guitarists, and finally invited Clint Grubb to the line up. His thick sound and penchant for hard and poppy hooks made him a natural fit. To this day, Kent and Rod both maintain that the only reason they chose him was because he was young, cute and brought the biggest amp. The hunt for a permanent drummer went on for a while, and Joe officially joined the band in October of 96, after flashing the band his tattoos.

Playing with their horn section, the band realized that groups like The Mighty Bostones and No Doubt had beaten them to the punch. Worried that by the time they matured as a full-fledged band, the sound would already be tired, they decided to drop horns and focus on a tougher, metal sound.

The idea to name the band Slender figures largely, though ambiguously, into the band's many mythologies. One version (and our favorite) is that the band members all used to clock in pretty hefty at 400 pounds, until they all took the Slender diet, which Rodney informs us consists solely of water and kitty litter.

The more likely version comes, appropriately, from out of Rod's tragic and twisted love life. During his time away from the stage as a happy husband, he put on a few pounds. Soon after moving to San Francisco, his marriage went south and Rod noticed that all his angst was helping him shed a few pounds. When the band was kicking around ideas for a name, he came up with Slender, and the name stuck.

Armed with a kick-ass name, some heavy tunes and hard live shows, Slender soon found themselves at the top of the San Francisco rock-n-roll scene. In early 1998, The band met up with Blag Dahlia (from the legendary punk band The Dwarves) who agreed to produce and mix some tracks for them in the studio. They recorded "Little Debbie" and "Honeymoon" to release as a single.

Tragedy struck shortly after the songs were mixed, before the band could get them to press. The house Kent was living in burned down when a next door neighbor decided to start his own fireworks factory. All of the masters and backups, as well as much of his equipment and home, were completely destroyed.

A version of "Little Debbie" did survive, though, because the band had given a digital recording of the tune to play at the University of San Francisco radio station. Support for the band was strong, too, and some friends passed the hat after hearing about the tragedy and raised $1800 to help put the band back in the studio.

This time, Slender went back in the studio to make the aptly titled Damn House Blew Up, a five-song EP. Blag returned to produce and the songs were released on cassette, along with a 7" single of ".08 Love".

The newly recorded material caught the attention of Guapo Records, and in early in 2000, Slender signed a deal with the label. They went into the studio to record Haunted Radio again with producer Blag Dahlia as well as engineer Brad Cook (Foo Fighter, Vandals, and Gloritone). With their first full-length album, Slender has emerged as one the great, no-nonsense heavy metal, pop bands of this brand new millennium.

http://www.guaporecords.com/slender/index.shtml

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