#Live Slow Joy live at the Pike Room BONUS, conversation with them
Slow Joy Confirmed Tour Dates:
June 15th @ Buckingham in Edmonton, AB*
June 16th @ Modern Love in Calgary, AB*
June 18th @ The Pearl in Vancouver, BC*
June 19th @ Mission Theater in Portland, OR*
June 20th @ The Dip in Redding, CA*
June 22nd @ Harlow’s in Sacramento, CA
June 24th @ The Black Sheep in Colorado Springs, CO*
June 26th @ Reverb Lounge in Omaha, NE*
June 27th @ The Rino in Lawrence, KS
September 7th @ Ohio Is For Lover Festival in Cincinnati, OH
*Supporting Free Throw
Slow Joy, the solo project of Dallas based, New Mexican born Chicano artist Esteban Flores, releases his latest single, the urgent and anguished “King Cowboy” – listen HERE. Along with the single, Slow Joy is exclusively premiering the official music video via Under The Radar today, watch HERE. “King Cowboy” is the second track from Slow Joy’s forthcoming new EP Mi Amigo Slow Joy – set to be released on June 7th via Mick Music. He will be hitting the road with his band in June for a North American tour that includes headline shows, festival sets at So What?! Festival in Fort Worth, TX and Ohio Is For Lovers Festival in Cincinnati, OH, and opening for beloved Nashville based American emo band Free Throw in the US and Canada.
New single “King Cowboy” looks at the consequences of existing in a capitalist society, including challenging economic realities. The song represents Flores’ foray into telling personal stories from the perspective of a character. “With ‘King Cowboy,’ I didn't want to critique the American Dream in a way that was preachy,” he says. “So I thought it was interesting to put yourself in a character and say, ‘I'm the King Cowboy,’ which is such a ridiculous term to say.” It’s also the second song to be released ahead of Mi Amigo Slow Joy and follows the Foo Fighters-meets-Pixies single “Pulling Teeth,” which was released last
month with news of the new EP –listen HERE/watch HERE. The new EP was produced by Mike Sapone (Oso Oso, The Front Bottoms, Grouplove) and follows 2023’s Wildflower EP.
Flores first started releasing singles under the moniker Slow Joy in 2020 and by 2022 the project gained momentum via a pair of singles – “Crawling” and “Soft Slam” – that accumulated millions of views on TikTok and secured impressive playlist placements. These early singles featured a sensitive combination of soaring space rock, noisy shoegaze, and dynamic post-rock. Flores originally started writing music to help him process the death of his mother and after his early success, continued to hone his craft. The new EP reflects lyrical and sonic growth that Flores attributes in part to working in the studio with Sapone. In addition, the EP’s visuals and title reflect his Hispanic heritage and culture – something very important to Flores. “Naming it Mi Amigo Slow Joy is like, ‘Hey, this is rock music. It’s serious, and it's important, and it's me.’ And one thing that is me is being a Mexican-American person, and being proud of that culture, and showing it off.”
Look for Mi Amigo Slow Joy on June 7th via Mick Music, pre-order/pre-save and confirmed tour dates
Stay in Touch with Slow Joy
Official Website | TikTok | IInstagram | YouTube | Facebook
We had the chance chat with Esty (Slow Joy) about his new album, competition, and
How did the name Slowjoy come about?
I was going through a really tough moment in life when I was working on this music. I had a death in the family in early 2020. so mid-2020 so like everything that was changing quickly was changing very like for the worst, so I had to remind myself that like good things take time like flowers take a long time to bloom, beautiful things take time to happen, there's a joy that will come slowly so I had to remind it's like a slow joy that's up in there so on my best days I had to I still believe that on my worst days.
How does it feel knowing that Mi Amigos is finally out?
I'm excited. Release days are really fun. They're overwhelming at first because you wake up to many messages and people being kind, and that's exciting. Uh, but then you start to have the average artist panic, like, uh, oh man, are people going to like this?
Is this, you know? And so I try, I try to take it with a grain of salt. Once the music comes out, it's like it's not mine anymore. It belongs to everybody else. So I have to like to remind myself of that. It's like this: this is no longer mine. It is. And then it is what it is at that point.
I want to know the writing process for least pulling teeth, as that was my favorite from this album.
I started, I wrote that in Nashville with a really good friend named Josh Varnador. And it was, uh, it was, we were just kind of like having. We usually start our writing together, like having conversations. And I was just talking to him about like, you know, sometimes I like, my wife flew out today, which I was excited.
But sometimes, I'm not the easiest person to deal with, like all the chaos and everything happening. And it's just like, like, the panic mode and like, yeah. You know, you get to those moments where you're like, thank you for being here, thank you for sticking with me, even through the chaos, um, and I, uh, I just wanted to write about that, and that's what that was, is like a song that was just like, hey, I know things are tough sometimes, I know it's like, I'm not the easiest person to deal with, but like, thank you for being here, and I mean, anyone who's been in a long term relationship has realized like, you go through these like ebbs and flows of like, you know, sometimes you're holding the other person up, and sometimes they're holding you up, and that's like what that partnership is about, and this is just a celebration.
Hey, thank you for not giving up on me and holding me up in the moments that I need it.
With That do you think the music video lives to that justice?
Yeah, It was the song has always been, very lyrically based, so having the lyrics on it was really important there wasn't, a theme to it, it was just, really cool looking room and a couple homies playing in there, and that's, at its element, that's what the song is, It's just, like, people playing in a room and, like, kind of pouring what I believe out into my heart, out into the moment, you know?
In your group of friends on tour, what type of contest would you win between all of them?
That's crazy. Holding breath contest. So we have a lot of contests in the van in general. We have a scoreboard in there, and we just play the dumbest games. Everything is for points.
So we raced back to the van for points. We snapped until the last person couldn't snap anymore. And then that was like for points. I know that I can hold my breath longer than everybody because we've done that, and then we always wrestle in the green room. So, feats of strength, I think I can beat them
who has the most points so far?
Travis, the drummer. He's got that dog in him. It's so frustrating.
