Stephen Malkmus

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 released an electronic album titled Groove Denied on March 15, 2019. He has been working on the album for 12 to 13 years. After he submitted the album in 2017, Matador's president and founder Chris Lombardi, who has been releasing Malkmus' records since Pavement's 1992 debut Slanted and Enchanted, flew personally to Portland to inform Malkmus that it wasn't the right time to release the album. The album features Malkmus on all instruments and production and engineering.

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

Malkmus's sixth studio album with the Jicks, Wig Out at Jagbags, was released on January 7, 2014. On February 7, 2018, Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks released "Middle America", their first material in four years. It was their first single from their seventh studio album, Sparkle Hard, which was released on May 18, 2018.

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.

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

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

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 moved to Portland, Oregon, where he met his wife, artist 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.

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 2001, following the 1999 dissolution of Pavement, Malkmus released his first self-titled album with his new band, The Jicks (although they were uncredited).

Malkmus 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. By 2001 he was performing as frontman of The Jicks.

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) and formed the lo-fi band Ectoslavia. 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.

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.

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, Kaisser Instruments Reamer and Pro Co RAT.

Stephen Joseph Malkmus (born May 30, 1966) is an American musician best known as the primary songwriter, lead singer and guitarist of the indie rock band Pavement. He currently performs with Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks and as a solo artist.

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 Deluxe, 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.