Photo by Michael Weintrob

There’s a bland, unassuming office park in San Diego’s warehouse district. On one corner, in the center of the building complex, adjacent to a janitorial company, is Slightly Stoopid’s recording studio. The only indication that the opaque black door leads into an office space, pot leaf-emblazoned lounge, a storage area replete with skate ramp and an upstairs studio is an askew band sticker slapped across the entrance.

“Our practice space was full,” Miles Doughty, the nearly 34-year-old guitarist, bassist and vocalist, says, leading the way through the studio. “This costs almost the same amount.”

The band moved in about a year and a half ago and, now, the group’s tour manager uses the front area as a base of operations. Merchandise and CDs fill countless shelves. There are so many pot leaves decorating the walls and covering the ceiling’s florescent lights that it would be easy to mistake this for a head shop.

In the back, amid piles of gear, is a half pipe where Kyle McDonald, the group’s other guitarist, bassist and vocalist, skates. Massive skulls props leftover from 2009’s Blazed and Confused tour – which Slightly Stoopid co-headlined with Snoop Dogg – watch over the ramp.

“After a long-ass day, you get to come here, skate, make music and hang out,” Kyle, 33, says. “That’s what the band is – a family that hangs out together. So the more we can do that while we’re off the road is always good. Good things come from hanging out.”

Slightly Stoopid, which also includes drummer Ryan “RyMo” Moran, percussionist Oguer “OG” Ocon, keyboardist Paul Wolstencroft and horn players Daniel “Dela” Delacruz and Christofer “C-Money,” believe in the power of collaboration. The band has shared the stage with artists like Ian and Ivan Neville, Don Carlos, G. Love, Steve Kimock, Cypress Hill and Snoop.

The attitude – embodied by Kyle’s statement that “if you go solo you’re just a cock squeezer” – is that everyone should just have a good time together. No ulterior motives, no blueprint, just the music and the vibe. If you’re doing what you like, others may like it, too – as long as you all do it together.

Exhibit A: The Greek Theatre, April 20. The outdoor venue, nestled in the side of a hill in Los Angeles’ Griffith Park, is overwhelmed with smoke from the capacity crowd of approximately 9,000. White bursts billow upward, creating a small-scale simulacrum of the ash cloud that overtook the sky when Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano erupted last year. If there was ever any doubt about whether it’s possible to develop a contact high, the answer is unequivocally, yes.

The vibe is uninhibited excitement, a bacchanalian exuberance tempered only by the effects of the excessive pot smoke that pervades the air. While Miles says Slightly Stoopid’s fans – the Stoopidheads – vary “from 15 to 55,” there’s no denying that the crowd here is largely twentysomethings – the sort of people who rushed frats in college and who, even in adulthood, consider 4/20 an important national holiday. When the band takes the stage after an opening set by punk legends Bad Brains, the plume of smoke expands and audience members pass joints to Kyle and Miles while a collection of family and friends members smash together onstage behind the musicians.

Today may be a particularly special occasion, as the oversized clouds of pot smoke suggest, but Slightly Stoopid attract these types of loyal, impassioned fans wherever they go. The band’s early touring career began on the West Coast, with frequent jaunts inland to places like Boulder, Colo. and Reno, Nev.

In 1999, the funk-metal band Fishbone gave the group its first national tour. The band began spending more than 300 days a year on the road, visiting each town several times during a one-year span. Less than a decade later, Slightly Stoopid co-headlined the Summer Haze tour with longtime friend and collaborator G. Love in 2007 – a trek that G. Love says was a “real good stepping stone for each of us to become headliners in the sheds.”

By 2009, the group invited Snoop Dogg out for a summer amphitheater tour. “It was pretty nuts,” Miles admits, looking back. “We were nervous, just because it was Snoop Dogg. It’s the godfather of rap right there. When we were doing that, me, Kyle and the boys were just going like, ‘Fuck, man, this is nuts.’ Every night, you’re going, ‘Dude, we’re on tour with Snoop.’ That’s what we kept telling ourselves.”

How is it, then, that a band that can sell out a 19,000-person show in Boston and follow Snoop Dogg as the final act for the evening on the tour, not be one of the biggest bands in the business?

Manager Matt Phillips, who began shepherding the group’s career while he was still in college in San Diego (along with his brother Jon who managed Sublime), believes this is due – in some part – to Kyle and Miles’ deep sense of self; a desire to do it their own way, no matter what the industry tries to dictate; and an attitude that’s reflected in the band’s arguably disastrous name.

“I don’t think they really care what people say,” says Matt over lunch at Jones Hollywood, an old school Italian joint in West Hollywood. "Not a rude sense, but I think they are who they are – they’re not going to change for anybody.
“And the way they look at it, people are either going to accept us or not. If that meant they were going to be playing 500-capacity clubs the rest of their careers, they were down to take that path.”

Both the band and its managers – Matt and Jon’s Silverback Management also represents Fishbone, Rebelution and The Beautiful Girls, among others – will tell you an animated story of the time the group almost signed with a major label, which would have jerked Slightly Stoopid’s career down a completely different road – and probably ended it prematurely.

“In 2003, when Everything You Need was about to come out, major labels really started to recognize, ‘Hey, this band is something,’” Matt recalls. "We were about to do a deal with Interscope and [label head] Jimmy Iovine was sitting there. Jimmy was like, ‘We have a studio that Dr. Dre built the specs for on the fourth floor, why don’t you start recording?’
“They started recording at this studio before we even had a deal. The lawyers started going back and forth with the deal. Jimmy was in the studio and had people coming through buying the band lunch and dinner from the best restaurants in Beverly Hills, bringing in sacks of weed from Dr. Dre’s weed dealer. One day, when we were in there, there was a little dispute over writing another verse in the song ‘Collie Man’ between Jimmy and Miles. Miles was like, ‘Look, I’m not going to let you tell me how to write my music.’ The next day we show up and we get the menu for [the Mexican fast-food restaurant] Baja Fresh. Right then, it was like, ‘Let’s go the independent path.’”

Slightly Stoopid’s first two albums, 1996’s self-titled debut and 1998’s The Longest Barrel Ride, came out on Long Beach, Calif.-based Skunk Records, the indie label owned by Sublime’s Bradley Nowell and Miguel Happoldt. Everything You Need ended up on the San Diego-based label Surfdog, home to Brian Setzer and Tea Leaf Green.

In 2000, the band and Silverback Management formed Stoopid Records as a means to release Acoustic Roots: Live and Direct, which it had recorded at San Diego station 105.3 FM. After exiting the Interscope negotiations and as other label deals waned, it seemed natural for the band to pursue the homegrown distribution system that has now become commonplace – and almost trendy – for larger artists. But even now, Miles and Kyle aren’t terribly concerned with business of things.

“We started Stoopid Records mainly just to help our friends,” Kyle shrugs, stoner-like outside the studio. His slow cadence and careful word choice, as well as his pot-leaf clad shirt, suggest weed-induced articulation. “It wasn’t some business thing. We don’t ever do anything just to try to make money. Basically, there are so many talented people out there that are our friends that [the label] gave us an opportunity to help some of them. That’s all we really do. Whoever is on Stoopid Records tours – they don’t just put records out. They put in the hard work.”

Miles, who’s been standing beside him sucking apple juice from a juice box, chimes in: “I think we’ve taken it as far as the underground circuit – or whatever you want to call it – will let us and we’ve been able to maintain a certain level of shows. We’ve gotten to play with so many dope people. We’re about as blessed as it gets.”

Ocean Beach, Calif. is a small beach town community seven miles south of downtown San Diego. The sun-drenched city is a haven for surfers and pseudo hippies – the sort of place you’d expect a band like Slightly Stoopid to hail from. As kids, Kyle and Miles – who met when they were one and two years old – would sit around playing guitar and watching Mötley Crüe videos, hoping to one day ape that lifestyle. They took surf trips to Mexico with Kyle’s dad and, over the years, formed a truly brotherly bond.

The guys established Slightly Stoopid when they were in high school and it named as such because it “looks like the correct spelling for stupid,” according to Miles. Initially, it was a punk band inspired by Minor Threat, Rancid, Operation Ivy and Bad Religion.

“We were punk kids, so that was the vibe and we did a lot of punk rock shows,” says Miles. “I think as you get older, you evolve as a musician – you’re not playing with that ‘fuck the world’ mentality. That’s what you have when you’re a kid. When you’re that age, your vibe is screw authority, your parents, whoever. Every kid at that age is basically a rebel of some sort.”

Ocean Beach was receptive to music, bolstered by a strong reggae scene and a solid collection of venues like Winston’s and Dream Street. It was at Dream Street in 1995, where the duo first encountered Sublime leader Brad Nowell. (In Jon Phillip’s more exciting version of the tale, Miles’ mom, an RN, brought Nowell home to “nurse him back to health” when he was jonesing for drugs and played a Slightly Stoopid demo tape for him.) Nowell and Happoldt signed the band to Skunk Records, and Miles and Kyle began opening for Sublime around Southern California.

That was 17 years ago. And while Nowell passed away from a heroin overdose in 1996, just after Slightly Stoopid recorded its debut record, the band hasn’t quite escaped the shadow of Sublime. Even though Slightly Stoopid has since evolved from a scrappy punk rock band to a stylistically diverse rock group that assumes the guise of numerous genres, the typical chatter makes it seems as if the band only exists because of Sublime’s endorsement and help.

“I think Brad definitely helped steer them musically and give them a focus,” Matt says. “They were high school kids and he was there in San Diego writing music with them. He played bass on a few songs on their first album. He was very instrumental in that sense. They did a song, ‘Prophet,’ together, that Myles actually wrote but Brad played bass on and sang with them on as a hidden track on their first album. It was later released on Sublime’s box set.”
“That’s how much Slightly Stoopid tried to exploit that,” Jon underscores of Slightly Stoopid’s balance of respect and appreciation for Sublime’s impact on its career. “They put it as a hidden track. It was just part of their life, the progression of events. They never took it to the bank.”

There’s a vaporizer directly inside the door to Slightly Stoopid’s studio/office space. A bong looms over the soundboard next to a giant baggie of weed whose strain is named “Closer to the Sun,” after the group’s song. A pile of marijuana-themed shirts is scattered by the entrance, which Miles notes he can no longer don thanks to a gig coaching a wrestling team at a local high school.

The band’s jaunt last summer, with hip-hop pot champion Cypress Hill, was dubbed the Legalize It! Tour. Last spring, when the tour was announced, journalists received rolling papers and a lighter emblazoned with Slightly Stoopid’s logo along with a traditional press release. It all begs the question: How much is Slightly Stoopid, its music and underground success indebted to pot?

“It’s an everyday thing to us, just like everything else,” Kyle says of his use, almost shrugging off the question – one that the band undoubtedly gets a lot. "But yeah, we definitely like to have a good supply of some good greens. That’s just how it’s always been. [For] everyone in my family, it’s always been a part of their life [and for] all my friends.
“It’s not something we think about, but it definitely shines through sometimes. Everything you do, the way you feel. I think that’s where a lot those melodies and stuff come from – when you feel good and you’re just singing to yourself. You’re like, ‘I feel good’ and you’re humming along and you’re like ‘Yeah, that’s nice’ and you take it from there.”

It’s a niche lifestyle, certainly, and there’s always the danger of exclusion when a band’s image so directly tied to something that’s marginally illegal. Surprisingly, Miles isn’t totally sure he’s still in favor of legalization despite the musicians’ status as spokesmen for the cause.

At this point, marijuana is so integrated into Slightly Stoopid – its lyrics, image and lifestyle – it’s nearly impossible to imagine its existence without it. “People assume we’re a stoner band – and we are – but they assume that’s all we do: smoke weed and that’s it,” Miles says somewhat dismissively. “[But] that’s our culture. We grew up around it and – to us – it’s fine.”

The group’s last album, Slightly Not Stoned Enough To Eat Breakfast Yet Stoopid, which came out in mid 2008, featured 21 tracks, clocking in at more than a hour – something most artists shy away from as fans’ attention spans seemingly decrease by the day. It was a collection of new tunes and old B-sides, showcasing a range in sonic designs. The band’s upcoming new disc, which its hopes to release this fall, will apparently contain enough music to completely fill a CD (roughly 80 minutes).

“I think the problem with music today is people are worried about force-feeding a 10- to 12-song record in 30 minutes [in] someone’s face,” Miles says sitting in front of the mixing board in the band’s studio. The room is small, but precisely wired to the band’s taste and specifications. The new disc, yet to be named, will represent the first time that the group eschewed a major studio and did the recording itself, on its own timeline.

While you can certainly hear Sublime’s influence in Slightly Stoopid’s music, the band accesses styles and aesthetics that Sublime only had a short chance to touch on. Slightly Stoopid’s records draw from reggae, punk, acoustic rock, hip-hop (more so in recent years) and jam rock.

The power comes, in part, from the fusion of two songwriters who each have distinct tastes that complement the other’s. “You’ve got Miles who knows how to write a real pop hit and also can write down and dirty stuff too, don’t get me wrong,” G. Love says. “And you’ve got Kyle who writes a lot of really dark tunes. You’ve got these different voices coming out at different times on the record and that’s something I’ve always thought was a strong point. I think it’s just a matter of time before they crack one out of the ballpark and it explodes onto a huger level.”

Miles, for his part, doesn’t seem concerned with finding commercial success. “Most of the records have that hit song and that record sucks,” he says. “Ninety percent of them are like that and you’re like, ‘Fuck, man, give me some jams.’ On our records – what I think is cool about the way we record music is – we make the songs flow into each other, which is really one long jam. So it almost feels like [one song is] supposed to go into the next song, not necessarily losing someone’s attention; it flows together.”

Kyle says that every time the band goes into the studio, it’s never trying to record a specific album. Instead, the group cuts as many songs as it can and sifts through the material to find what merits inclusion on a particular project.

Moreover, owning their own studio has allowed for a certain amount of freedom for these childhood brothers in arms who are now both parents: Kyle has baby twin boys and Miles has a young daughter.

“There’s no structure, really,” says Kyle of Slightly Stoopid’s recording process. “When you’re doing something and you try to do it all at once, it’ll never get done. But if you just enjoy what you’re doing – little piece by piece – when it’s all said and done, you look back at it and you’re like, ‘Goddamn, I just built a house.’”

Or, in this case, a sweet place to hang out with your friends, smoke a little weed and skateboard to your heart’s content.