San Diego-based Slightly Stoopid are a band not easily labeled, a point of pride for lead singer Miles Doughty. But when talking sports, particularly the Rams/Chargers/Raiders relocation effort, Doughty’s hometown allegiances are apparent.
Slightly Stoopid’s Miles Doughty – Photo: Silverback Music
Doughty is outspoken about the Chargers both on and off the field, making the Rams and/or Raiders his choice to move to Los Angeles. Talking sports with Doughty isn’t much different than sitting with friends in a bar, only your friends probably don’t play golf with David Wells.
Doughty and co-frontman, Kyle McDonald started Slightly Stoopid in 1994, and began gaining traction when Sublime singer/songwriter Bradley Nowell discovered them two years later.
Their unique mix of rock, reggae, blues, and folk has earned them spots touring or collaborating with Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir, Ziggy Marley, Snoop Dogg, Widespread Panic, Cypress Hill, and the Meat Puppets.
Doughty sat down with 101ESPN before his band’s fall tour opener at the Pageant to discuss the San Diego/St. Louis stadium situations and, of course, alligator wrestling with Jeremy Roenick.
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St. Louis just had our mandatory NFL Town Hall meeting on relocation. What are your thoughts on the situation? What’s the feeling like in San Diego? “The feeling from San Diegans is that our team is gone. Just the attitude (owner Dean Spanos) has given has been kind of bulls—t. ‘Unless the NFL says we can’t go to LA, we’re going. And that’s that.’”
That’s pretty much identical to the feeling in St. Louis. Stan Kroenke has done everything in his power aside from verbally saying he would like to move the Rams. “It seems like this town is more of a baseball town than a football town.”
That’s an argument people have who aren’t here as often. And it’s easy to have that assumption because the Cardinals draw more people, win much more, and have an owner who is very involved in the community and is very fan friendly. And then you have the Rams who had the worst five-year span in the history of the NFL. “It was pretty bad there for a while. Things are looking up for the Rams now though. Todd Gurley is legit and your O-line is looking better.”
They basically had a practice squad out there at times during the rough stretch. Pair that with Kroenke and it has eroded the fanbase a lot. “The thing is, the Rams started in Los Angeles. My argument is if the NFL is gonna give one team a place to go, it should be a team that was in Los Angeles, whether it be the Raiders or the Rams.
You’re gonna rip a team away from one of the most beautiful cities in the country and you’re gonna tell me a city like Detroit, which is completely bankrupt should have a (expletive) NFL team? A city like Jacksonville where people barely even go to the games should have an NFL stadium…And the fact that the Chargers have to borrow money against the league, they have to borrow money from Goldman-Sachs to even do anything and Kroenke has $5 billion.
He can start digging tomorrow and build a stadium in Inglewood. I know that’s not what St. Louis fans wanna hear, but that’s a fact. If the NFL is truly concerned about the overall dollar then wouldn’t you take a guy who can pay for everything himself over two teams that have to borrow against the NFL and private investors?”
Lots of people around here think the league already has their mind made up for exactly what you just said about Kroenke and his money. They think the public hearings are a show. I see San Diego’s best argument being that you’re still selling out games. “Right. Every game pretty much. And we signed such a sh—y lease agreement with the Chargers that the team doesn’t even pay rent. We pay them! And to me, if you’re Dean Spanos, if you’re an owner then you have to have a voice. You can’t just have this lawyer…People hate Mark Fabiani.”
One of our columnists said Fabiani got booed down pretty good at the hearing. “Oh yeah. Big time. And the fact of the matter is they’re basically saying (expletive) you, San Diego unless the NFL says they have to stay here. Then they’ll say, ‘Oh well this is where we really wanted to stay the whole time!’ It’s just sad because so many people spend their hard earned money on professional sports and you have the blackouts if they don’t sellout. The fans at home are the ones buying $150 jackets and $200 jerseys too and then they get screwed because they can’t afford the jacked-up prices at games.”
What’s doubly sad in this situation is fans from one of the three cities are going to get screwed. “If the Chargers leave, I won’t be a Chargers fan any more. I can’t support a team that leaves their city even if they call them something like the ‘Southern California Chargers.’ LA has always been more a Raider town to me.”
Eric Grubman said here the other night that St. Louis’ stadium efforts are about eight or nine months ahead of San Diego’s at the moment. So the gripe around here is if that’s still the case when the owners vote then the NFL loses even more credibility. “Right. And the thing of it is, we can all speculate and guess what’s gonna happen, but until January when they vote and declare what’s actually gonna go down, we’re all just gonna be sitting here scratching our heads wondering ‘what the (expletive).’ And it’s sad because it’ll change a lot of people’s lives. But at the end of the day, if sports really went away tomorrow we’d get over it because life goes on.”
It’s a luxury. It’s a fun part of life that’s really important until something actually important comes up. “Yeah. Like the other day the Chargers were getting obliterated by the Raiders. I decided to stay home with my kids since we were about to start the tour and we turned the game off and forgot about football for the day and went and just did stuff on a Sunday. It freed up our whole day. I saved myself three-and-a-half hours of bulls—t.”
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How does it feel having the Cardinals knock the Padres out of the playoffs three times the past 20 years? “(Laughs) Thanks for bringing that up. It’s brutal. The Cardinals have pretty much abused the Padres in the postseason. All you can do as a San Diego fan is tip your hat to the St. Louis organization. With Tony La Russa and now with Mike Matheny, it’s pretty cool, the culture they’ve instilled is what you want. Even after Albert Pujols left, everyone wondered what was gonna happen. They won the freakin’ World Series again. They didn’t need Pujols.”
Money talks in some situations, but winning helps fans forget about a guy. “Right. But you’ve seen what he’s done in Anaheim compared to here and it’s kind of squat. I don’t see how he could’ve left the embracement and the love that he got from this city. It’s such a powerful baseball town…When October time is around this city’s like (makes explosion noise).”
St. Louis definitely loves its Cardinals. This is a city full of sports fans in general though. “Right. As a sports fan, I fly all around to see my teams play. I just got back from Green Bay watching the Chargers and you know the drill, sports fuel you. There’s something weird about it. You’ll end up drinking with some guy you’ve never met in your life because of the shared passion over football or baseball.”
St. Louisans spend many nights drinking with people they don’t know if there’s a game on. “When I went to Green Bay literally the night before the game, we were at the Chargers’ hotel and these Green Bay fans would come up and be like, ‘Oh, let us buy you a drink. You’ve gotta drink this thing called a spotted cow that’s like ‘Green Bay’s beer.’”
We’re familiar with it. “Yeah, it’s like Wisconsin’s beer I guess. You can only get it up there so they bought us drinks and we’re like, ‘sure, man. It’s great to be here.’ It’s just good vibes, man. Sports bring out the best and sometimes obviously the worst in people, but you go with the best intention that it brings out the positive energy in positive ways.”
One thing I know a lot of people around here are thankful to the Padres for is Ozzie Smith. (Laughs) “The Padres are actually notorious for trading away potential superstars. You’ll watch them in your lineup and then say, ‘oh my goodness. How could you let that guy go?’ And then they’ll go on to hit another few hundred homeruns for another team or go on to pitch great for another team. Just think about Roberto Alomar. We could’ve locked him up forever. He was one of the best second basemen in the game!”
You did hold on to Tony Gwynn though. “Well, what was cool about Gwynn was he really got a lot of heat from the MLB player’s union because he took less to stay in San Diego and he was unarguably one of the greatest hitters of all time. If he didn’t get injured so much toward the end of his career he could’ve made a run at Pete Rose’s record. But the last eight years of his career he was in and out of the lineup. That’s too bad. Rest in peace. He was a San Diego icon. When he passed, no one realized his cancer was that severe. Everyone though he was going through his treatments and doing ok. I was in my car at 6:30 in the morning when I heard he passed and I literally had to pull the car over and I started crying. Since I was four-years-old going to Padres games, he was Mr. Padre.”
His death hit a lot true-bred baseball fans hard. Because on top of being so fun to watch, he was one of the good guys and stuck with one team his whole career, which was admirable in his era. “You have to take some happiness into consideration. I mean, if I pay you $10 million a year to live in San Diego, or $13 million to live in Detroit, I’m personally gonna play ball in San Diego. (Gwynn) loved the city though and the city loved him back so much. He’s a legend.”
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Chris Long, who’s a huge music fan, once told us every musician he’s met wants to be an athlete and vice versa. Does the band have any pro athlete fans or friends? “Yeah. A bunch of different guys. One of my good friends, Lonnie Paxton was on the Patriots Superbowl teams and he’s one of the most standup guys you’ll ever meet. I met him at our show and we ended up really good friends. Everybody wants to live the dream and be a kid forever. If you can get paid to play a game it’s just incredible.”
You’re living the dream playing music though right? “Very true. I grew up an athlete too. I played football and wrestled and golfed and surfed and skated. I played golf in St. Louis this morning in Forest Park. If you get on a field, whatever kind of field you’re on, you can lose yourself in that moment. If you have a bad day you can play a pickup game with your buddies and leave it all out on the table. Just like what we do on stage every night. We work our asses off to rock people to death pretty much.”
Sports and music share quite a crossroads. “It’s really huge. Some of the Padres guys will even play Stoopid songs as they walk to the plate. I’m good friends with Tyson Ross who’s a hell of a pitcher and I just met James Shields the other night and found out he’s a Stoopid fan.”
Small world. “And one of the coolest guys is David Wells, who lives near me in Ocean Beach, and we hang out a lot and play golf or party. Standup guy. He’d give you the shirt off his back. And another guy who is absolutely nuts is Jeremy Roenick.”
Does he live out there? He gave the Blues fits when he played. “He does live out there and he is nuts. Just a riot. Great player too. One of two American-born players with 500 goals. Fearless. And he’s still that way. Last week he was golfing somewhere down south and there was an alligator on the golf course and he f—ing tried to dive on it.”
What? Wow. “Yeah. It was on the news. He tried to get his buddy to film it and his buddy thought he was joking and he just dives and barely misses it! It dove into the water. It’s like a seven-foot alligator! We played in a tournament after that and I asked him about it and he was just like, ‘Yeah, that was last week,’ like it was no big deal.”
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A lot of your fans are fans because you guys have no category. You do a little of everything. You have lots of influences and have collaborated and toured with so many different bands. I’ll throw out a name of one and you tell me what comes to mind. “Okay. Yeah.”
(Grateful Dead guitarist) Bob Weir. “Legendary, man. It was one of those moments where I’m sitting in a room like this one and him and I both have acoustic guitars and we’re singing ‘I Know You Rider’ together. And as I’m singing I’m thinking to myself, ‘Holy s—t. I’m playing with Bob Weir right now.’ It was one of those pinch-me moments.”
Sublime. “Back in the day when we were kids they really took us under their wing. Brad (Nowell) was a friend and mentor and he was kind of a big brother figure a little bit. The world lost an incredible musician and songwriter. And he really changed the culture of music from grunge to the Southern California sound. Whether it was reggae, rock, ska, or punk, he really changed that element.”
I’m sure a lot of fans think of you guys as a continuation of that. Because you listen to Bradley and he had all these influences from (Frank) Zappa to the Butthole Surfers, Jimi Hendrix, Jerry Garcia and you guys have the same kind of thing. “And what’s cool is we learned a lot from Brad and (manager/producer) Miguel (Happoldt) when we were kids about how not to be lazy on the road and to tour and respect what you’re doing and to give it your all. And we really owe a lot to those guys with getting our foot in the door. I’ve been in the band for 22 years now and there’s never been any looking back and I haven’t worked a regular job since I was like 19-years-old.”
Primus. “Man, they were just visionaries, dude. If you ever watched their killer videos. To me they were revolutionary in some of their videos. And Les (Claypool) is an incredible bass player. I can’t even describe what their sound is because it’s just so out there.”
I think Claypool categorized it as ‘psychedelic polka’ one time. (Laughing) “Nice. They’re great. Growing up when MTV was actually playing videos, theirs were incredible. They were a huge influence.”
The video for ‘Wynona’s Big Brown Beaver’ comes to mind. “Oh dude. (Laughing) That video is ridiculous. They’re so great. They’ll be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame someday because they’re an incredible band.”
The Meat Puppets opened for you guys last time you were here. What comes to mind there? “They’re ridiculous as well, dude. Curt (Kirkwood) is an amazing guitar player. He does some obscure stuff, man. You’ll sit there and watch his hands and go, ‘What the (expletive) is he playing?’”
You get the same feeling from listening to him. “You know what I’m talking about then. I would sit there and watch him while we were on tour. It twists your mind the way he puts stuff together in songs. He’s a visionary and not everyone knows about him and that’s a shame.”
Cypress Hill. “So-Cal hip hop originators…What can you say? We’ve toured with them a lot and they’re really cool guys. They smoke a lot of weed (laughs). I grew up listening to them in high school and it’s kind of surreal to have toured with them like we have. We’ve gone down to South America with them and did a whole national tour in the States. They’re really just incredible guys. Sen Dog looks mean muggin’ and crazy and B-Real does too, but they’re actually just super, super nice guys. They deliver a great show every time and who can’t get down to ‘Insane in the Brain?”
No one worth getting down with. You guys have also opened for Widespread Panic who have a pretty big local following. How was that? (Excited) “Musically, they’re incredible. If you’re not into jam bands then I don’t know if you’re gonna like it or not because they do some pretty gnarly stuff at their shows. But if you’re just a music fan they’re great because every one of them is an incredible musician. Guitar, bass, drums, everything and they have great light shows on stage. It makes it an incredible experience for the fans.”
They put on a great show. “Oh yeah. And the musicianship, even with a band like Umphrey’s McGee who we’ve toured with also, they’re the same kind of thing. Their musicianship is crazy. I don’t know if you’ll like every song if you’re not a jam band fan.”
But you’ve got to respect them musically. Umphrey’s always draw well here too. “And they’re all really nice guys as well. We’ve toured with them a few times.”
We can’t thank you enough for your time, Miles. Have a great tour. “My pleasure, dude. I enjoyed it.”
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