Raging Sound of Slo’ Ponies : San Diego Band Tops New Wave of Surf Music

With an impish grin, lead singer Stu Schumacher of local surf-rockers the Slo’ Ponies shoves a cassette of his band’s newest original, “I Am a Surfer,” into the tape deck and cranks up the volume as high as it will go.

“This is not the kind of stuff you put on for a nice mellow evening at home,” he cautions. “Some surf music is wimpy, but our songs really rage, just like the early-morning surf.”

Indeed. “I Am a Surfer” is a musical tidal wave of twangy reverb guitar leads and thumping bass and drum rhythms. Just as brazen are the lyrics:

Down by the shore we sleep in vans

With teen-age girls with deep dark tans

To pounding surf we wake at 6

One more time, then wax our sticks.

And between each verse is a series of high-pitched blasts from a vintage Fender Rhodes organ--a trademark of most every classic surf-rock tune from the early 1960s.

“That’s our drummer, Chris Fry, doubling on the organ,” Schumacher says. “But he only does that in the studio. We don’t yet have an organ when we play live, so we try to duplicate that sound with our voices.”

Even without an on-stage organ, things are looking awfully good these days for the Slo’ Ponies. Four years after their debut at a college fraternity party, they have finally broken into the San Diego nightclub circuit.

For the last few months, the Slo’ Ponies have been gigging regularly at the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach, Rio’s on Point Loma, and Jose Murphy’s in Pacific Beach. Saturday night, they will share the bill with surf-rock pioneers The Ventures at San Diego State University’s Backdoor.

Aside from sped-up covers of such instrumental surf-rock oldies as the Ventures’ “Walk--Don’t Run,” the Surfaris’ “Wipe Out,” and the Champs’ “Tequila,” the Slo’ Ponies’ repertoire over the years has grown to include nearly two dozen equally energetic originals, with titles like “I Am a Surfer” and “Jetty Betty.”

Five of these songs are on a just-completed demonstration tape the band is about to send off to major record companies in Los Angeles and New York in the hopes of landing a deal.

“We’ve even got our first video, for ‘I Am a Surfer,’ all planned out,” Schumacher said. “It’s going to start with a wide-angle shot of this van driving all psycho on the beach, while a bunch of chicks are sitting on their surfboards, rocking away.

“When the van stops at the water’s edge, there will be a close-up of us jumping out and-- ‘dum-de-dum-de-dum’--start playing. It’s going to be so hot--we want to film it down at the Mission Beach jetty, where all four of us surf.”

At a time when the national record charts are crowded with techno-pop and disco hits by the likes of Prince and Madonna, the Slo’ Ponies see themselves as rebels with a cause.

“We’re trying to bring back the early 1960s, when everyone was into surfing and surf-rock, even if they lived in Ohio,” Schumacher said. “We want to show the kids of today what music was like before disco took away all the fun, all the excitement, all the meaning.”

The Slo’ Ponies were formed in 1984, when Schumacher and three of his surfing buddies--drummer Fry, bassist Gar Wood, and guitarist Rob Meyers, all in their late teens or early 20s--were working at an Ocean Beach pizza parlor.

“After work, we’d go surfing together down by the jetty,” Schumacher recalled. “Between waves, we’d talk about how sad it was that there was no real surf music anymore; everything was techno-pop and disco.

“Eventually, we decided it was time we did something about this problem. And since I was the only guy who didn’t play an instrument, I became the singer.”

After two years of playing fraternity parties and dances around San Diego State University, Schumacher said, the Slo’ Ponies got an unexpected break.

A friend of drummer Fry’s father, Jack Harmon, owned a recording studio in England. And in the spring of 1986, he booked the band on a month-long mini-tour of London pubs and underground clubs.

“Much to our surprise, everyone in England was totally into the surfing life style,” Schumacher said. “They saw us with our long hair and tans, and they were dying. That made us realize that surf music was coming back, bigger than ever, not just in the United States, but all over the world. And that’s when we really decided to get serious.”

Upon their return to San Diego, Schumacher said, the Slo’ Ponies began spending more and more time in the studio, writing songs and recording tapes.

And after making a big splash in San Diego nightclubs, he added, there’s no reason to doubt the Slo’ Ponies will soon make an even bigger splash on the national recording scene.

“The ‘Big Wednesday’ life style, the raging surf parties, the simple, energetic surf-rock of bands like the Ventures and the Surfaris--we want to bring back all that stuff, only with a little more power, a little more gusto,” Schumacher said.

“We’re determined to pull people from all over the world out of the cities and into the surf. I don’t mean physically, I mean through our music.”