ABOUT SLACKEYE SLIM

Instead of counting streams, chasing likes on social media, or making thirty second videos desperately begging for attention on Tik Tok, Slackeye Slim has always stayed true to himself, his fierce DIY ethos, and his love for the American West.

Slackeye Slim has been the de facto OG of the spaghetti western genre since 2006. Taking influence from an abrupt decision to move to Butte, Montana at the age of 21 and work as a classic country radio DJ,  Slackeye Slim took a pause from his early influences in punk and metal and traded them in for country music, but eventually circled back and combined all three styles along with a heavy dose of western swagger to come up with a sound that was truly his own. 

After struggling to make ends meet in Montana, he returned to his native Ohio and got his start by singing the over-the-top cowboy songs found on his first album "Texas Whore Pleaser." In a matter of months, he went from uploading his first few songs on MySpace as an unknown 22 year old kid to becoming one of the core members of the then still new underground country movement of the early 2000's; a brief moment where there were no rules, and genre-bending creativity was celebrated. He spent the next several years playing alongside such notable acts as Slim Cessna’s Auto Club, The Legendary Shack Shakers, 357 String Band, Rachel Brooke, Those Poor Bastards, and Lydia Loveless. 

While all eyes were on him following the release of his second album "El Santo Grial: La Pistola Piadosa" in 2011, an album which still stands in 2023 as one of the best "country" concept records ever released according  to Saving Country Music and countless others, Slackeye weighed his options. With things linings up in his  favor to break out of the underground, or at least rise to the top of it, he decided to skip it and instead moved to a 2000-acre ranch in western Colorado. 

There, he began working on his third album, "Giving My Bones to the Western Lands." Recorded entirely in the abandoned homestead buildings on the ranch, this album marked a shift in focus from metaphysical cowboy tales to more personal songwriting, although there was still plenty of irreverent  gunslinger attitude to be found. 

June 23, 2023 marked the release of his fourth album, “Scorched Earth - Black Heart.” His most bleak, honest, and personal collection of songs to date, the album deals with the most difficult parts of his life; his family, his relationship with them, and particularly his relationship with himself. 

Currently, Slackeye Slim lives in the middle of nowhere in Montezuma County, Colorado where he raises a family, roams the surrounding canyon country in search of undiscovered Ancestral Puebloan ruins, and continues to work on new music.

 

 

 

"Like many of the leathered-skinned, sand-blasted, sullen and desperate characters which populate his stories, Slackeye Slim seems more apparition than man, shifting in and out of the material consciousness, showing up when you least expect him, and disappearing for years at a time in between"

-Saving Country Music

 

"Slackeye Slim is what it would sound like if Ennio Morricone wanted to be Link  
Wray when he grew up."

-NO DEPRESSION

 

"He never intended to be a part of any genre, but it didn’t stop his 2011 album El Santo Grial: La Pistola Piadosa from becoming one of the best western-inspired albums in the dying gasps of the alternative country movement."

-THE MUSICAL DIVIDE

 

"Essential listening."

-NINEBULLETS