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. Biography Early years 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 learned the guitar by playing along to Jimi Hendrix's recording of "Purple Haze". Around the age of 16, he started playing in several Stockton-based punk bands: Bag O Bones, The Straw Dogs, and Crisis Alert. After graduating from high school, 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. Career Pavement 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, were hailed as spearheading the underground indie movement of the 1990s. Pavement reunited in 2010 and embarked on a world tour, and reunited again in 2022 and 2023 for another tour. Solo work and The Jicks In 2001, following the 1999 dissolution of Pavement, Malkmus released his first self-titled album with his