Today we’d like to introduce you to Zach Noel.
Hi Zach, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
Sure, I am 32 and grew up in the San Fernando Valley singing from a very young age and for as long as I can remember have always had a strong fascination with music. One of my earliest musical performances onstage I remember was when I was 8 years old I sang “Pinball Wizard” by The Who in front of my entire elementary school with the encouragement of my school’s music teacher. I sang it accompanied by a tape recording of my dad playing along to the song, which he had multi-tracked on the acoustic guitar. Two years later, at the age of ten years old, I would sing it along with the band he played in, performing live at The Mint. Needless to say, I have always felt at home singing and performing onstage ever since.
Slowpoke started in late spring of 2013 when I first met our bass player Jack Meighan after he responded to a Craigslist ad I had posted with a link to some of my own solo acoustic demos on SoundCloud and the goal of finding other musicians with which to start a band. We were both in college at the time and we hit it off over our shared tastes in music and starting out playing covers of indie-rock standards. Jack’s friend Sam then joined us on bass as Jack was playing guitar at the time, before moving back home to Boston. I then convinced Jack to switch to bass after I asked my friend Tamara Simons, who I had met years previously jamming with a mutual friend and who I had studied music with at Pierce College and CSUN together to join us on guitar. Now a trio, we began rehearsing and writing music together in Tamara and Jack’s apartments in Sherman Oaks and Koreatown respectively, often drinking beers and trying to imagine how the then-sparse, guitar-based songs we were writing would sound with a full band and started meeting with a few drummers, though few of them stuck. Not long after that though we met Julien Nicolai in the summer of 2018. We called ourselves New Media, inspired by New Order and a mutual love of other post-punk era bands and released our first three singles under that name throughout 2020: “Thin Ice”, “Tunnel Vision,” and “Signals” Then, we released our debut EP, How It Was in Dec 2021. Following How It Was, we released two singles: “Slackers”, written as a tongue-in-cheek ‘anthem for a recovering slacker’ which was featured on Buzzbands.LA and Vanyaland, and “April Fool” released that same month of 2022. Originally, Jack wanted Slackers to be a song about tacos being a reason for living or and as part of an exercise in writing a hypothetical slacker-rock song like that of an imaginary band at some of the DIY/all ages venues we would see play at would write, but thankfully we changed it around and it settled into what our version of an anthem for a recovering slacker would be. We then changed our name to Slowpoke in 2023 and have since never looked back.
This year, we released our first single under our new name as Slowpoke, “Tiki Dream” on March 19, 2025, a song dating back to 2019 and another song (much like “Slackers”) which was written and developed over the course of the pandemic. It was inspired by a guitar part Tamara brought in at a morning band practice based on in her own words ‘pure raw emotion’ as she had just experienced a serious breakup, while its title was inspired by the tiki bar-crawl themed birthday that had been thrown for Jack the night before. It’s lyrics I had written stream of consciousness with Jack in his apartment; a bricolage inspired by Tamara’s breakup, reading climate reports about the future, and contemplating the idea of who can you turn to or count on when the world falls apart.
On April 23, we released “Listening”, a song about taking walks and listening in on the world around you and finding inspiration in the act of quietly creating something and the rewards this solitude offers. At the moment, we are currently self-recording many other songs out of our practice space with our drummer Julien producing, some of which we intend to release later this year, and what we hope to release on our very first full-length record.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Is it a smooth road for anyone? I don’t know how anyone in this city is able to be an artist or a musician with the constant financial pressure one’s placed under, we’ve seen bands break up or some live venues of our earliest shows we had previously played at have relocated due to rising rent costs, being bought up by private development, have pivoted away from live music entirely or have altogether closed permanently. Living here forces people to be frugal in order to do so and demands that you spend the majority of your time trying to make rent. It’s a testament to the creative heart of this city and a miraculous wonder that anyone perseveres at all.
One of the biggest obstacles for us as a band was that of unfortunate timing. In 2019, we went from playing a couple shows a month to being unable to play for a year and a half, due to the pandemic. Once we could meet up though, we learned how to do things within our budget. We experimented in recording ourselves or opted for a hybrid approach where we recorded selected instruments such as drums ourselves and put the costs towards recording vocals, overdubbing instruments, mixing, or mastering more professionally with someone else. One such example of this was Julien recording his drums himself for our recent singles “Tiki Dream” and he recorded all our instruments and engineered the sessions for “Listening”, while we had Kenny Becker of Goon (who had also mixed “Tiki Dream”) record mine and Tamara’s vocals.
We also started networking with other bands online, meeting a lot of musical kindred spirits whose music we were equally inspired and excited by, adding to our existing network of bands we’d met through performing live, with the idea we’d book a show together once it was possible again to do so.
We resorted to increased focus on our social media presence and content production: live-streamed acoustic sets on Instagram, posting monthly playlists with local bands whose music we liked…we recently joined TikTok to try other means of engagement and promotion, so far making edits and memes featuring our new songs. Even after lockdown lifted and we had begun to book shows again, I couldn’t help the disconnect between social media followers and those actually there in person to see us live but also how many bands had decided to breakup or reevaluate their future in music altogether.
After returning to playing some shows, we took a lengthy break. Our guitarist Tamara went on tour to play bass with the band GOON and I worked on playing solo, playing some open mics and solo showcases with just my voice and an acoustic guitar of our songs and I started to write a batch of songs, unplugging to re-learn how to perform after some inconsistent, poor sounding shows and as a way of working out some of the songs to a small crowd. After a few gigs, I met up with Jack and Julien to have them help me finish writing and arranging them together as a trio. When Tamara returned from tour, inspired by our newfound tightness and how productive we’d been while she was away, we began arranging them as a four-piece. After rehearsing many months together and almost considering breaking up the band after frustrations over inaction of recording, growing disillusioned with playing live when we had a continually growing backlog of songs that had yet to be recorded, struggling to juggle the band (we had all reached our thirties), our mental health, and our personal lives, we decided once again to come together and start over.
In April 2023, we changed our name to Slowpoke, a bit of an admittedly ironic acknowledgment as to how long it had taken us to release music and have since returned reenergized to play and write new music. We started out playing a few small shows in 2023 before resuming performing more regularly again in the last year.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
As to what I do, specialize in or am known for, I’d say I’m a songwriter through and through. My bass player Jack would describe me as a very earnest person. I don’t say or write things unless I feel really strongly about them. That’s not to say I take myself that seriously though. I’ve often written stream-of-consciousness for so long because of its ability to reveal my inner most thoughts and feelings about things in a way that is immediate, raw, and truthful, though it’s usually written in an almost detached or abstract manner or not from my own point-of-view. When I used to write it was always because some seed of an idea, sprouted other ideas to grow into a bigger concept within the song. I often liken it to the late David Lynch’s thoughts about catching ideas, ideas being like the bait on a hook to catch a fish and when you find an idea you’re in love with, it’s in doing it and trusting the process that it will all come together. However, now I often find myself writing lyrics by singing nonsense words, mumble, or sing gibberish along with a melody and listening and transcribing these sounds and in doing so, revealing what words I’m trying to say. This is often much harder to do, but no less exciting when it takes you somewhere new and out of your comfort zone. I usually let a melody tell me where a song is going and will write to it, it’s rare that I write separate from the music, it’s usually much harder and I find it often comes out feeling forced or contrived.
When it comes to music, I usually write on instinct and start out with a riff or chord progression I love and play it over and over until I can figure out where it’s going or needs to go. Even with my knowledge of music theory and harmony, I very rarely write with it in mind, choosing to write based on instinct or how I emotionally respond to it. When writing music together with Slowpoke, I or Tamara start by coming up with a riff or chord progression on the guitar and then work on writing our own unique and distinct guitar parts to determine the “skeleton” of the song and its structure, usually based around how our guitar parts will play together, but in the last year we’ve written more from impromptu jamming between practices,Julien coming up with a particular groove, Tamara coming up with a riff, or I try to sing the first thing that comes to mind to what we’re all four playing at once, then later shape the melody on my own. Then I write lyrics with Jack and the four of us will work on the music to determine the arrangement and translate it to the four of us when playing it live or if it will be recorded.
Outside of my work in Slowpoke, I am currently working as an instructional aide in adaptive skills training now for almost a year and a half for a children and young adults who are autistic or are on the autism spectrum, serving many different cases of clients and their families within the San Fernando Valley, through the regional center, varying in different age groups, races, ethnicities, co-morbidities, and socioeconomic backgrounds. In the almost year and a half in this position its given me a lot of perspective on the challenges that communities of these disabilities face day to day and has been extremely educational (as I was not all that familiar to autism or the autism spectrum) and inspiring as much as it can also be challenging, as I am often there as a coach or advisor one-on-one assisting them in mastering certain skills as part of their adaptive skills training in their homes or on campus as part of their continued ABA (or applied behavior analysis) training and its is very emotionally investing work. I’ve been told that I am an extremely patient person, which is part of the reason I believe I’ve done it this long, but also the working relationships and support I have gained from my clients as well as their families/guardians, my supervisors, and superiors has been extremely encouraging.
What makes you happy?
I’m happy when I play a song and I get caught up in playing music as a joyful act. To know that I’m sharing something I had a hand in writing and bringing it to life and playing it, brings me immense joy and makes me extremely proud to share with an audience. The fact that anyone is moved by our music makes me very happy, but it’s the excitement over writing new music together and seeing how quickly it comes together with my bandmates in real time and the surprises that may result when it really comes together that makes me even happier.
Aside from music I’d say I’m most happiest when I’m in the company of my friends, having quality time with my partner or my family. I love listening to a favorite album or some new music I haven’t heard that excites me, reading an engaging book or short story, watching a favorite movie, working on a puzzle, I love comedy especially the most silly, surreal or absurd. Since doing The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, I’ve made a point to take myself on more of what Cameron refers to as “artist’s dates”, where you take yourself somewhere to inspire and engage yourself and your ‘inner child”. The purpose being that in order to open yourself up to create, an artists is at their most creative when they entertain or do thing that make their inner child happy. Sometimes this could be seeing a movie screening, going to a record store, seeing live music, going for a walk or hike, practicing or playing a show with my friend’s band who I also play lead guitar in Blonde Goth are just a few examples.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://hurryupslowpoke.bandcamp.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hurryupslowpoke/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hurryupslowpoke/
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@hurryupslowpoke
Image Credits
Bijan Eghtesady
Sabrina I. Gutierrez
Dylan Noel
Tamara Simons
