“My grandpa had lived kind of close to here and I went to watch a show at [former Deep Ellum venue] The Door," Flores says. “And I was like, if I have any chance to live in Dallas, I'm gonna do it. So, I made that happen.”
Flores originally came to study at Southwestern University in Waxahachie, but has now been in Dallas for nearly 10 years. The Texas transplant has made music under the moniker Slow Joy since 2020. He started gaining traction online after two singles, “Crawling” and “Soft Slam,” blew up on TikTok in 2022. Last year, Flores released his first EP, Wildflower, and on June 7 he will release his second EP, Mi Amigo Slow Joy, which is a nod to his Mexican heritage.
“I'm Mexican,” Flores says. “I'm proud of it. I love it. My culture rips. I have this rich cultural background that I really enjoy. And some people don't have that, which is really, really crazy.”
Flores, who will perform at So What?! Music Festival in Fort Worth on June 1, often talks to audience members after his performances and says he's had multiple people thank him for being a trailblazer.
“When I was growing up, there weren't a lot of people who looked like me doing rock music,” he says. “I love championing it now. I think this is a really cool era for music where we're just so proud of who we are. We don't hide it anymore. And I think that's amazing.”
Flores says the new EP shows his growth as an artist, especially since it was his first time working with a big-name producer and recording at a studio away from home. Mi Amigo Slow Joy was produced by Mike Sapone at New Jersey’s Barbershop Studios. Sapone is known for working with other alternative rock bands such as Grouplove.
“He made so many incredible records,” Flores says. “It was a really cool bucket-list kind of item, feeling like a real artist for a second, which is really nice.”
The new EP also differs thematically from the last. While Wildflower focused a lot on grief after the loss of Flores' mother, Mi Amigo Slow Joy touches on a motley mix of things, including relationships, divorce and even capitalism.
Rock Is in His Blood
“I think everything is just more heartfelt,” he says. “I've really just been listening to the heroes of rock music. So the music is just a lot more simple, but a lot more straightforward and poignant. It's just a picture of things to come.”Growing up, Flores says a lot of music was off limits in his “really religious” household. He remembers sneaking around listening to artists such as Taking Back Sunday because they were not allowed at home. But Flores doesn’t mind, because getting to discover “the greats” as an adult has really influenced his work. He says '90s alt-rock groups like Modest Mouse and Smashing Pumpkins inspired his sound — and it's unmistakable. The four tracks on his new EP mix grunge and emo in a way that feels decidedly nostalgic.
“I just went through a Nirvana phase in the last couple of years,” Flores says. “Like five years ago, I went through a massive Beatles phase. So that's really kind of permeated into the music that I've been writing.”
While the rock genre is something Flores dove into later in life, music itself has always been a part of his identity. His love for music started after watching the movie Drumline starring Nick Cannon. Soon after, he joined his middle-school band and started playing the snare as well as taking guitar lessons.
“It was kind of like the family trade,” he says. “Everyone in my family played at least one or two instruments. My grandpa was a pastor of this small church so if the drummer didn't show up, you had to be the drummer that day, or if the guitar player didn’t show up, you had to be the guitar player that day. So that was kind of like my rite of passage.”
Flores says he loves having been raised in a “very musical family” as he calls it, and wasn't surprised by what the results of a recent DNA test said about his musical genes. He couldn’t help but laugh when he read, “Your DNA suggests that you play an instrument.”
“I thought it was pretty hysterical,” he says. “I guess I couldn't escape this thing.”
