In just two years, Pocket Theory has gone from scratch to two long-players and a steady stream of gigs and has even carved a little national profile for itself. The video for the song “To Be Missed (So Early)” has been viewed 28,200 times on YouTube.
Not bad, especially for four Fort Worthians who aren’t old enough to booze legally.
Sure, the pop-punks get a lot of help from drummer EJ Zukoski’s father, a veteran musician with a background in entertainment law, but most of the praise has to go to Zukoski, vocalist/guitarist Justin Miller, vocalist/guitarist Nick Via, and vocalist/bassist Jackson Neely.
“This is all we’ve ever wanted to do,” Via said. “I’d rather be homeless and playing music than not be able to do this.”
Pocket Theory is a combination of two defunct outfits. One was Miller and Zukoski’s unnamed cover band that pumped out mainly ’90s hits at house parties. The other, well, wasn’t really a band band. It was just Via and Neely jamming at home, digging into a lot of Green Day, Bad Religion, and Black Flag. “We just started playing music that we could handle and developed from there,” Via said.
Pocket Theory came together via All Saints’ Episcopal School, where Miller, Neely, and Zukoski will be graduating this year.
Zukoski’s father saw the potential early in his son’s group. When the kids weren’t at school, they were rehearsing. In early 2013, Eric Zukoski brought them to the recording studio at Aaron Ave Records, an Arlington label.
Pocket Theory’s eponymous debut EP is full of uptempo tunes heavy on rapid chord changes and bright, harmonized vocals. And it’s all decidedly radio-friendly.
“We’ve never tried to fit into a particular scene,” Miller said. “We just enjoyed the music we were playing.”
The quartet’s first break came from a battle of the bands at The Door in Dallas last spring. Pocket Theory’s first-place finish led to a slot at the annual Wildflower Art & Music Festival in Richardson in front of a crowd of about 2,000.
Things continued to trend upward last summer, when the band released its first full-length, The Era of Good Feelings, also recorded at Aaron Ave. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRZa5NiysXk By then, the EP was getting airplay on 150 radio stations in the United States and abroad. In November 2013, The Real Radio Show, a nationally syndicated program that features celebrities and indie rockers, flew the band to New York City to perform and be interviewed on-air. Miller also said that Pocket Theory was the most requested artist on a St. Louis radio station for a couple of weeks last year.
Neely thinks his band’s success owes in part to offering free Pocket Theory songs online. “I think so many people use [streaming] it’s not something you can refuse to adopt,” he said. “You have to go with where the music industry is going.”
Streaming, Via said, has been “really great” for letting people find his band. “This isn’t our career yet, as much as we’d like it to be,” Via said. “We just want our name to be out.”
The age thing is a minor annoyance. Teenagers would line up for miles for a Pocket Theory show, but there aren’t many venues open to the non-drinking class. “We can’t really [attract] the over-21 crowd, because we’re not in those clubs often,” Miller said.
Dozens of fans had to be turned away from The Grotto not long ago because they were under-age. “A lot of places don’t want you if you’re not over 21, so we’re thinking of starting a fake ID business,” Miller joked.
A recent show at the all-ages Live Oak Music Hall & Lounge on the Near Southside was much better. The room was packed.
The pop-punks are writing material for their third (yet-unnamed) album, to be recorded at Elysian Studios in Denton. “We are a lot better at playing our instruments, so the songwriting is getting a lot more complex,” Miller said. “Before it was a big, solid block of sound, and now the individual parts are more dense and intricate.”
In addition to a slew of local shows, the band is also thinking about a summer tour.
But what about college?
Miller doesn’t think there’ll be much difference between now and the near future: “Right now we only have summers to tour anyway. We’re planning on going all-out the rest of this spring, and when we come back in town we’ll gig. It should work out better.”
