Image via Zach Hoppenrath - Facebook
The Statics - Mid-West Summer Road Trip Poster
A poster for The Statics' 'Mid-West Summer Road Trip' (2025)
Looking back at the early to mid-1990s, when the young Statics were earning enthusiasm from record labels and fans as they delivered Billy Childish-inspired primitive kicks as part of the sizzling-hot Seattle music scene, Zach Hoppenrath says he sometimes feels like the universe played a cruel trick on him.
“It’s like the first band I ever started,” he says. “I barely knew how to play the guitar, barely knew how to do anything, and I did this stuff, and everyone was really excited about it. And then eventually it faded. It faded out, and I was never able to get there again. I’ve been chasing the dragon.”
Hoppenrath, still based in the Seattle area, will play Milwaukee for the first time with a new version of the Statics on Friday, July 25 at Sabbatic.
Skateboarding Beginnings
In 1993, two things brought together the Statics (originally Hoppenrath, drummer Donnie Hilstad and bassist Diane Kitano), who would go on to create budget rock nuggets like “Burger & Fries” and “Do the Russell Quan,” according to Hoppenrath: skateboarding and the now defunct record store Fallout Records.
“If you skated or you were into punk, your path would eventually take you there,” he says. “That was like the epicenter of everything in Seattle in the ‘90s for a kid.
“Russ and Janet (Battaglia) owned Fallout Records, and they were the best. We were buying Mummies records, and then Janet said, ‘Oh, you like the Mummies. You’ll probably like this.’ And then she pulled out a Supercharger record. … so we bought it. And then we rode the bus home to Donny’s house, and then we put it on. And we were like, ‘Holy shit, we could do this. They have a record. You know, they have an actual record.’ And anyways, that’s kind of what spoke to us. And so that’s what we did.”
They played with the legendary Dead Moon and Gas Huffer for their first show, which Hoppenrath says was a big deal, but it wasn’t because they knew Gas Huffer’s Tom Price from Fallout Records (and they had shared their demos with him) and knew Dead Moon from going to their shows frequently.
“Yeah, it was a little nerve-wracking,” he says. “But we walked out on stage and were like, ‘Oh, let’s play. It’s like practice.’”
They quickly came to the attention of Supercharger’s Greg Lowery, whom the Statics met at a show at the Crocodile (which Hoppenrath says seemed like the “coolest place on earth” in the early ‘90s) that featured Supercharger, Girl Trouble, and the A-Bones. They talked to Lowery after the show and shared their demo. He was so impressed with them he made them their first release on his Rip Off Records, which would go on to put out records by Teengenerate, the Marked Men, Loli & The Chones and Wauwatosa’s Kill-A-Watts (featuring Ryan King, drummer for Jinksie).
Steve Turner from Mudhoney was also a fan of the band. He put out one of their first singles on his own Super Electro Sound Recordings.
“It just all seemed normal at the time,” he says. “You know, it’s just because everybody was doing it. Everybody had a label. Everybody did this.”
Green Bay Connection
Around 2004 or so, with the Statics way in his rear view, Hoppenrath wanted to go with his wife to see the Packers play at Lambeau and decided to contact Norb Rozek (Rev. Norb) of Boris the Sprinkler about seeing a show in Green Bay while he was there. Rozek told him the only way there would be a show is if they played a show. Hoppenrath liked that idea.
“This is before we were all over the internet and everything, so Norb and I decided that we would do a Statics show, and Norb and his friend Eric would back me up,” he says. “So, I like made a CD on my computer and mailed it to him, and then they learned the songs, and then we flew out there. And I got off an airplane, he picked me up, we went to his house, we rehearsed for an hour, and then we went and played a show.”
One of the attendees of that show was “Timebomb” Tom Smith. Hoppenrath connected with Smith again at several Goner Fests in Memphis, and this year the Statics will be making their return to Packerland at Smith’s Green Bay UFO Invasion Fest 2025 this weekend.
The New Lineup
The new Green Bay show inspired Hoppenrath to put together a few other dates while he’s in the Midwest, and Milwaukee became part of his itinerary. He says he knew getting other original Statics to play so far from home would be difficult, so he enlisted two members of a Portland, Oregon, group, Amy Beth and the Creeps, who were enthusiastic (specifically, says Hoppenrath, “all jacked up”) Statics fans.
“It’s great because the original Statics had a female presence in the band, which I thought was cool and important, you know, when we started out,” he says. “And Amy likes to sing, which is awesome. She’ll shout some backups, you know. And Amy and Joe, they are age appropriate, and they’ve got the pedigree. They’re the exact kind of people I would have started the band with anywhere along the line.”
The Statics perform at 8 p.m. Friday, July 25 at the Sabbatic,700 S. Second St., headlining a night of garage punk. Milwaukee’s Jinskie and Chicago’s Claw Toe also perform. Jinskie has been recording songs in recent weeks with the goal of making a full-length LP. Darius Hurley is the musician/artist/comedian/former record label honcho behind Claw Toe.
