I (Bert) have no recall for dates or years or such things but I’ll do my best… I always wanted to be in a band but I knew it was not for guys like me who never had any music lessons or knew anything about music. But while working at a sunglass shop in the Westminster Mall in the late 1980’s I noticed my co worker would always tap along to the rockin’ rhythm station “KNAC” (before it was metal) and he kept a pretty solid beat on the cash register. So ridiculously, I asked him if he wanted to start a band and play drums. I was a kid who played sports and knew zero musicians, just jocks. One of the girls who worked around the corner at Baskin-Robins had a musician looking husband with hair that stuck up in front and long in the back so I asked her about him. She said he would like to be in a band but was just learning guitar. I told her that was okay because this was for beginners. The best part about her husband was he had a full PA, guitars, amps, etc. We then forced another kid from the sunglass shop to be the bass player. We had six or seven rehearsals in my parents garage and promptly called it quits. No matter. I had the bug, big time. I was going to try this ridiculous thing. I knew I wasn’t much of a singer but I could carry a tune and I figured I could learn a few chords on the guitar, so I took Bob, the guy with all the equipment and started to plan. Bob and I placed an ad in the recycler looking for beginner musicians. A fellow named Ken (who would later become a successful politician) responded. He played bass and brought his younger sister who played flute to meet us. We got together once or twice and then his sister brought around a fellow she was drooling over from Fullerton College named Rich. Rich was in the garage when I arrived to rehearsal (not really rehearsal as we had no songs and no drummer). Rich was adjusting the volume settings on his amp with his back to me. The amp was roaring like nothing I’d ever heard. He was shirtless and had something resembling a make shift mohawk. I said to myself, now we are getting somewhere. This guy looks like someone I’d like to be in a band with. He had a tomato soup can hanging by a thread off the amp and a telecaster with something called a preamp. It sounded great. I realized he was just a beginner like the rest of us but he had style. I also noticed he was not interested in turning around so we could be properly introduced and I’m pretty sure he hadn’t bathed. No matter, I was a fan. So now it was me, Bob, Rich and Ken the bassist, but no drummer. We started practicing songs from the 50’s, like Buddy Holly type songs and any song we could find that was three chords. Heck, even if the song wasn’t the three chords we knew, we could just play it wrong because it was easier that way. Ken the bassist told us he had a gig for us at the frat house of the college he attended. Somebody knew a drummer and we threw together ten or eleven songs for the frat house show. Every song sounded the same but no one noticed or cared. It was a gig. Eventually Rich’s friend named Greg came aboard on drums and we played a few house parties and at that bar in Mission Viejo where they moon the train. We recruited Jt Thomas to play lead guitar and Rich switched to bass. Playing covers was not ideal but no one knew how to write a song. Time passed and we decided to have Rich’s friend Jon Poutney (who I liked immediately when I met) replace our bassist Ken and Rich went back to guitar. JT was too good on his instrument for us and was more into audio gigs because he could actually make money doing sound.

Eventually, I started to write songs and they mostly stunk. But every so often I would write one that wasn’t so bad so I kept at it. I figured I’d better write songs as my vocals and guitar playing weren’t much. Greg the drummer started playing with another group so some time later we ran an ad and met up with a balding Minneapolis insurance salesman named Joe who had moved to SoCal and he played drums with us for a while. Joe the drummer was famous for the following event. We were opening for Tender Fury in Long Beach and Joe the drummer came to the gig straight from the insurance office dressed in a shirt, slacks and a tie. After our set and before tender fury took the stage, Joe in a very Minneapolis Salesman drawl asked a couple of very punk rock chicks if they liked the opening band (that would be us). They said “they sucked.” Joe said, “Well, I played drums in that opening band.” The punk girls said, “Oh… Well, I guess the drumming was ok.” Joe didn’t miss a beat and said, “Can I buy you ladies a drink?” The girls rolled their eyes and walked away.

At this time I’d had enough recruiting drummers and watching them leave. Rich was a dear friend of mine but he was hard to motivate and so I decided to try something else. I recruited Jon and we left to form an acoustic duo. We called ourselves Limburger. Jon and I played one show. Only my sister attended. Our quip from the stage was, “We are Limburger, and we stink.” After that Jon and I played some gigs as The Ziggens with Steve McKay, a Fullerton kid, who went on to be a fine painter. I think we played The Troubadour and then Joe the drummer left. He said, “I need to make money. I’m going to find work playing casuals and perhaps soft rock.”

Subsequently, guitarist Steve McKay moved on and Jon went to CSUDH to study audio recording. Jon met a young kid in that department named Mike Happoldt. Mike said he could secure some time in the campus studio and we went in to record a song I’d written called “Mrs Brown.” Mike Happoldt liked the track and kind of started to join up as lead guitar. He brought in a drummer named John T and our lineup was set. Mike was different than anyone I’d played with. He was about getting work done and didn’t care about the rules. He brought us in to the CSUDH studio in the middle of the night by giving the janitor beer so he wouldn’t squeal that we’d been in the studio all night. I remember looking out the window of the college recording studio and seeing the professor of the department walking toward the studio from his car at 8 am from the parking lot as we bailed down the back stairs after having recorded all night. We turned the lights off and the professor turned them on a minute later. I always questioned if he wondered why the studio smelled like teen spirit after it had been “closed” for many hours. We ended up making a cassette tape called “The Ziggens” in those sessions. Mike took a black and white picture of an apple against a garage and that was the cover. My singing was pretty bad but the cassette had a few reasonable cuts on it.

Somewhere around this time we recorded a few acoustic numbers in Poutney’s parents garage. We called it the Gehrig sessions. The drummer was a young fellow from orange named Bobby Trimble. He had a cool vintage drum set but was just learning to play drums. He went on to be the drummer for Big Sandy and one of the best drummers of all time. He now lives in Austin, TX.

Somehow (I don’t recall how) after that we ended up with a drummer who worked for Oakley Sunglasses named Ray. We immediately renamed him “Ray-Pissed”. During a practice he sang lead on a cover of Ted Nugents Wango Tango which Mike recorded on a boom box and we all loved it. When Ray the drummer was in the band we played a show at CSULB. I was working as a courier for a laboratory and my job was to be on call to pick up rush blood work and take it back to the lab. The show was in the afternoon and I figured I could pick up and deliver the samples while squeezing a one hour gig in at CSULB between blood runs. Of course it took time for the PA to get set up and as the band members and interested students filed in, time started to pass. I had not responded to multiple pages (we had pagers back then) from my boss and the set began. By the end of the set I was a nervous wreck. Mike Happoldt to this day recalls how I laid my wildly howling and feeding guitar back down in the dirt and sprinted to my Ford Escort to get to a pay phone so that I could call my boss in hopes that I wouldn’t be fired. I guess when I sped off I almost clipped a few gig onlookers and left a cloud of dirt and dust all over the stage area as I peeled out. That was the same gig that someone asked Ray the drummer, “What kind of music do you guys play?” Ray answered, “I don’t know.”

Mike Happoldt got us a gig opening for a group calling themselves Sublime at the CSULB bar. He had been spending a lot of time with these guys and it started to be harder to get things done as he was out with them a lot so I backed off and let Mike (now Miguel) focus on Sublime… And he surely did. Mike is a special man and every time I’m with him for any reason I just smile. Sublime would not be where they are without him, believe me.

So back to the drawing board. At that time, Jon Poutney and myself heard about a drummer who was also a good singer. He was Rich, our old band member’s roommate. Like Mike had become “Miguel,” Rich had become “Dickie” and so we went over to Dickie’s house to try out this drummer roommate fellow. I almost didn’t go because someone told me at the last minute that this drummer fellow Brad Conyers was into groups like Rush and I think, The Moody Blues. I was already disappointed, but I’ll never forget how it felt when we tried our first number and Brad just automatically started singing harmonies with me. It brought a dimension to my songs that I’d never heard. We took him right on the spot. We were officially a three piece band now and immediately started playing shows.

So our new drummer Brad had a friend named Rob Perez who had a little mobile recording setup that he brought to Brad and Dickie’s house and we recorded live in the living room our cassette we called “Wake Up and Smell The Ziggens.” It sounded very amateurish but showed promise I think. I was less freaked out about being a weak singer because Brad’s co-singing helped a lot. Suffice it to say, the three of us played a lot of shows and then Miguel took us back into CSUDH to record his first release on his fledgling Skunk Records label. We recorded it just a few weeks before Sublime did theirs. As usual, we recorded in the night, all night with guards posted at every door looking for professors, administrators or janitors we needed to pay off. When we were done we had what I consider to be a really fun cassette called Rusty Never Sleeps. Low tech, but catchy. It was a good time. Brad our drummer even chipped in with a few songs of his own like the classic “On The Way.” Meanwhile Miguel and Sublime were getting it going. I’m proud to say that Brad Nowell told me several times that my stupid little songs meant a lot to him. I think he appreciated what we were trying to do even if we had no coolness factor. He simply liked the melodies. I appreciated that and appreciated playing tons of shows with Sublime. We were the band that opened for them the most and it was a hoot and a little troubling for me at the same time.

Brad’s buddy Rob Perez had access to a real recording studio and so we paid him nothing (cuz we had nothing) except our most sincere admiration and thanks and we began working on our first CD, “Chicken Out.” We’d only done cassettes up to this point. About 2/3 of the way through the CD Brad was asked to come to Branson Missouri to do audio work for the country stars doing shows there. It was too good to pass up so he went. Brad’s drums were already recorded and some of his vocals too so we wished him good luck and kept our fingers crossed that he would miss California and come back sooner rather than later. I remember Rob and I finishing that huge Chicken Out CD without Brad, often staying up all night, on and off for months. It was exhausting to go to work after being up all night.

Fortunately, after a while Brad returned from Missouri and the three of us picked up right where we left off by playing a lot of shows and since I was writing like crazy we began (with Rob Perez again) recording “Ignore Amos.” I like the Ignore Amos CD and I recall enjoying myself with Rob, Jon and Brad. During this time we would play in Northern California quite a bit and even started to get out of California to the Pacific Northwest and Arizona quite a bit. When Sublime asked us to go with them to perform in Hawaii we jumped at the chance. It was a fun trip and our silly waitress song charted on the independent Hawaiian station. Of course the Sublime song “Waiting for My Ruca” was #1 on that same chart. I remember calling Dickie when were at the airport leaving for Hawaii and myself, Brad and Jon seemed to wish he was going with us. I was lucky to get home from Hawaii unscathed as some of the locals wanted to beat me up for wearing a traditional Hawaiian moo moo on stage. They thought I was making fun of their culture or wardrobe but I frequently wore moo moo’s on many stages/gigs. The radio station wasn’t happy either when I backpedaled on stage and knocked down a couple prized surfboards they were giving away.

Upon returning from Hawaii we felt good about the fact that we had been doing small tours in different states and had CD’s out. I had been asking our drummer Brad if he would consider adding a fourth member into the group as I was tired of being a three piece. Brad didn’t care for the idea much unless it would be Dickie because he was, well… Dickie. I remember when Dickie rejoined the band it was a big venue in the Inland Empire (I think) opening for Sublime. Brad Nowell said to Dickie as we took the stage “Play good Dickie” and he did. Sometime during this span Sublime pitched The Ziggens to the Warped Tour folks and as such we were able to do portions of two separate Warped Tours, usually on the small side stage. Warped Tours were fun. We would often see the luxurious buses hauling the exhausted rock stars to the next venue but we had to go in Brad’s Mitsubishi van. Sometimes the venue wouldn’t believe we were part of the tour and give us a hassle to get in as we were such low budget travelers comparatively. I’ll never forget playing in Arizona in 117 degree heat dressed in space suits.

After more tours and tons of gig, we, like everyone had to live through the passing of the great Brad Nowell. A day before he passed, we were opening for Sublime in Northern California and I got a chance to hang with Brad in a winnebago outside the gig. Brad showed me pictures of his new son Jakob and that reminded me of when my second son was born. Brad and Miguel secured a congrats card and got everyone to sign it. I remember Brad being joyous in the winnebago about his son. After the show, Sublime went to their hotel room and we drove to a friend’s house to sleep on his floor. The next morning we drove to the venue where we would once again open for Sublime. When we arrived for soundcheck a guard told us the show was off because “the singer from Sublime died last night.”

The funeral for Brad was packed with despondent kids and adults. After the funeral we drove to Buena Park and played a show at Knott’s Berry Farm, performing Badfish for the first time, of course, in Brad Nowell’s honor.

A few years later we would return to Hawaii to perform with Del Noah but it just wasn’t the same. Brad was gone. The four of us have continued on for so many years that we are now one of the longest running acts in OC history. Same four guys, but I’m not sure how many years since I have no sense of such things.

We’ve put out a Christmas album called Three Wise Men (and Dickie), recorded with the great Eddie Ashworth to create the CD called, “The Ziggens” and even put out a live disc called The Ziggens Live: Tickets Still Available. The live recording was taken from two gigs in town, The Foothill and The Blue Cafe. During this time we forged deep and meaningful relationships with the fellas of Cornerstone RAS, the label that introduced us to our great and now departed friend Josh Fischel. Josh’s brother Zach Fischel worked tirelessly to keep The Ziggens going as did his colleagues Kevin Taylor and Matt Sweet. They put up with our nonsense for a long time.

We have many people to thank for our limited but unexpected success: specifically all the Ziggens players mentioned in this piece and some I didn’t mention because they came and went too quickly. Our great merch guys “Grateful” Dave Esqueda and Chris Dumm, our photographer Micky Simeone-Flegel, The great Linda Jemison-Conyers, Mark Dipiazza, Bud, Eric and Miguel (my hero), the great Rob Perez (a great man), our spouses Susan, Linda, Camry, Julian our kids and most of all the small but fiercely diehard Ziggen fans. Give yourselves a pat on the back or better yet, rub deeply into my stage sweaty armpit in a circular motion for a free CD. Yes, the armpit giveaway is still part of the show! Thanks to all who housed us, fed us and bathed us when we were touring and all the musicians with whom we shared the stage. Also want to thank Jeff Smith for all his help.

When we started out we didn’t think we would play portions of two Warped Tours, open for Sublime, open for No Doubt, tour with The Ventures, tour with Dick Dale, open for Mojo Nixon, open for the Beat Farmers, open for NRBQ multiple times, open for Coolio,open for Slightly Stoopid, the great Frank Black ((pixies) and have our disc “Pomona Lisa” produced by Elliot Easton of the Cars, get played and interviewed on KROQ and 91X, make all these CD’s, make videos, get two record deals, tour many stages and different countries and still be playing shows and having fun. But dreams do come true.
I’ve also been lucky enough to make two CDs for kids under the name Jelly of The Month Club with Dr. Todd, Mic Dangerously and Crumb, a solo CD called Onward Christian Slater and a disc under the name Bert Susanka and The Astronaut Love Triangle with Rob, Adam and Jason. I also was very lucky to be the singing voice of Snoopy at Knott’s Berry Farm.

Thank you Jon, Dick and Brad for putting up with me. I will keep bugging each of you until we get the new CD out in 2019. It’s been a while. It’s time for a new disc!

We are having ourselves a time, are we not?!!

Or as Brad says… “Thank you… Both of you.”

*Note: If you have the Live Tickets Still Available CD you will hear Brad yell that our song Going Richter is an Iggy Pop and The Stooges song. It’s not. It’s one of the few songs I’ve written that I’m proud of. But that would be cool if we covered Iggy Pop sometime but doing covers requires work. I don’t like work. Bert-o
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