How the Ziggens are making up for a 19-year hiatus one song at a time

It had been 19 years since they last recorded a studio album when the original members of the Ziggens, an Orange County-born self-described “CowPunkSurfabilly” band, got together in a studio in Long Beach to make up for their long absence by recording one new song for every year between albums.

Now the band, which toured alongside Sublime for years while attracting a small cult following, is releasing the 19-track album “Oregon” Sept. 24 that exemplifies the band’s eccentric blend of country, punk, surf and ballads. Frontman Bert Susanka thinks “Oregon” may even earn them some new fans who may not have heard of the band or fully understood them during their original heyday.

But don’t make the mistake of thinking of this new album as the band’s breakout record.

“I would love it if more people heard of us and found out about us but we’re way too old, way too fat, way too tired, there’s no breakthrough happening here. This is just more Ziggens and I think it is a very very nice record,” said the 59-year-old singer, guitarist who now lives in Corona but formed the band in Huntington Beach in 1990 alongside guitarist Dickie Little, Jon Poutney on bass and drummer Brad Conyers.

The Ziggens started out playing mostly country tunes and goofy humorous songs, which Susanka admitted wasn’t the best way to break through to mainstream success.

“That was just the quickest way to go nowhere in life,” Susanka said of the band’s early sound.

But as the band’s music morphed into their current sound, that’s when the Ziggens’ first break came as they met members of Sublime when the two groups played a show at Cal State Long Beach.

The Ziggens pretty much became the opening act for the iconic band from Long Beach as they constantly toured together.

“I would say 80% of our fan base found out about us via Sublime. If we didn’t play all those shows with them and being with them and them mentioning us so much I think our fan base would be much smaller. Not that it’s huge, we’re basically an underground cult band,” Susanka said.

During their career the Ziggens also performed on the Warped Tour, opened for No Doubt, Slightly Stoopid and also toured with The Ventures and Dick Dale.

But as the band members got older and started having families the touring and recording slowed down while members also pursued solo projects, although they continued to play occasional shows together during the 19 years between albums.

Around 2013 Susanka teamed up with Sublime drummer Bud Gaugh to form a children’s band called Jelly of the Month Club.

“That was a blast and I was in that band for six years so that took up quite a bit of time because we did all sorts of shows and stuff,” he said.

Always a prolific songwriter, Susanka continued to write songs that would eventually end up on the new album.

“I’ve been busy doing other things during the year and finally I said ‘Hey guys I got 42 songs why don’t we pick 19 of them, one song for each year and just bang out a new album?’” he said.

“The truth is it’s a Ziggens record, so people are going to get content that’s all over the map, — surf, country, punk, pop, jazz without us having a feel for any of those styles. We just fake it as much as we can,” Susanka said with a laugh.

For more information, visit theziggensofficial.com.