Enter: The Conquering Gits

The Gits made a triumphant return to Seattle earlier this month — in more ways than one. 

The band’s catalogue recently found a new home on Sub Pop Records, who have reissued remastered editions of all the band’s albums: their debut Frenching the Bully, on vinyl and digitally (sorry physical media fans; the CD version’s already sold out), and digital-only releases of Enter: The Conquering Chicken, their second album; Kings & Queens, a collection of early recordings; and Seafish Louisville, a set of alternate takes and live tracks. And as a bonus, there’s also a new, digital only concert recording Live at The X-Ray, taken from a 1993 show at the Portland, Oregon, club during the band’s final tour.

The much-loved band (Mia Zapata, vocals; “Joe Spleen,” aka Andy Kessler, guitar; Matt Dresdner, bass; Steve Moriarty, drums), who fell apart in the wake of personal tragedy, are now reframing their story to put the focus back where it always should’ve been — on their music. There was a signing event at Seattle’s best record store, Easy Street Records. There were two record release parties (one all ages, the other 21-and-over), featuring the screening of the live Gits footage shot for the music documentary Hype!, a poster display, and the reading of an official proclamation from King County Executive Dow Constantine, naming February 1, 2025 “The Gits Day in King County.” And the cherry on top was a nice surprise for attendees; each party featured a live performance by a reunited Gits, with Karen Marie (of LA band Cosmic Kitten) and Zapata’s longtime friend Maria Mabra trading lead vocals. 

The Gits formed in 1986 in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where they were all attending Antioch College. In 1989, they relocated to Seattle, and quickly fell in with the city’s burgeoning rock scene. In 1992, Frenching the Bully was released on Seattle-based C/Z Records. In 1993, they were on the verge of being signed by Atlantic Records. But it all came to an abrupt end when Zapata was raped and murdered that same year on the night of July 7. It would be another decade before her killer was apprehended and convicted.

And that’s unfortunately how most people outside the Pacific Northwest knew about the band; the crime that seemingly brought the band’s story to a horrific close. Now there’s something new to talk about, and a musical legacy to revisit. Andy Kessler and Matt Dresdner spoke with Rock and Roll Globe about reviving the Gits catalog, the joy of playing live with the band once again, and what releases might come next.

 

How did these reissues come about?

Andy Kessler: our stuff was unavailable, as far as we knew, for a very long time. I think we always knew we needed to at some point do something with it, because we didn’t like what the dregs and remnants of the Gits presence on the web was, how things were left. But we didn’t know how to deal with it. And other things happened; one person asked through a friend of mine “Why isn’t Frenching the Bully available on vinyl?” So that got us thinking.

 

And we finally had the idea to maybe do a box set kind of thing. And then really, it was through our friendship and involvement with Rachel [Flotard, the band’s manager] who said to us, “Look this could be could be something far, far better and bigger. If you guys expand your vision for it, this could be a way of revitalizing the Gits’ presence to new generations of people.” It doesn’t just have to be like, “Oh, we’re going to re-release this one album.” So we began the arduous work of trying to assemble master tapes and all kinds of other materials, and deal with the many, many considerations that had to be dealt with. And the idea started assuming shape to speak with a label about re-releasing the entire Gits catalog, and that’s what happened. So hopefully the re-release of Frenching the Bully is just the first segment of the project.

Sub Pop seemed like a natural home for you guys to resurface at.

Matt Dresdner: Yeah. They weren’t really on our radar initially and we were looking at other labels. But then Rachel contacted them, and it did feel like a very natural fit, with them understanding the history and the sensitivity, and many of them having been there and even involved, like Jeff Kleinsmith, back in the day. [Kleinsmith, Sub Pop’s graphic designer, designed many of the Gits’ original show posters]. It just felt really good. And we feel like finally, our music can have a little bit more exposure than it did before. And in a place where it feels like it has the support and respect that we want to see the catalog treated with.

 

What was it like listening to your music again? Some of these records are over 30 years old.

Matt: For me, I hadn’t listened to much of our music at all for the last 30 years because it’s just hard. It makes me sad. It brings back some amazing memories, and a lot of pain, too. So forcing ourselves to go through it now and having to listen carefully over and over again, and dig back into the art, and open these boxes with photos and artifacts and stuff was a difficult task. But it felt like it was time and it was necessary. And if we have an opportunity to get this stuff out and polished and available and make it as good as we possibly can…I’ll speak for myself here. It was like I fostered the fortitude to get it done. And now that it’s up and out, it feels like, mission accomplished.

I liked having the all the reissues out at one time, and being able to compare, say, a song like “It All Dies Anyway” on Kings & Queens with the later version on Frenching the Bully.

Andy: Well, if I listen to a lot of stuff, I tend to hear flaws and I hear how things could have been so much better. And that’s a song definitely that I feel that way about. The earlier version, that one on Kings & Queens, I actually like it far better than on Frenching The Bully. And there were things like that with a bunch of other stuff. Like, for example, the song “Seaweed.” It’s one of my favorite songs that we did. Mia’s vocals are amazing. And we originally released it as the B-side of a seven inch, in 1990, with “Precious Blood” on the A-side. [It’s now on Seafish Louisville] And that version of “Seaweed,” that original version, is to my mind the real version. It never sounded better than that. It just had the spirit, and Mia did the vocals in I think maybe like two takes, pretty much live, and it just captured the feeling of it. And the later version that we ended up releasing on Enter: The Conquering Chicken didn’t capture that. I never liked it as much. It didn’t have the same feeling and it was too fast. The guitar sounded terrible. 

And I don’t know if people knew this, but we had to piece together Enter: The Conquering Chicken. Because Mia was killed in the midst of us recording it. So the thing is, Mia was actually going to redo all the vocals on the whole record, and so it would have even been better. Obviously the Gits could have definitely benefited from a really good producer and maybe a few more thousand dollars to produce our records. But it is what it is. And I think there’s a lot of compelling stuff there. And it has a powerful energy about it that maybe is pretty singular. And I think that’s why people are digging it now.

What do you think of new remastering that producer Jack Endino did?

Andy: I think he brought a unity to it, a thickening of it, making it sound as good as it could sound.

Matt: Yeah, I think there were production styles happening in the early ’90s that everyone was doing, adding reverb here and there or whatever. And I think now, with fresh ears, he was able to strip it down to more of its essence and create a separation between the instruments, more so than existed before. It’s really cohesive and more powerful. I’m really, really happy with everything Jack did with it.

 

It was great to get a new live show with Live at the X Ray release.

Matt: And that’s another testament to Steve [Moriarty] staying in touch with some of the concert promoters and sound engineers, where it just happened that the engineer recorded that show, and made a high quality board tape. Steve, over the years was able to track stuff like that down. And we were able to take it and clean it up. And I’m really glad that there are documents like that that exist, that we can share. This is just another glimpse of what we were doing as a band.

 

Steve told me about all the stuff in your archives; will some of that come out someday?

Matt: Yeah, there is a ton of stuff. Steve has done a great job over the years collecting and archiving VHS tapes and all kinds of stuff from people that we knew back in the day. We’ve been able to compile and collect and transfer a lot of footage. That Hype! footage is really just a unicorn in its quality and completeness, especially since there was that live to 24-track audio recording that happened with it. But yeah, there’s a lot of other video, and we’ve been trying to figure out what can be salvaged, what can be used. So there’s definitely more stuff that we’re going to be working on over the coming months and probably years. And I think at some point we will release some of that. 

The live sets at your release parties were pretty exciting. How did they happen?

Matt: That was really pretty impromptu. We didn’t know if we would do it or not until, I don’t know, like a week in advance. We were preparing for the possibility, but it was definitely not for sure that we would perform. And we hadn’t practiced with these singers until two days before the show, and we just had no idea what was going to happen. No idea how it was going to come together. 

 

How did you choose the singers?

Andy: Maria was an old friend. She was very close with Mia and she was part of our circle that moved out here [from Yellow Springs]. And we knew she was very familiar with the songs and a good singer and one of Mia’s best friends.

Matt: She not only knows these songs, she knows the history of them. She knows the lyrics. She knows what Mia was thinking about and was just a natural choice when we were going to try to do this again. Because we were thinking, it’s a family affair than anything else, and we wanted to make it for our friends.

Andy: And Karen was someone Moriarty had worked with, and he sent us some videos of her singing Gits songs. I thought she did a nice job.

 

What was it like to play together again?

Andy: I mean, for me, it was the same thing that I suppose went through my mind whenever we played, which was I just focused on playing the music and feeling the music. And that’s really about it. I think it’s not trying to recreate any feeling, but just trying to play the songs well, and give them a feeling, and a power, and whatever else happens, happens, you know?

Matt: Just playing it in front of all those people, so many of whom we remember and recognize — it felt like everyone was there as part of the mission, to celebrate this music and to honor Mia. And to think about what we did together, rather than the shadow of her being depicted as a victim. It felt like everyone was ready to think about her as an artist, a musician, a friend, a singer first, which to me, the whole thing felt pretty cathartic. And I’m glad we played. It was really a last minute decision.

And there’s just one thing that I’m saying as often as I can. The intention of all of this that we’re doing is so that Mia is remembered first as an artist and not as a victim. And I think putting this music out there and getting it out there and not having the stories start with her murder is, I think, an important pivot that is indicative of what I hope will be the way that the stories of our band are told henceforth.

Have you been surprised at the interest that’s been maintained in the Gits over the years?

Matt: I think Andy and I have different ideas about that. Andy, do you want to answer?

Andy: Yeah. I mean, to my mind, no, because I always knew that we had something pretty special, even from the first time we got together when we were 19, with [first drummer] Bob Lee on drums in the practice space back in Ohio at a stupid college. So I always knew that we would be, I don’t know, an entity of note. 

Matt: It was more surprising to me than it is to Andy. After Mia’s death, we did re-release [our albums] on Broken Rekids. But I kind of thought, all right, well, it’s all going to fade away like so much of the music from that era and that will be that and it’ll be fine. But there continued to be these bits of evidence. Even though I personally wasn’t really engaged with it on social media or anywhere else, we would receive these messages or someone would write something. And I did start to see that our music did continue to resonate with and have an impact on people’s lives. From around the world. I was blown away by that and really moved by it. And then, when we started to dig back into the catalog and the content, and when we decided to play those few shows, the amount of like, I don’t know, love that I felt for bringing it back out. Just love for the music. I drew a lot of energy from it, and it was surprising and I think wonderful. And I’m just thrilled that there’s people today who are finding it and want to listen to it. I think it’s really cool.