Zig Zags: Interview With Guitarist & Vocalist Jed Maheu From The Thrash Punk Trio

As I mentioned in my recent review, I’ve made no secret of my love of thrash/garage/punk ragers Zig Zags. The Los Angeles trio seamlessly blend SoCal skate punk energy with a crunchy, chugging, feral, at times weird, yet always fun, mix of vintage thrash metal, eighties hardcore and nineties garage rock to a very original, and lethal effect.

Zig Zags, comprised of founder, guitarist and vocalist Jed Maheu, Sean Hoffman on bass as well as sound engineering, and Jeff Murray, formerly of LA high-energy, heavy punk rock and rollers The Shrine, on drums, released Strange Masters, a ‘fake live album’ which was a re-recording of older Zig Zags songs, blasted out live at John Dwyer’s Discount Mirrors Studio, while the band were demoing songs for their ripping, new album, Deadbeat At Dawn, to be released May 30th on RidingEasy Records, their second for the label.

I recently had the opportunity to speak with Jed and we had a robust conversation about a myriad of topics, including the Los Angeles fires, the band’s ongoing evolution, the nineties garage rock scene in Seattle, his relationship with John Dwyer, Metallica, running, the band’s mascot ‘Randy’, their upcoming European tour with label-mates Early Moods, and of course, their new album Deadbeat At Dawn.

Hey Jed, thanks for your time! I was curious how things are going in Los Angeles with the fires? How are people doing? What is the mood of the city?

That first month, January, I think everyone was just in shock, it felt like the rest of the world was going on, while we were in a weird holding pattern. In LA, it felt like time stopped, no one was really doing anything, and nothing was going on because everyone was just devastated and shocked by the situation. My partner that I have a wood shop with, lost his home.

He was up in Altadena and was worried this tree was gonna fall over and he’d get trapped. He came to our place, and the next day we rolled up there just to see if anything was left. We thought maybe his house was still there, perhaps we could retrieve some of his stuff, but when we got there, the entire neighborhood was gone. We were not prepared for that and really underestimated what we were walking into.

It was pretty much the gnarliest thing I’ve ever seen in real life with my own eyes. So, I think people were optimistic with rebuilding, it’s just gonna be years and I don’t know what the fuck you know? It’s hard to tell what’s gonna happen. I’d be silly if I said I had any clue as to what is actually gonna happen.

It was pretty much the gnarliest thing I’ve ever seen in real life with my own eyes…

Sure, especially with the current environment in the country with this administration, and their stated animosity towards California. I was watching on the news when the fires were in the Hollywood Hills, they’re showing a map, and there’s Sunset Boulevard, it was unimaginable.

Yeah, I got married in the Palisades at Michael Mann’s house, the director. I’m friends with some of his family, and the fire got right up to the house. I know twenty people on this side of town that lost their place, and it’s just unreal. I mean, you see all these, not to compare the two, but you see all these photos of Gaza, and that was the closest thing I’ve ever seen in my real life to what I imagine total devastation is like, it’s just gnarly.

All the good vibes myself and The Sleeping Shaman can summon for everybody affected by those fires, it’s horrific. I wanted to ask what your origin story is. I know you’re from Washington State but wanted you to elaborate if you could.

Well, my dad is from New Orleans, and my mother is from Eastern Washington. When he got back from ‘Nam he went back to New Orleans, but made his way to Portland, where he ended up meeting my mom. She was a Scientologist at the time, and my dad went to a meeting where he met her. They split that, and I was born in Portland and spent my early years there before moving to eastern Washington, where my mom is from, this town called Richland, which is about 2 1/2 hours south of Spokane, and it’s in the middle of nowhere. It’s built up now, but at the time, it was a lot of farms and wineries, but it’s a very rural small town.

I became obsessed with metal ‘cause all of my friends I met when I moved were all from Southeast Asia, like Thailand or Laos. They were all immigrant farm worker kids and their older brothers were walking around with Iron Maiden and Slayer t-shirts on, and all sorts of shit you know? So, I joined Columbia House and immediately got into Megadeth and all those, and started listening to metal, which was all I did through elementary school.

Then, in high school, I was playing sports and doing the sort of normal things, when a kid moved from Seattle to Eastern Washington, we became friends and he’s the one who started giving me Dead Kennedys, The Misfits, Circle Jerks and all the classic hardcore stuff. Up to that point, it was all metal, but once I started listening to punk, I got into it, and I really wanted to get into playing music, but didn’t know anyone to play with or where to get a guitar, or anything. Then I started listening to punk and I was like OK, cool, maybe I can figure this out you know? As well, there was a legendary band from Tri-Cities, Washington called Small. They were the band that really got me to pick up the guitar. I played baseball with the singer/guitarist’s younger brothers, and we’d go see them where we’d wait in line to stage dive at age thirteen.

Punk rock stuff, The Ramones or The Misfits, seem more attainable, guitar-playing wise than the mega-shred of thrash metal. My trajectory was similar in getting into metal before punk.

Sure, yeah.

Then, suddenly James Hetfield is in Thrasher Magazine, coupled with Metallica having their own Zorlac deck and that’s when things seemed like they were starting to converge.

Yeah, when I saw Cliff Burton wearing a Misfits t-shirt, I was just like whoa, ‘what the fuck!’, I didn’t understand it at all, and he’s also wearing bellbottoms. So, you’re without the Internet, and you’re trying to understand it, and you come up with your own version of what it meant. For me, living in the middle of nowhere, not really having anyone older to even tell me about this stuff, I was creating my own storylines as to who these people were and why they were doing what they were doing.

Then, in high school, I started putting on these all ages shows in the Tri-Cities and Eastern Washington. We had The Murder City Devils come through. We had Zeke come through. We were writing letters and calling these bands on payphones to see if they would come through our town and play. We had friends that graduated high school and went to Evergreen (state college) in Olympia, and so they were sending us tapes of Bay Area bands like Filth and Blatz and I’m reading the Maximum RocknRoll book Your Own Fuckin’ Life and trying to get bands to play our small, weird town you know? I graduated high school in ‘98 and moved to Seattle that day. I think the first Murder City Devils album was 96-’7?

Yeah, ’97, the self-titled .

Yeah, I had seen them on a side stage at Lollapalooza, and when I would drive to Seattle on the weekends to go to shows we’d see Derek (Fudesco, bass) from The Murder City Devils working at Singles Going Steady (a legendary ‘90s Seattle record store).

When I got to Seattle, it shifted from the hardcore and the metal that I was listening to, and I became really obsessed with all the garage rock stuff like The New Bomb Turks and Dead Moon, who are still my favorite. Then, The Retards came out and there were all these garage rock bands happening at that time and that was my scene at that point. I wound up playing bass for The Valentine Killers.

We had The Murder City Devils come through. We had Zeke come through. We were writing letters and calling these bands on payphones to see if they would come through our town and play…

What a trip man, yeah I remember that! We had a similar rock and roll path as I got really into garage rock around ’95 and that lasted for most of my time in Seattle. Rocket From The Crypt were huge for me, so were The New Bomb Turks, Zeke, The Murder City Devils, Hot Snakes, The Makers, Turbonegro…

The Makers I had heard in high school, they were from Spokane, and the fact that they were wearing suits, I was trying to understand it you know? Then, I heard that they got into a lot of fights, and I was like oh man I got into fights in high school, these guys are cool you know?

Right, well that was their whole thing and Michael Maker’s always been an extravagant rock and roll dresser, so imagine walking around draped in feather boas in Spokane? Like you had to be ready for a fight looking like that in that town. 

Well, that’s the thing, I love Metallica and bands like Nirvana, being from the Pacific Northwest, but for me, at that time, it was guys like Blind Markie (Zeke), Mike Maker, these guys are sort of like my rockstars you know? Fred Cole (Dead Moon), guys like that really kind of spoke to me.

It’s funny, I tattooed Mike Maker a  couple times back then.

Super nice guy.

Absolutely. It was interesting as you were talking about the garage stuff. One of the things with Zig Zags is your evolution. Your self-titled album has plenty of garage rock energy, with songs like Down The Drain. Ty Segall was involved in that album, right?

Ty recorded it, but it was released on In The Red Records.

I have a question going back to when you first started, you shared vocal duties with your original drummer.  Was that planned or did it happen organically?

It was basically split 50-50. It was just a two-piece when we started, then when we added a bass player, we all shared vocal duties. It’s a long story, but after the first record came out, we went on a short tour. The drummer quit after that tour and then the bass player quit shortly thereafter, and we had a European tour booked. I had to scramble to replace them and still keep the tour, which ended up failing miserably, so I cancelled it.

Then, as I wondered if I wanted to continue the band, I met Dane Arnold, Zig Zag’s second drummer. We were working together at this bar and restaurant, so we’d get off at two in the morning and we’d go to my practice space after that and like jam from 2 to 5 in the morning. We needed to find a bass player which ended up being rather easy, so in the end, it worked out.

That’s when Sean Hoffman came in right? He was your sound engineer, and then stepped in on bass?

Yeah, we had a bass player before named CJ who was in the band for the Running Out Of Red record, and then Sean came in after that. Sean and I have been playing music together on and off for years. Then, he came and tried out on second guitar at one point, but he’s like out of the Berkeley School of Music. He’s very learned compared to me, and wasn’t sure if he wanted to play with us as we were a little rough around the edges, you know? And I get it. I also kinda wanted to keep it as a three-piece, but when we lost the other bass player, Sean stepped in.

As I was absorbing your discography, the jump from Zig Zags to Running Out Of Red is lethal. There’s absolutely raging, feral stuff on it. Can’t Afford The Basics is just vicious and The Sadist is about as Show No Mercy-era Slayer in both execution and tone as I’ve heard.

Let me also ask you since we were talking about Ty, you also have a relationship with John Dwyer from Osees right? You’ve played with them and recorded Strange Masters at his studio Discount Mirrors, and I heard a bit of an Osees vibe on both the title track and Nothing To Do off your third full-length. Are you guys friends or is it a working relationship?

John and I are really close. We don’t even really remember where we met, but we crossed paths a long time ago. We’re both loud, outspoken and talkative. He’s even more talkative and more hyper than I am, but John and I understand each other, and we get along really well. We have one song on the new album, that while I never copy anyone, is very much in Osees territory, and I just fucking leaned into it. I did some vocal stuff that’s just totally like ripping him off, you know?! [laughs]. There are bands that have built their whole fucking careers ripping him off, so whatever. I don’t really have a lot of friends who want to go to metal shows, but when he’s around, he’s into it. We’ll see really gnarly hardcore bands or metal shows and he and I seem to connect on a lot of that stuff. Especially when it comes to death metal.

I wanted to ask about the songs on They’ll Never Take Us Alive. Again, you guys made another massive sonic jump, tonally and song-wise. That riff from Fallout is as killer as any I’ve heard in a long time, but you really got me with that True Detective (TV show) sample!

That’s funny that you say that because it came up the other night! My buddy, who I mentioned I have a wood shop with, we were hanging out the other night and he hadn’t heard the sample. He’d heard the record, but didn’t catch it, but when he did, he was  like ‘oh man that’s fucking Colin Farrell in True  Detective!’ I love that we have that weird connection that we both think that thing is funny, you know?

What I love about that is the idea. You know, I grew up on a lot of hardcore records like Dystopia or bands that have samples from movies or even bands like The Deathwish Kids or Area 51. They had a sample from that movie Over The Edge, and I’m such a huge movie guy. And what I loved about that True Detective thing was putting something current on there. It came out right after that show was on, so it was fine to put something current as opposed to obscure.

With Zig Zags, I’m booking shows, writing songs, making T-shirts, and handling the label and art. It takes up a lot of time and energy, but I’m not complaining…

They’ll Never Take Us Alive, was your first album on Riding Easy Records. How did you hook up with Daniel Hall (owner of Riding Easy Records), because it’s a really good fit. I’ve read and written about him as I’ve reviewed a number of the Brown Acid comps, as well as Early Moods first album. How did Zig Zags hook up with Riding Easy?

He was kind of there from the get-go. Larry Hardy from In The Red Records released Zig Zags and he and Daniel were friends. Daniel in turn put out a cassette version Zig Zags and also did an exclusive version of Brainded Warrior on seven inch. At that time, we played Psycho de Mayo fest, which turned into Psycho Las Vegas. We played with Pentagram, The Obsessed, and all these bands back in 2014. Daniel was there, we hung out and kept in touch.

The second album, Running Out Of Red is on Castle Face, which is Dwyer’s label. Then, he was deciding if he was going to release other bands or be Osees-exclusive. When it was time to make They’ll Never Take Us Alive, I called Dwyer a few times, but he was still transitioning, so I called Daniel and mentioned we were ready to do our next record and he mentioned he’d love to do it. So, we did They’ll Never Take Us Alive on RidingEasy, as well as our new one Deadbeat At Dawn.

I’m excited to ask about the new album, but briefly wanted to ask about Golden Grease, and the debut album Zero Time. I enjoyed that and it’s cool hearing that side of your guitar playing. It reminded me of Hot Snakes, The Wipers, Dead Moon, and all those bands that we both seem to dig. Are you still playing in that band?

Yes, we just played our first show outside of Southern California, up in San Francisco. That band is made up of these two guys, Nicholas and Calvin that are from Seattle that I met when we were 15 years old. They would come down to where I lived and play shows with their band and I would go up to Seattle and hang out with them and we’ve now been friends for 30 fucking years!

Golden Grease started out with the idea of hanging out and having fun. A band with no expectations because we’ve all been in a million bands and dealt with the conflict created when all of a sudden somebody wants to do something, and another member doesn’t. We decided to make a record and are now working on a new one. I really enjoy playing guitar with Golden Grease, though I don’t write the songs. I have a minimal amount of input, which is where I wanna be with it.

With Zig Zags, I’m booking shows, writing songs, making T-shirts, and handling the label and art. It takes up a lot of time and energy, but I’m not complaining. I just didn’t wanna do another band where I was responsible for as much, and I really don’t like the idea of people being in more than one band, I’ve always been kind of against that, but with Golden Grease, it works because everybody’s friends.

Let’s circle back to the new album Deadbeat At Dawn. It finished and set for a late May release?

Yep, it comes out May 30th on RidingEasy. I think it’s my favorite album as a whole. If I’m being completely honest, there are songs on other albums that I like more than the songs on this album, but I think it’s my favorite record we’ve done. I think the production is the best that we’ve had. My friend, Dave Hill, who’s a comedian in New York and a metal guy, was a fan of the band. We became friends on social media, and he came to LA to do a comedy show and introduced me to some of his friends that he grew up with in Cleveland. I’m a huge fan of all things Ohio when it comes to music, like The Pagans, the Dead Boys , Devo, etc.

The aforementioned New Bomb Turks…

Yeah exactly.  If I had to pick only one state I could only listen to music from it would be Ohio. Dave Hill then introduced me to Michael Parnin, who is from Cleveland. He has a studio here, Blacksound, and it was just janky enough that it made sense for us to record there. We started working with him and he’s just a fucking great guy and a great producer. He’s the first guy that I’ve worked with who, when I said I wanted a certain sound, he knew how to do it in an analog way, but with Pro Tools.

In the past, I’ve come up with ideas of how I want things to sound, and people say they’ll try to do it on the computer, but there’s way too many fucking options, and you can just sit there for days on end, trying to make something sound a certain way and it never does. But Michael was able to hook up this pedal with that pedal, and say, ‘I’ll do this, while you do that, and we’ll get it to sound that way’. It’s never gonna be perfect, but if I can sleep at night, that’s as good as it’s gonna get. We did They’ll Never Take Us Alive on tape, and honestly, I can’t tell the difference anymore.

He’s the first guy that I’ve worked with who, when I said I wanted a certain sound, he knew how to do it in an analog way, but with Pro Tools…

Your tone is vicious, you hear it right away and you’ve got that crunch and energy in abundance.

Well, it’s not an accident. It’s definitely something that I’ve really thought about for a long time and I’ve had people come up to me randomly and say ‘dude, the fucking tone is crazy, how do you do that?’. It’s a lot of trial and error you know?

I read that when you were recording They’ll Never Take Us Alive that you were trying to replicate the Hetfield’s early recording rig.

Yes, we were. We went with the Mesa Boogie studio preamp mixed with a Marshall. I also mixed in my Music Man head, which I always play, and I got what I got.

Deadbeat At Dawn is such a fluid blend of your stated influences, vintage thrash, ‘80s hardcore and ‘90s garage rock. Every song absolutely rips, but I’m curious what your favorite tracks are?

Right now, I’d say my favorites are Deadbeat At Dawn, Say it To My Face, and Not Of This World. My favorite to play through is Altered States.

Are you excited for the upcoming European tour? It’s a great lineup, alongside your RidingEasy label-mates Early Moods.

You know I’m stoked. We haven’t been over there in five years. I was thinking about this the other day, we did two tours of Europe in the summer of 2019, and when we came home we decided to take a break. Then Covid happened, I put the kibosh on everything and then people started having kids and moving, next thing you know, it’s five fucking years and I was in high school longer than it was between European tours!

We’ve never gone with another band, we’ve never even toured with another band, we’ve always just been the headliner on our own, playing small shows. I think we’re gonna play last, but only because we’ve been over there four times and Early Moods never have, but it doesn’t matter. We’ll play before or after any band. I’m just proud that we’re able to do it, and I’m excited to get back over there.

I wanted to ask some random questions. First of all, I need to know about Randy, Zig Zags long haired, skull-headed mascot?

So, Randy was my babysitter when I was living in a trailer park outside of Portland, Oregon and he was this long-haired, mullet-rockin’, BMX-riding kid in the neighborhood who was around six years older than me. I was six or seven when I met him, and I think he might’ve been twelve or thirteen. He gave me Def Leppard’s High ‘n’ Dry and On Through The Night.

High ‘n’ Dry is a brilliant, underrated album. It was the first record I bought with my own money that wasn’t KISS. It’s an album that if you know, you know.

Absolutely! So, when I started the band, I decided I needed my own version of Eddie, fucking Vic Rattlehead from Megadeth, the Boognish from Ween. I felt we needed a character, so I thought we’re gonna name him Randy and he’s a long haired, skull head, hesher-dude that is the ghost of this guy that babysat me when I was a little kid, you know? I don’t know what happened to that guy.

He lives on through your merch, your song Randy and your awesome, weird video for They Came For Us! He joined Heaven’s Gate Cult apparently!

Yeah, exactly!

I told him it’s like a uniform, I wear a Zig Zags shirt at my job, and he wears a fucking Subway shirt at his…

What’s your take in wearing your own band’s t-shirt whilst on stage?

Well, I don’t even wear a t-shirt on stage a lot of times, I’ll take it off, but I always have. I was a big drinker for years and years and then when I got married, I decided I was gonna get in really good shape so I quit drinking and now I’ve become obsessed with working out. The whole band runs and we all run together. So, in the way, I was obsessed with alcohol and cigarettes, I’m now obsessed with working out, and now I take my shirt off on stage and flex a little bit now and then.

My whole thing is, I do wear Zig Zags shirts on stage because Metallica and all those thrash metal bands would wear their own shirts when they played and I always thought that was such a tough move to wear your own shirt. I was wearing a Zig Zags shirt at a show and this guy came up to me at the merch table. He was unfamiliar with the whole thing. Someone had dragged him to the show and he asked, ‘wear your own shirt?’ and I was like ‘yeah’, and he said it was weird, and asked why I did it. I told him it’s like a uniform, I wear a Zig Zags shirt at my job, and he wears a fucking Subway shirt at his.

Exactly! You mentioned running. I too found exercise after years of alcohol & drug abuse. I started running when the tattoo shop was shuttered during Covid. Turns out there’s not much I enjoy more. It’s very cathartic and amazing for both physical and mental health. Zig Zags are a killer running soundtrack by the way. I read online that you guys do the Mount Baldy run in Los Angeles. How often are you running now?

I try to mostly run hills, there’s a good mountain by my house that’s about a five mile loop two and a half up, and down. I try to hit that twice a week if I can. What we’ll try to do, as a band, which can be hard, as my bandmates have families and children, and we practice around people’s schedules, but if we can, we try to run those hills before band practice at noon and then go to practice right afterwards. That’s my perfect day if I can get that in, you know?

That sounds amazing. At fifty three, I too hit it twice a week, usually five miles a pop, but I need to rest and rehab in between. I wanted to ask you about another thing that you and I have in common and that’s our mutual love for  Metallica. I have to ask you what your favorite album is and did you fall off on the Black Album?

For me, it goes Kill ‘Em All, …And  Justice For All, Master Of Puppets and Ride The Lightning. That’s my personal order. The first record that I heard when I was eight years old was Master Of Puppets, and since then they’ve been, and continue to be, my favorite band of all time.

Me too, Ride The Lightning is my number one album of theirs, and arguably my favorite album of all time.

Well, it’s funny because I love that record, Escape is one of my top ten Metallica songs, and they’ve only played it live once, and they wrote that song begrudgingly as the label wanted a potential radio song. By the time the Black Album came out, what year was that? ’91?

Yeah, it was 91.

At that time, I was in sixth grade, and trying to make friends, no one liked that kind of music as they were listening to commercial hip-hop or whatever pop was on MTV. I tried getting into that stuff, but it never took, and when the Enter Sandman video came out, being a kid and trying to fit in I said ‘oh, I don’t like that kind of stuff anymore’ at least publicly, and anything past that I didn’t even pay attention to. Then, when Load came out, I thought it was even worse, and they cut their hair and were wearing eyeliner and I thought OK, this Metallica sucks now. However, a few years ago, I put on Load and I remember liking Hero Of The Day and Bleeding Me.

The Outlaw Torn.

Yeah, I kinda started liking it again, some friends and I decided it was their classic rock album, and when framed that way, I had a different appreciation for it. Now, I put it on somewhat ironically, but I do actually kind of dig it, so there you go.

The first record that I heard when I was eight years old was Master Of Puppets, and since then they’ve been, and continue to be, my favorite band of all time…

Yeah, I always felt like it was their AC/DC and The Cult phase. I also think they were really influenced by those early Danzig records too. Hetfield was hanging out with all those Danzig guys back then.

Oh yeah, thing is, I would never put those records on in company, but I’ll totally like listen to them in my truck you know?

Pre-Kill ‘Em All, one of my gateway albums was Accept’s Restless And Wild.

Oh fuck, yeah, of course! What about Riot? The early eighties, New York, NWOBHM inspired cult band.

Swords & Tequila dude, carry me through the night!

Fuck Yeah! We have a lot of conversations about that era, those bands, what’s right and what’s wrong, and all that shit.

I think we covered it all, and then some! I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me and answer a few questions for The Sleeping Shaman. Good luck with the new album and with the European tour! I’ll be championing you guys!

OK sounds great. Thanks, I appreciate it, and take care!

Label: RidingEasy Records
Band Links: Facebook | Bandcamp | Spotify | Instagram

Interviewed by: Martin Williams