Mia Zapata was drenched in sweat, surrounded by congested bodies as she geared up to sing “Second Skin,” the final song of The Gits’ set inside the cramped Jabberjaw Café. It was a hot summer day on June 27, 1993, and they were opening for riot grrrl pioneer Bratmobile. It was the last time The Gits would ever play in Los Angeles.
“I need a second skin, something to hold me up, can’t seem to get out of this hole I’ve dug myself right back in,” the 27-year-old soulfully crooned at the illustrious rock venue.
In a YouTube video of this final L.A. show, Zapata often closes her eyes and vividly emotes the pain, anger and joy in her music. Zapata’s bandmates, bassist Matt Dresdner and guitarist Andy Kessler, said Zapata had a “no bulls— persona” that was “100% organic and authentic.” On stage, her performances became a “dance of communicating the feelings that she’s singing about,” Dresdner said.
“I don’t think there was any artifice in any of what she did, she was just herself … Her lyrics are personal and visceral, and I feel like that is the window into who she was, better than anything I could say about her,” Dresdner told The Times .
When the Seattle-based band was in L.A. in June 1993, they were offered the opportunity to sign with Atlantic Records, but The Gits never got the chance to fulfill that deal — Zapata was sexually assaulted and murdered 10 days later in Seattle.
Unable to continue without their best friend, The Gits called it quits. But more than 30 years after her death, Zapata’s art and music continues to make a mark on the punk rock scene and influence both old and new generations of fans.
On Friday, Sub Pop Records is rereleasing the band’s full-length album “Frenching the Bully” on all formats and teaming up with nonprofit music organizations The Vera Project and KEXP for a record-release party in Seattle on Saturday. The celebration includes a screening of the short film “The Gits – Live at RKCNDY,” vinyl signings by the band, and an art exhibit showcasing some of Zapata’s paintings.
“They’re all coming together and helping put on this amazing celebration of Mia and The Gits,” Dresdner said. “Our manager, Rachel Flotard, has been coordinating [and] moving all of these mountains for years and it’s culminating now, and on top of one of these mountains is Mia Zapata, and it’s about time.”
The Sniveling Little Rat Faced Gits, as they were known before shortening their name to The Gits (and originally named in tribute to Monty Python’s “Flying Circus”), were formed in 1986 by Zapata, Dresdner, Kessler and drummer Steve Moriarty while students at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio.
“The thing that’s interesting is that the chemistry and power of it was there right away, and it did last from then until the end … we played together sporadically during those college days, but it was when we moved to Seattle that I feel like we really became a band,” Kessler said.
Before they met, Dresdner remembers seeing Zapata on campus and feeling “inspired and intimidated” by her but says he didn’t have “the guts” to talk to her. Eventually, she approached Dresdner about his lack of initiative as a painter and gave him a directive.
“She called me out for half-assing it, and from there she’s like, ‘Tomorrow, you’re coming down to the art building with me and you’re gonna paint,’ she challenged me,” he said.
They quickly became friends, and after that incident, Dresdner said he saw her sing at an open mic night on campus and was stunned by what he witnessed.
“I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, I was just so transfixed by her, her voice and her presence, it brought me to tears,” the bassist said. “She was so resonant and personal, and at that point I was like, ‘God, we got to figure out how to start a band.’”
Zapata, a Mexican American art student originally from Louisville, Ky., wasn’t just a gifted singer with a voice akin to greats like Bonnie Raitt, Patti Smith and Amy Winehouse. Friends also describe her as being an exceptional painter who made creative works in other mediums including ceramics and printmaking.
Michael Casselli, associate professor of sculpture and installation and creative director of the Herndon Gallery at Antioch College, was friends with Zapata when they were both art students and said Zapata was a passionate painter with a very distinct style that came to define her work. In 2023, Casselli curated an exhibition at Herndon Gallery titled “Mia Zapata: A Place Within,” which featured various paintings, prints and a sculpture by Zapata, which were on loan from the singer’s family.
“She was influenced by abstract expressionism, and she was influenced by the people at the time who were also painting in the neo-expressionist movement,” Casselli said. “[Mia’s art had] this kind of emotive and emotional but not highly realistic approach, and also a real softness to her touch too, so she could vacillate between slightly different approaches, you could really sense her, in her work.”
Casselli said that one of the most “outstanding” visuals on display was a painting Zapata did of Mexican revolutionaries Emiliano Zapata and his brother Eufemio Zapata.
In “Mia Zapata & The Gits: A Story of Art, Rock, and Revolution,” the Gits drummer details the moment when Zapata painted this portrait, briefly indulging in family lore alleging the Gits singer was a distant relative of the Mexican heroes.
“I remember when she painted that painting of Emiliano and I couldn’t even really make out what it was, because she had this canvas sprawled on the floor and was painting kind of Jackson Pollock style, and she told me that she just wanted to look into the eyes of the painting and try to figure out her history,” the drummer said.
Moriarty’s book, which was published by Feral House, pays homage to Zapata by focusing on the artistry and creative genius of the singer, recalling the band’s friendship and music career to the best of his memory, according to Moriarty. For him, it was important to paint a picture of Zapata in a way that hadn’t been done before to reclaim the narrative about the singer’s life.
“Every time I saw anything written about The Gits, half the story was about [the murder], and it would never get to who Mia was,” Moriarty said. “I got really tired of seeing draft after draft of things about the band that were more about murder than they were the band.”
The book also extensively covers the band’s time in Seattle after college, when they started taking their music seriously and playing more shows on the west coast.
“It was before terms like ‘grunge’ started being pinned onto Seattle,” Dresdner said. “Over time we realized that our music, the kind of stuff we were doing, wasn’t easily categorized within the other sort of genres that were burgeoning here, so I don’t think that we necessarily found a natural home at the time, but I don’t think it really affected us because we were pretty clear on our mission,” Dresdner said.
Kessler added: “We had a strong identity, a transforming sound but still a strong sense of who we are and what we wanted to do.”
That strong identity is something they say reverberates in Mia’s words and is the best way to get to know her and remember her.
“You can get a lot about who she was just from listening to the songs, listen to her voice,” Kessler said.