Zippy Caplan, Lead Guitarist for the Cult Punk-Garage band The Litter, and former Lead player for White Lightning, has been playing and recording since the 1960’s. Over the years he’s racked up a massive catalogue of recordings he’s played on, and countless venues across the U.S. he has performed at, including the Cheetah Club in New York and LA, The Aragon Ballroom in Chicago, The Electric Theatre in Chicago, the University of Missouri, The Des Moines Civic Center (Iowa) and many more.

In addition to The Litter headlining the Electric Theatre in Chicago, as well as other top venues, Zip has toured extensively opening for such acts as Cream, The Who, The Byrds, Eric Burdon and War, The Amboy Dukes with Ted Nugent, Johnny Winter, Steppenwolf, Genesis and the list goes on. He has also performed with groups at huge festivals including Grant Park, Chicago, Stevens Point, Wisconsin, Galena Rock Festival, Iowa and much more and has personally played with Johnny Winter, Capitol Records artist Sherman Hayes, and Shelter Records artist DJ Rogers in addition to doing studio work in LA.

In 2001 when Zip finished his solo CD Zip Caplan and Cast of Thousands “Monsters and Heroes”, he and Co-Producer Bernie Bomberg formed The Surf Dawgs. As Zip puts it “…a way to get back to my roots” since his beginnings were an instrumental band when he was 16 years old playing Ventures, Duane Eddy and other artists of the time. His resume is way too lengthy to go into here but The Surf Dawgs is his main focus now. In addition to performing with the band, he has several original songs on the 5 + Surf Dawgs albums and also co-produces the group and has album credits for mixing and mastering on all The Surf Dawgs recordings. Tom “Zippy” Caplan was inducted into the Mid America Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with The Litter in 2007 and The Accents in 2010 and was personally inducted in 2004 with a Life Time Achievement Award.

Bernie Bomberg has been in the music business in one way or another since the 1960’s. Classically trained on Piano, he taught himself to play Rhythm guitar at an early age to compliment his Keyboard playing. In the early 60’s Bernie and his boyhood friend Zippy Caplan would get together and work out songs to play. These very early get-togethers would eventually lead to the boys working out a version in Rock style of the William Tell Overture. Ironically enough this version of William Tell became a show-stopper years later when Zippy’s popular band White Lightning used it as their closing number at concerts. Since White Lightning eventually toured nationally to promote its album, audiences all over the U.S. got to hear it and when White Lightning (now called Lightning) opened for Grand Funk Railroad on New Year’s Eve 1970, the crowd went so wild at the end of William Tell they rushed the stage. The band’s manager overheard Grand Funk’s manager tell the promoter …

“don’t ever put us on the same bill with these guys again”. To this day The Surf Dawgs still perform it as their closing number and have been doing so ever since the group’s inception 13 years ago. Bernie also sat in with Zippy’s first group The Uniques several times and later filled in for Zippy’s Rhythm guitar player in the group Froggy and His Friends when he couldn’t make a gig and again for the keyboard player in another group Zippy was in called The Accents. In the late 60’s, after High School and while he was working his way through College, Bernie formed his own band, The Persuaders, and proceeded to play local bars and clubs in the Minneapolis area. After College he had to give it up to start his dental practice but never stopped playing for his own personal enjoyment and continued to grow on his instruments and learn new songs.

Fast forward to the late 1990’s when Zip Caplan called Bernie one day and said “I’ve got a major project I’ve been waiting to do for the last 30 years”. Zip explained his love for the music in the old Universal Horror movies and early TV shows like Superman and The Lone Ranger and that he wanted to do an album of this music but with Rock instrumentation which eventually was named “Monsters and Heroes”. Bernie and Zippy were re-united and Zip was glad since he knew Bernie’s classical training and excellent ear would come in handy on this very big project.

As Bernie quickly learned the ropes in the recording studio the album slowly came together and after 2 ½ years of recording, the project was ready for release, at which time Zip gave Bernie very well deserved Co-Producing credits on the album. Bernie played on every track, mostly Keyboards, some Rhythm guitar, and even Bass on one song. When the project was finished it was decided to keep going and put together an Instrumental band so they could play all those great songs they loved and grew up with.

As the group gained popularity locally they eventually went into the recording studio in 2006 and recorded The Surf Dawgs first album “Driving Guitars”. Bernie finally had a chance to once again use the skills he learned making “Monsters and Heroes” and 5 plus albums later he shares credits with Zippy and Engineer Brian Bart for producing, mixing and mastering on all The Surf Dawgs recordings. Bernie “Bombers” Bomberg was inducted into the Mid America Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2009 with a Life Time Achievement Award.