Pioneering Hmong rocker Thai Thao of the Sounders talks about his final show in Milwaukee

The way Elvis Thao sees it, Hmong rock band the Sounders, and their frontman Thai Thao (no relation), are "never going to die."

"(Thai Thao) will be that Jimi Hendrix, that Babe Ruth, he's the (Michael) Jordan," Elvis Thao, a Milwaukee music veteran with Hmong hip-hop group RARE and rock project Elvis Thao and the Creatives, told the Journal Sentinel. "What the Beatles and the Rolling Stones are to the American public is what his sound is the Hmong community. He's a forefather who took a lot of risks to get that kind of sound for a generation."

As rock pioneers, the Sounders and their songs may be immortal to the Hmong people in the United States and beyond, but Thai Thao's days on stage are coming to an end.

After playing farewell shows in North Carolina, California, Michigan and Minnesota from late 2022 to late 2023, Thai Thao, aka Thai Sounders, has just one show left: at the Riverside Theater in Milwaukee Saturday.

"I'd like to say that we started a movement," Thai Thao said on the phone from his home in Fresno, California. "A generation of people from Thailand, people from Laos, got really involved in music because of what the Sounders did. … I'm honored, I'm proud, to be able to have somewhat of an impact on the community."

After the Vietnam War ended in 1975, and the United States military left Laos, many Hmong in the country ended up in Thai refugee camps. From the mid-1970s to the early 2000s, more than 130,000 Hmong people resettled in America. California, Minnesota and Wisconsin were among the most common destinations.

Thai Thao himself grew up in Missoula, Montana, listening to Hmong folk music but also rock bands like the Beatles, the Carpenters and the Bee Gees. In 1991, he moved to be closer to relatives in Fresno — the American metropolitan area with the second largest Hmong population, according to the Pew Research Center, behind Minneapolis-St. Paul. And there, the Sounders was born in 1992, with Thai Thao the band's singer, songwriter and guitarist.

At the time, Thai Thao said, in Hmong households "you would still hear a lot of traditional things, or music that took a lot of Chinese melodies or Thai melodies or Laos melodies sung in the Hmong language. … Western music in itself was very new to us … as immigrants coming to the States."

With the Sounders, Thao wanted to do something "totally different."

"We wanted to do (songs) … like you would hear on the radio," he said. "It was my take on marrying the Hmong language, which itself is very poetic, to the Western style of music."

"At first, it was a shock to people," Thai Thao continued. "But when you talk to our fans, they'll mention … a lot of our youth don't speak enough Hmong. When they listen (to the Sounders), it makes them wonder and find out what certain things mean. It's a way to look back at their culture."

Releasing about 60 songs over six albums from 1993 to 2017, the Sounders' sound recalled rock, blues, reggae and even a touch of country. Love ballads were a specialty, but the songs, besides being sung in the Hmong language, often speak to the Hmong experience.

"Pais Nyob Meskas," the title track from their final album, is about "dreaming to come back to Laos and reunite with that one special person," Thai Thao said. Other songs dealt with themes like "being here but not having a land you call your country" or about "families breaking up and not being able to work things out."

"His sound broke a lot of barriers," said Elvis Thao, who was inspired in part by the Sounders to pave a path for Hmong hip-hop with RARE around 1999 or 2000. The Sounders "spoke to the changing of the identity of what Hmong music traditionally is."

Along with releasing albums, the Sounders played festivals and other Hmong events around the country, including shows in Green Bay, Appleton and Milwaukee, primarily in the mid-1990s, Thai Thao said.

But after releasing and promoting their 2017 album, "we all were pretty busy with life and didn't all have the same energy for it anymore."

The band members came to a mutual decision to split, Thai Thao suggests, but "I didn't want to just go quietly."

The first show of the farewell tour happened in late 2022 in Hickory, North Carolina, which according to Pew has the fifth largest Hmong population among American metropolitan areas. Then came shows in other populated Hmong cities — Detroit, St. Paul and Fresno last December, which initially was set to be the last show.

"But we skipped Wisconsin and there were a lot of requests, so we made a decision to do a finale show there and chose Milwaukee," Thai Thao said.

Along with Milwaukee — the fourth-largest American metropolis for the Hmong population, according to Pew — Wausau and Sheboygan also make the top 10. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2019 American Community Survey, Hmong make up the largest Asian American ethnic group in the state, more than 58,000 people.

"It's one of the states that helped put us on the map in our community," Thai Thao said. "Wisconsin really knows how to show their support and show they are proud to be Hmong and are proud of the accomplishments of any Hmong person."

Thai Thao may be retiring from live shows — he wants to spend more time focusing on his family, he said — but he's hopeful that songwriting "will continue to come to me" and is interested in mentoring young Hmong musicians. His final show at the Riverside will double as a pass-the-torch moment, with eight younger Hmong musical acts sharing the bill, and with Elvis Thao back in his former hometown to serve as the night's master of ceremonies.

"It gives you chills that this is really happening," Thai Thao said when he thinks about playing his final show at the Riverside. "It's a good feeling that I am going to walk away from this thing … with some of these new artists that can continue to play on stages like that and at venues like that."

"I really want to walk away from this just remembering all the good things that we have accomplished as a community together. I didn't get here all by myself," he continued. "It has been a blessing, and I have a lot of good memories to go to bed with."

If you go

Who: Thai Sounders with SuddenRush, Reflections, Pagina Xiong, Jeeker, Michelle Elle, Melody Li, Alina Xyooj, DJ Sushi Lor and Elvis Thao

When: 7 p.m. Saturday

Where: Riverside Theater, 116 W. Wisconsin Ave.

How much?: $80 to $150 at the door, the Pabst Theater box office (144 E. Wells St.) and pabsttheater.org.

Contact Piet at (414) 223-5162 or plevy@journalsentinel.com. Follow him on X at @pietlevy or Facebook at facebook.com/PietLevyMJS.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Hmong rocker Thai Thao of the Sounders talks final show in Milwaukee