Smoking Popes
American pop punk band
Smoking Popes is an American pop punk band from the northwest suburbs of Chicago. They are composed of brothers Matt Caterer (bass), Josh Caterer (lead vocals/guitar) and Eli Caterer (guitar/backing vocals) and Mike Felumlee (drums).
History
Early history
In 1990, the Caterer brothers formed a punk trio called Speedstick with Josh on vocals/guitar, Eli on bass, and Matt on drums. They played one gig in a friend's basement, after which the Caterer parents decided that Eli, then a sophomore in high school, would have to quit the band until after he graduated, so Matt switched to bass and Dave Martens joined on drums. That summer, at their first self-funded recording session, the trio recorded about 15 original songs composed by Josh, some of which would form the basis of the Smoking Popes early material.
They played a handful of local shows over the next year, and in the summer of 1991, they changed the band's name to Smoking Popes, inspired by one of the Caterer brothers' favorite movies The Pope of Greenwich Village. Soon after that, Martens left the band and the Caterer brothers recruited Mike Felumlee to replace him.
In late 1991, the band released their first EP called Inoculator with help from local indie label Radius Records. In early 1992, the band self-released a 4 song EP called "The Smoking Popes Break Up", recorded by Phil Bonnet. That summer, Eli rejoined the band on guitar and they self-released another EP called "2".
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7546039. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1990, 1991 and 1992.
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This entry incorporates text from “Smoking Popes” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.