Formed in 1993 out of Chapel Hill, NC, Squirrel Nut Zippers are a renowned eclectic fusion of Delta blues, gypsy jazz, 1930s–era swing, klezmer, and other styles makes them hard to categorize, their unique music found a niche in the late 1990s, when the band met with national recognition and commercial success, sometimes associated with the Swing Revival of the same period. Breakthrough single “ Hell” went into the top 10 on Modern Rock.  Catalog sales of more than 3 million records.  Milestone performances: Radio City Music Hall with Tony Bennett, President Bill Clinton’s Inaugural Ball, 1996 Summer Olympics, Sesame Street, Letterman, Leno, Regis and Kathy, Conan, Dick Clarks NYE, 1997 tour with Neil Young, multiple sold out headline tours and private shows for Microsoft, Daimler Chrysler and others.

2016 will mark the 20 th  anniversary of the Squirrel Nut Zippers most celebrated and commercially successful album Hot.  Originally released in the summer of 1996, Hot was the follow up to the band’s critically acclaimed debut The Inevitable. By this time the group had already established a substantial live following across the country thanks to early support from NPR, college radio and non-commercial stations. 

Shortly after the release of Hot, the Zippers caught lightning in a bottle with “Hell.”  MTV added the song into heavy rotation, modern rock radio stations pounded the track on air, and the album flew into the Top 30 on the Billboard charts.  Audiences doubled and tripled in size and the band found themselves performing everywhere including at President Clinton’s Inaugural Ball, the Summer Olympics, on tour with Neil Young and Tony Bennett and even performing on Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Year’s Eve.  Hot wound up selling over 1.3 million copies.

Pitchfork, which was in it’s second year of operation at the time, raved about Hot giving it a 9.5 and saying: “When you first splashdown into the CD, ya hit this realization: that people even older than your parents liked music like this. …Hot is exuberant, gin house swing without apologies and it rocks without pretense. If you can manage to resist liking it, you must be dead.”

In honor of the 20 th  Anniversary the album, the bands visionary creator Jimbo Mathus, along with founding member and partner Chris Phillips (Drums), have crafted a brand new stage show including singer Ingrid Lucia (Flying Neutrino’s), and long time members Stu Cole (Bass),  Henry Westmoreland (Baritone Sax) and Charlie Halloran (Trombone) and Je Widenhouse (Trumpet) plus other guest musicians with a New Orleans flavor.  It will be the band’s first tour of North America in seven years and is likely to include select guest artist’s the band has worked with through the years.

“We’ve been quiet for long enough,” remarked Chris Phillips.  “Honestly, we still love performing the songs from such a unique and rambunctious catalog.  When it was brought to my attention that 2016 was the 20 th  anniversary of Hot I knew the timing was right.  We take great pleasure in the sense of togetherness we maintain with our fans and especially from the fact that the audiences have such a wide age range - from young to old and those in between.  Even the old are young at heart when they are at our show….”

Fans and critics alike have always have always had difficulty pigeonholing the bands unique sound. Some have called it a perpetually confused stew of Southern Roots and Surrealist paintings.  One critic aptly tagged them as "'30s punk. However NPR’s Morning Edition might have said it best when they said: “It’s not easy to categorize the music of the Squirrel Nut Zippers, except that it’s hot.”