DERRY — Ever since Halloween, ho-hum holiday PA music has been doing its best to taunt and annoy, but before saying bah humbug to the sonic monotony of the season, head to Tupelo Music Hall Friday at 8 p.m. for a refreshing taste of blues, jazz, Americana and swing-inspired holiday music — a special gift from the Squirrel Nut Zippers.
This is the third consecutive year the band, originally from Chapel Hill, N.C., has taken its Holiday Caravan show on the road to perform material both new and old. That includes songs from the 1998 release “Christmas Caravan,” which was just released on vinyl and features new liner notes penned by the band’s lone original member, founder and lead man, Jimbo Mathus.
While he admits he’s more inclined to show his holiday spirit on stage than off, Mathus, who now lives in Corinth, Miss., does share one particularly fond holiday memory in the revised notes.
“Last year, my mother, who I don’t see very often, came to a Christmas show we played in Arizona, and while we played ‘Coming Home for Christmas’ — which I wrote for her — she came down to the front of the stage, looked up at me and she just sort of turned into a little girl at Christmastime,” Mathus says. “It was magic — magic with music.”
Influenced by legendary jazz greats such as Cab Calloway and Fats Waller, the Squirrel Nut Zippers helped contribute to the swing revival of the late 1990s, inspiring a new generation to take up swing dancing, learn the Lindy Hop and embrace 1940s-era fashion. The release of the album “Hot” and the infectious calypso-inspired single “Hell” in 1996 led the charge.
The band and its evolving roster have been writing, recording and performing its enigmatic style of music since the mid-1990s, although the original lineup parted ways in 2000. At that time, Mathus pursued a prolific solo career, exercising his blues guitar chops while touring and recording with Buddy Guy, as well as forming a band called The Tri-State Project.
Then, in 2016 — the 20th anniversary of the release of “Hot,” Mathus began assembling a revival band, tapping a whole new lineup of players to comprise the “new” Squirrel Nut Zippers.
“With the anniversary of ‘Hot’, I realized it was time to bring it off the shelf and reanimate it,” he says. “But reimaging it just as a reunion situation just to capitalize on a particular anniversary or whatnot ... I realized I might as well just start the band up again.”
The Squirrel Nut Zippers’ 2018 release, “Beasts of Burgundy,” debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard Jazz Albums Chart, and the group just finished recording, mixing and mastering “Lost Songs of Doc Souchon,” which is slated for release next summer.
The band’s holiday caravan is different from a usual Zippers performance.
“We do the entire ‘Christmas Caravan’ record along with some new things we added to the catalog last year, like ‘Mardi Gras for Christmas,’” says Mathus. “The show is guaranteed to bring a lot of joy, delivered by a top-notch, madly entertaining band.”
