Not A Reunion, A Revival

Squirrel Nut Zippers’ love letter to New Orleans.

- John Wirt

In March, the Squirrel Nut Zippers released Beasts of Burgundy. Recorded in New Orleans at the Marigny studio owned by producer-engineer Mike Napolitano and Ani DiFranco, it’s the band’s first album in 18 years. The return of the Squirrel Nut Zippers, said the band’s leader, Jimbo Mathus, isn’t a reunion—it’s a revival.

In 1996, the then North Carolina–based Squirrel Nut Zippers recorded what became their mainstream breakthrough, Hot, in New Orleans at the former Kingsway Studio. Napolitano engineered the recording in the Esplanade Avenue building Mathus calls the “haunted mansion.”

Hot featured the surprise hit “Hell.” Influenced by New Orleans music and Mathus’ decades of fascination with the city, the album mixed the Squirrel Nut Zippers’ unschooled enthusiasm for traditional jazz with an arty, post-punk aesthetic.

“It was my idea to take the band down to New Orleans to record,” said Mathus, a native of Oxford, Mississippi. “I wanted them to see what I had been experiencing my whole life. None of them had been to the city before. That was part of process, to get them there.”

Mathus also recruited ace local trumpet player Duke Heitger for the Hot sessions. As for the band’s trad-jazz musicianship, it was a work in progress. “We didn’t know what we were doing, but we had raw energy and crazy creativity,” the blues-and country-based Mathus said. “My decision to learn about jazz came from my curiosity about how jazz works. Looking back 20 years later