View credits, reviews, tracks and shop for the 1998 CD release of Christmas Caravan on Discogs. View credits, reviews, tracks and shop for the 1998 CD release of Christmas Caravan on Discogs.
10 Show Run Will Feature The Band Performing Classic Holiday Songs Along With Squirrel Nut Zippers Hits This Winter you’ll have an excellent new reason to round up the kids, adults and grandparents for the holidays. The Squirrel Nut Zippers are embarking on their first ever holiday tour – The First Annual Christmas Caravan tour. The ten-city tour starts in Memphis, TN on November 30th and will make stops in Birmingham, Pensacola, Atlanta, Nashville, Asheville, Charlotte, Jacksonville, St. Petersburg and Orlando. Tickets for all shows will go on sale this Friday. “Zipsters, we’re excited to be spreading our holiday cheer with you all this winter,” remarked band leader Jimbo Mathus.
“We’ll be playing selections from our old Christmas Caravan album, holiday hits and of course the finest Squirrel Nut Zippers music for you all. It’s gonna be a blast.” It was back in 1998 when the Squirrel Nut Zippers released their first and only Holiday album titled Christmas Caravan which went on to sell a quarter of a million copies and reached #12 on the Billboard Holiday Albums chart. Since reactivating in mid-2016 the Squirrel Nut Zippers have been performing to packed houses across the country and around the world.
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As Jimbo Mathus has said since the band’s re-launch, ‘it’s not a reunion, it’s a revival.’ The Squirrel Nut Zippers are currently in the studio putting the finishing touches on a new album to be released in 2018. It will be their first in seventeen years.
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Since they were riding high on the strength of Hot, the Squirrel Nut Zippers convinced Mammoth to release a holiday album, Christmas Caravan, just months after they delivered Perennial Favorites, their follow-up to Hot. It was an unconventional move, but the Zippers were never about convention, and, appropriately, Christmas Caravan isn't a conventional holiday record. Relying heavily on original material, the crew has created the Christmas equivalent of one of their studio releases - an album that revives swing and hot jazz, tweaking it a little bit with ironic humor yet remaining reverential of the music's heritage. If anything, they take fewer liberties on Christmas Caravan than before - there aren't as many jokes and the music sounds surprisingly restrained at places. Still, the Zippers know how to have a good time, and that's exactly what Christmas Caravan does, thanks to their enthusiastic performances, strong songwriting and sharp covers ('Winter Weather,' 'Sleigh Ride'). Stephen Thomas Erlewine.