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Squirrel Nut Zippers at Minnesota Zoo Amphitheater on 7/21/07

By: Ilya Ratner

You know how music sometimes transports you into different moments in time? Like how Hendrix teleports you to

Squirrel Nut Zippers - Photo by Greg Gibson

the ‘60s while “Voodoo Chile” explodes out of your tweeters. Or the way the Muddy Waters can paint a blues joint all around you, or lay out the Mississippi Delta before your feet. It doesn’t happen all the time, only once-in-a-while when the air is right, and a curiosity about a time foreign to you manifests in your imagination. And there you sit, enveloped in music—distilled from time and space. At such moments, you become involved with not merely the music, but the culture, even if it’s illusory and somewhat unimaginable. 

The Squirrel Nut Zippers induce such states with every juke-joint jive and calypso melody, with their zoot suits and oversized swing pants, and with their energy and enthusiasm. I’ve never wanted to own a pair of billowing dance pants, but listening to the tottering swing of the Zippers at the Minnesota Zoo made me want to slap on a flap cap, pretend I was one of the Newsies and lindy hop like a lunatic. 

I didn’t do this, of course. I don’t know how to lindy hop and really have no idea what it looks like and if I tried to swing dance someone would get hurt (and it wouldn’t be me). Though apart from my absence, what could be considered as the “floor” of the Minnesota Zoo amphitheater was dotted with aspiring swingsters and even some impressive dancers. Girls in black dresses and Bette Davis haircuts swerving sinuously; girls flailing their arms and legs and fluttering their hands with every electric crescendo; and even a few guys trying really hard to find rhythm in the slash and dash numbers. 

Squirrel Nut Zippers - Photo by Greg Gibson

The Zippers boogied through the ‘20s and ‘30s genre catalog. Cornet solos and scattered guitar licks punctuated the charismatic arrangements. A little Django Reinhardt (though I have to say the DR was in a class of his own), a little Louis Armstrong, and the music careened on stage like a frenetic fat cat. BAM! BOOM! BAT! If it were possible, I would write the whole review in onomatopoeias. But, then, I would be forced to leave out the starlet, Katherine Whalen, who seduced the stage with her smoky alto and made all of us smile with her Betty Boop flourishes and quirky dance moves. Not so much of a BAM—more of a SIZZLE. 

But the band didn’t just impress with pizzazz and musicianship. It wasn’t just the violin crying with Gypsy quivers in “The Ghost of Stephen Foster;” it wasn’t just Je Widenhouse’s shuttering cornet bursts or Ken Mosher’s growling and bawdy vocals—it was also their showmanship. The bow after a song, the smile at an excited fan, the sequined dress, the fedora, the choreography—it was a show. 

The Zippers induced a moment. A fleeting glance at a time that has long disappeared, a time which now congregates at ballroom dance competitions and throwback gangster movies. This was my glance into the roaring ‘20s, a moment drunk on bootleg whisky and bathtub gin. Hell, I don’t know how to jitterbug, but I now know that whenever I go to a SNZ show, in my head, I can pretend to be Fred freaking Astaire.

Location Info: Minnesota Zoo Amphitheater
Artist Info: Squirrel Nut Zippers

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