Hot Day at the Zoo
"Zoograss"
Red Boot Publicity
hotdayatthezoo.com

AUGUSTA, GA -New England’s renowned Hot Day at the Zoo gathered together for a live show at the Waterhole in February of 2009 and the result was the current live album Zoograss. There hasn’t been a live album this marvelous in years.

Full of high-energy string band rock, Hot Day at the Zoo capture their infectious sound the way it was meant to be heard: live in front of a crowd of friends and fans at their favorite bar singing along to every song. On "Zoograss" is everything that HDATZ have come to be known for, including some marvelously complex harmonica work and a killer mandolin.

Hot Day at the Zoo fit right in with that wild bunch of fans who follow the Grateful Dead or Phish, channeling that same energy, community, and sense of spirit but these New Englanders add more folky bluegrass roots to their music than their counterparts. Still, take traditional country, folk and bluegrass, but tinge it with that stripped-down Deadhead classic rock, and this is just the tip of Hot Day’s iceberg. 

The lyrics are hilarious, insightful, and as real as any lyricist has ever come up with. You feel every single thing songwriters Michael Dion and Jon Cumming write about and know they come straight for the heart.

Every track is a standalone masterpiece with full musical instruments and a wild, howling true sound. Some of the best songs include the opener “Boston Blues” and the way Dion’s harmonica slices “Mercy of the Sea” in half just brings that traditional old school country down full force. The moody sounds of “Back this Way” are raw and nasty and bring an alt-country/psychobilly essence to Hot Day at the Zoo. “Midnight Moonlight” has some over the top banjo work unlike anything imaginable.

When it comes down to it, "Zoograss" is not only one of the best albums to come out in a long time, nor is it part of that rare breed of live album that truly captures what a band is about, but "Zoograss" is something far more: it spans genres, unites fans of multiple sounds, and infuses such a frenetic energy into the listener that after only one song they are diehard fans until the day they die. How many other bands can claim that?