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They’re a little older, a little wiser and perhaps a little more prone to the aches and pains of age, but there’s no mistaking the energy.

They’re still the same Squirrel Nut Zippers, that unclassifiable, uncategorizable band from the late 1990s that turned hot jazz into something of a modern rock phenomenon.

After a seven-year hiatus, the band is back on tour, reworking old songs, putting new takes on the hits and renewing friendships, according to SNZ founder Chris Phillips.

“Back in the early days, we would spend all weekend practicing and just be so excited to be together,” Phillips told The Daily Times this week. “We would spend a lot of time frying chicken and drinking whiskey. There’s a little less of that now, but there’s no less verve and no less laughing when we’re playing music. This reunion isn’t some sort of historical look at old jazz music; it never has been with us.

“It’s a very mysterious machine working there. It’s all about chemistry more than anything, and we still share a great chemistry. It still really vibrates and gets us all tickled — except we’re 10 years older now, and we all have canes and crutches that we come in with.”

A sense of humor has always been the backline that’s anchored the music of the Squirrel Nut Zippers. After all, when the members founded the group in 1993, applying a punk-like do-it-yourself aesthetic to early 20th century American popular music, its founders — Jim “Jimbo” Mathus (who’s performed with his band, the Knockdown Society, at Brackins Blues Bar in Maryville on more than one occasion), his then-wife Katharine Whalen, Ken Mosher, Don Raleigh and Phillips — had no idea that, four years later, they would score a modern rock hit.

Formed in the incubative Chapel Hill, N.C., music scene, the band soon was making waves in the Chapel Hill scene, initially being lumped in with the whole neo-Big Band movement that arose from the popularity of groups like Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and the Brian Setzer Orchestra.

However, the Zippers soon proved beyond the ability of most music writers to accurately describe what they do. The members incorporated everything from Delta blues to the Gypsy jazz of Django Reinhardt to the noise-folk of Tom Waits to jazz bandleader Cab Calloway. The group released “The Inevitable” in 1995, which attracted the attention of National Public Radio, and followed it up with “Hot,” released in 1996.

“Hot” contained the hit single “Hell,” which peaked at No. 13 and gained the band an invitation to perform at then-President Bill Clinton’s inaugural ball in January 1997. “Perennial Favorites” followed in 1998 to moderate sales and a warm critical reception, and the band’s last studio album, “Bedlam Ballroom,” was released in 1999.

Lineup changes abounded, and in 2000, after extensive touring and conflicting personalities, the members went their separate ways. Whalen and Mathus divorced, both pursuing solo careers, and Phillips drifted to Los Angeles, finding work in film and with other projects such as The Lamps, which includes members of Jolene, The Connells and The Bangles.

But Phillips missed his old group, and late last year, he decided to call them up.

“It was kind of spur of the moment, but who said it ever had to be over really?” he said. “We got to talking to each other, and we were all kind of surprised that we did want to make music together again. In the end, I guess we got too crazy, because the idea of just taking a break never occurred to us. We were all moping around thinking it was over with.

“So I called Jimbo, and I thought he was going to just laugh me off the phone. But he said, ‘Sure; great, I’m in.’ I called Katharine, and she said the same thing. With the two of them being divorced now, I didn’t know if they would be up to the challenge, but as it turns out, everyone loved being in the band so much, they were able to put everything aside and focus on the Squirrel Nut Zippers.”

Revisiting old material proved challenging at first — not only had the individual members grown as players, Phillips said, but tackling the old material with a fresh eye was a task in and of itself.

“I was a bit nervous at first because I was worried it would sound or feel like a caricature of the past,” he said. “Everyone plays a little bit differently now, and we had to let it be something new, or it would have felt like we were trying to force something. Now, there seems to be more like a rhythm section kind of vibe to it, with more roots and rhythm instead of horn stuff.

“It was important to make it work and to let it breathe and grow. Because we had taken a break, it was like playing cover songs all of the sudden — like I was playing songs I somehow knew but hadn’t heard in so long that they felt very fresh. So it was a good decision, to come in and play the old songs but to make them feel new again.”

The second part of “reanimating the corpse” of the Zippers, as Phillips called it, is looking ahead to the future. With seven years of established solo careers, are the members ready to get back together full-time? Yes and no, he said.

“The idea of doing a recording is totally on the table, but it can’t be going back to 1997,” he said. “Right now, it’ kind of like, let’s get the summer tour through with, and in the fall we’ll get together and see what the new material sounds like and just let it be what it’s going to be. We’re certainly very interested in film and all sorts of creative projects, but we’re not so much interested in being in the van, on the road all the time.

“Everyone is really settled into themselves as musician now — Katharine has grown tremendously as a singer, and Jimbo’s guitar playing is out of this world these days — so getting back together and seeing how it all collides is fantastic. And that’s what it is — a big musical collision. We were kind of clunky and weird, but there was a chemistry that somehow worked. I don’t know how it got successful and stayed successful, but I think it had something to do with the love of playing with each other.

“During our first rehearsals back, it felt the same way,” he added. “We were all overjoyed to find that it’s still there.”