Zip City

Mike Cooley wrote it, one of five of his on Southern Rock Opera, and it was never a single. Zip City is an unincorporated community in Lauderdale County, Alabama, in the Florence and Muscle Shoals area; per Wikipedia the name dates from the 1920s, from drivers zipping through toward the Tennessee line to buy alcohol. The Houston Press called the song Cooley's tongue-in-cheek tribute to Muscle Shoals, the Charleston City Paper a warts-and-all tale of underage lust and small-town politics with a deacon father whose secrets are wrapped in Reynolds Wrap, and Americana UK a raucous twin-guitar affirmation of Southern life with the usual Cooley sardonic cynicism. PopMatters' Josh Langhoff found it a rote cad's chronicle lacking a hook, though among the better character studies.

Setlist.fm's Cooley page lists it at 45 performances, rank 20, a Cooley count and not a band-wide one. A taper recorded an acoustic version at Stephen's Talkhouse in Amagansett, New York on July 18, 2007 on the Dirt Underneath tour. We found no statement from the band about the song and no covers or samples, and cannot say whether our upload is the studio track or a live recording.