Folk; Jim Kweskin and Co. catch the spirit with jug band
DANIEL GEWERTZ
* 02/26/99
Boston Herald
(Copyright 1999)
Jug band legend Jim Kweskin has a new band, yet he has hired
neither a booking agent nor a publicist, and there's no immediate
plans to record. Tomorrow's gig at Club Passim will be only one of a
handful of dates this year for Jim Kweskin & Samoa with the Swinging
Tenants.
"Music is not what I do for a living," said Kweskin this week from
his commune home in the Fort Hill section of Roxbury. "I'm in the
construction business. I mostly play music just for fun, on nights
and weekends."
The new band explores the old-time music for which Kweskin is
known: vivid versions of pop, country, blues, swing and jug band
songs from the 1920s through the '50s, from Mance Liscomb to Duke
Ellington, Bessie Smith to Julie London. The Kweskin Jug Band of the
'60s brought Maria Muldaur to prominence. The new band showcases
another young female vocalist, Samoa, "an incredible singer," Kweskin
said. Samoa has been living at the Fort Hill commune since she was a
baby.
The commune was once a public part of Boston life, publishing the
city's first "underground" weekly paper, the Avatar, in the late
'60s. At the center of the group was the late Mel Lyman, onetime
harmonica player with the Kweskin Jug Band.
"We were inaccurately called a cult. The word cult has an extreme
connotation, and it has absolutely nothing to do with my life," said
Kweskin. "Mel Lyman was an inspirational person who many people
loved and gathered around."
Though long out of the public eye, the Fort Hill group never
disbanded, and now, in fact, exists in several locations: There are
outposts in Los Angeles and New York City, and a farm in Kansas.
"We're an extended family and the construction business has grown,
too," said Kweskin, 58. "We were just voted the No. 1 residential
contractor in Southern California."
Kweskin claims the commune has no religious base, and the only
connection it has to his music is a group spirit. "For my own
personal well-being and happiness, I choose to live in a large group,
and my favorite thing in life is to gather a large group of good
musicians around me."
The Swinging Tenants are mandolinist Bruce Millard, pianist Leo
Blanco, bassist Matt Berlin, guitarist Titus Vollmer, drummer Paloma
Ohm and harmonica player Geordie Gude, another child of the Fort Hill
family.
The vivacious, soulful music that Kweskin has always played first
came into his life 50 years ago. "My father had an antiques store in
Connecticut, and there were old 78s of Bessie Smith, Jelly Roll
Morton and Fats Waller that I fell in love with at a very early age,"
he said. "It was only in the '60s that I found out all those songs
could be played by a jug band."
After dropping out of Boston University, Kweskin traveled the
country, hooking up with other young unknowns such as Paul
Butterfield in Chicago and Spider John Koerner in Minnesota.
"In 1963, I was back in Cambridge, jamming with lots of folks at
the Club 47," said Kweskin. "Maynard Soloman of Vanguard wanted to
make a record with the `band' he heard one night, and I told him:
`That's not a band. But if you give me three months, I'll get one.'
" The Kweskin Jug Band, with Geoff & Maria Muldaur, Richard Greene,
Fritz Richmond and Bill Keith, became perhaps the most influential
folk band of the 1960s.
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