Jim Kweskin, the octogenarian icon of jug band, jazz, blues and folk music, returns today with Doing Things Right, a vibrant 14-track revue released on Jalopy Records. Recorded with The Berlin Hall Saturday Night Revue—a multigenerational ensemble led by producer and bassist Matthew Berlin and featuring five-time Grammy Award-winner Cindy Cashdollar—this new collection melds pre-war jazz, hokum, western swing, folk, blues and New Orleans street rhythms into a singular celebration of American roots music.
Praise for Doing Things Right has poured in across the music press. Mojo Magazine hails it as “a potpourri of Americana by one of its creators working with killer musicians” while No Depression praises its “relentlessly infectious spirit and swing that defies time.” Boston’s WBUR calls it simply “Joyful,” and Wide Open Country declares Kweskin “a national cultural treasure” at age 84. Folk Alley notes how the album “lives up to its title as Jim Kweskin and the Berlin Hall Saturday Night Revue shuffle, strut and swing their way through 14 songs in this jumping collection.”
Kweskin’s enduring influence stretches from the 1960s folk revival—when his Jim Kweskin Jug Band shared bills with Linda Ronstadt and Janis Joplin, appeared on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show and headlined the Newport Folk Festival—to present day, where Bob Dylan name-checks him in Martin Scorsese’s Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story (Netflix) and Timothée Chalamet nods to his music in the Searchlight Pictures film A Complete Unknown. USA Today recently lauded Kweskin as a “superb finger-picking guitarist and dedicated explorer of the arcane.”
The lead single, “Four or Five Times,” a tongue-in-cheek western-swing number first recorded by Byron Sturges in 1927 and sung here by Kweskin with longtime collaborator Matt Leavenworth, debuted this week. Listen and share at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXtzy0V_5Zg
Doing Things Right draws inspiration from Berlin’s grandfather’s 1930s Saturday-night dancehall in Newport News, VA, where string bands blended folk, blues and jazz for eager audiences. Across these fourteen tracks—from the New Orleans mambo of “Mardi Gras Mambo” to Ma Rainey’s “Farewell Daddy Blues,” Samoa Wilson’s haunting take on “I Get the Blues When It Rains” and the sentimental swing of Irving Berlin’s “What’ll I Do”—Kweskin and company revive that variety-show spirit with fresh energy.
A key figure on the album are:
Cindy Cashdollar (five-time Grammy winner), whose slide guitar has graced recordings by Bob Dylan, Asleep at the Wheel, Dave Alvin and more
Samoa Wilson, Kweskin’s niece and a standout in New York’s roots scene, lending vocals to several tracks
Matthew Berlin, producer and bassist, a Boston trad-jazz mainstay and Kweskin collaborator for over three decades
Matt Leavenworth, three-time Boston Music Award-winning fiddler (Mary Gauthier, Peter Wolf)
Racky Thomas, renowned blues vocalist featured on western swing and New Orleans numbers
Annie Linders, St. Louis Blues Society Award-winning trumpeter and leader of Annie & The Fur Trappers
Steve Langone, drummer for John Carter Cash, the Boston Pops and Sesame Street
Track Listing
Four or Five Times (feat. Matt Leavenworth)
Casey ’n Bill
When I Grow Too Old to Dream (feat. Samoa Wilson)
Show Me the Way to Go Home (feat. Racky Thomas)
Sail My Ship Alone
What’ll I Do (feat. Samoa Wilson)
Mardi Gras Mambo (feat. Racky Thomas)
Duck’s Yas Yas (feat. Annie Linders)
Mona Lisa
I Get the Blues When It Rains (feat. Samoa Wilson)
Viper Mad (feat. Samoa Wilson)
We’ll Meet Again (feat. Samoa Wilson & choir)
Farewell Daddy Blues (feat. Samoa Wilson)
Right or Wrong
About Jim Kweskin
A driving force in the 1960s folk revival, Jim Kweskin’s Jug Band helped shape the sound of modern Americana while inspiring bands from The Grateful Dead to the Lovin’ Spoonful. Over a career spanning six decades, Kweskin has championed the arcane traditions of string-band skiffling—reviving jug band, blues and pre-war jazz with an unmistakable flair.
