Name-checked by Bob Dylan in Rolling Thunder Revue and again in the popular Timothée Chalamet film A Complete Unknown, Jim Kweskin is no ordinary torchbearer of American roots music. Once the leader of the boundary-breaking Jim Kweskin Jug Band—which paved the way for acts like the Grateful Dead, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and Lovin’ Spoonful—Kweskin’s legacy is etched into the DNA of the folk revival and beyond.
Now 84, Kweskin allows no grass to grow under his feet. His new album, Doing Things Right (out April 25 via Jalopy Records), finds him collaborating once again with producer/bassist Matthew Berlin (who has worked with Kweskin for over thirty years). Berlin previously spent eight years playing with Howard “Louie Bluie” Armstrong, including during Armstrong’s Country Music Hall of Fame induction and in the film Sweet Old Song. They’re joined by a top-shelf cast, including slide guitar great Cindy Cashdollar. Together, as The Berlin Hall Saturday Night Revue, they conjure a kaleidoscopic mix of jug band jams, folk, jazz, hokum blues, and western swing.
Also featured are his niece Samoa Wilson—whose voice The New York Times calls “sweet, effortless”—three-time Boston Music Award-winning fiddler Matt Leavenworth (Mary Gauthier, Peter Wolf, Doc Watson), renowned blues singer Racky Thomas, St. Louis Blues Society Award-winning trumpeter Annie Linders, and drummer Steve Langone (John Carter Cash, Boston Pops, Sesame Street, Next Stop Wonderland).
With a wink and a shuffle, Jim Kweskin returns not to relive the past, but to reimagine it on Doing Things Right. We’re thrilled to exclusively premiere one of its most jubilant moments: “Mardi Gras Mambo.” Led by the big-hearted vocals of Racky Thomas, the track feels like stepping into a street parade that time forgot. Bridging old-time jazz and zydeco spirit with the textures of pre-war Americana, the genius of Kweskin and company lies in their instinct to treat every track like it’s Saturday night on the second floor of a family-run dry goods store in the 1930s (a vision inspired by Berlin’s grandfather, who once ran a dancehall).
Thomas sums it up best:
Just like a gumbo, the mambo is originally a dance music of Afro-Cuban origin with syncopated rhythm. Add a little N’awlins hot sauce and you’ve got a Mardi Gras Mambo!
Before streaming and samples, string bands were the soundtrack of everyday life—playing bars, clubs, and community halls across the South. These roaming “skifflers” had to know it all, from blues to beer hall tunes, ready to perform whatever the crowd called for. Doing Things Right picks up that thread; it’s a modern tribute to a tradition that once brought the first true playlists to life.
