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Kingston Trio who had comic routines and they would tell the same jokes and the same stories and everything was always the same. We weren’t like that. We did routines, but every one was improvised. We didn’t repeat the routines… we never knew what we were going to do from one show to the next.”
“To me, a great band is a band that’s tight but loose. We rehearsed a lot, over and over, ’til we got the arrangements down, so by the time we got on stage we could be loose. We weren’t wor- ried about whether we were going to hit the right note because everybody knew their part, everybody had it down, so we could just have fun with it and that’s the way The Jug Band was. We were seri- ous musicians and musicianship, arrangements, and quality was very important to us. At the same time, we weren’t pretentious; we did- n’t take ourselves too seriously. It was like we were out there, we entertained, have people enjoy us. We wanted people to love our music and in so doing, love us too. Isn’t that why all people are up on stage performing? It’s because you want people to like what you’re doing. We were funny on stage, we would do funny songs and arrangements, but not too corny. One time Spike Jones came to see the jug band and he hated it. We weren’t funny or corny enough. But Duke Ellington came to see the jug band and he loved us. If you’re going to have one person like you and one person hate you, couldn’t you ask for better than Spike Jones not liking you and Duke Ellington loving you!”
microphones to get the balance, so that part was hard. Towards the end, we were getting on stages, like the big ballrooms in San Fran- cisco, where the opening act was The Doors and they were so loud that by the time we came up, people couldn’t even hear. A lot of these kids that later become huge were just getting started, like Janis Joplin with Big Brother or Linda Ronstadt with the Stone Ponies. So they would be our opening act but they were very loud, all-electric rock bands and we were just acoustic guitars and har- monicas and kazoos. So sometimes there were certain elements of it that were difficult… but not being on the road. I never found being on the road difficult. I loved it. First four years, ’63 to ’67, were great. The last year, ’68, I got tired of it. I felt like we were starting to repeat ourselves and I didn’t want to live that way any more. So I decided to do something else to make my living and play music when I wanted to, where I wanted to, with whom I wanted to… and that’s the way it’s been ever since.”
“T “A lot of people think that I left music alone for a while, but
that’s not true. First of all, I live in this large group of people. We all started together, it was a gathering, people gathered around Mel Lyman, it was just the kind of person he was, and that just grew. We had more than 20 kids all growing up together, so I was teaching them, doing music with them, plus I was still going out and doing gigs. We had our own family band that travelled and did a bunch of gigs in the mid-’80s.”
“Some of the kids who grew up in our family became profes- sional singers and musicians. I’ve gone out and performed with them. I’ve never stopped performing. I’ve continued making albums from the ’70s right up to now. So I never gave it up, I just cut back. Then, over the last two or three years, I just decided to jump in and do a little bit more than I have been, just because I still can and while it’s still fun. I’m 75, so I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be able to do it. We’ve already lost a lot of our musicians. Bruno Wolf just disappeared. I’ve asked a lot of people and nobody has any idea. I would not be surprised if he’s no longer alive because I know he had a drug problem at one point. Fritz has gone, Mel’s gone, Bill Keith’s gone. Geoff and Maria are still around, and Richard Green’s still alive… and I’m still here.”
Fifty years after its inception, Jim Kweskin & The Jug Band took to the road again for a celebratory tour. “I realised in 2012 that the next year was going to be the 50th anniversary, so I instigated it, a reunion. 2013 was great, I mean, there were like four mini-tours. We went to the East Coast, went to the West Coast, went to Japan and then went back to the East Coast again. And it ended up at Sympho- ny Hall with Tom Rush. It was great. I’d be happy to play the UK with The Jug Band but somebody’d have to pay a lot of money. This band is not cheap.”
Jim Kweskin’s Unjugged album for Hornbeam Records is due for release spring 2017.
www.hornbeamrecordings.com
F
ouring was always fun to me. We had our diffi- culties, like getting a good sound system. A lot of times you go to a place and the sound was terri- ble and the sound guy didn’t know what the hell he was doing. It was an acoustic band… you need
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