18-TRACK ALBUM A SONGSTER’S JOURNEY, OUT NOV. 20 VIA JALOPY RECORDS, FEATURES SONGS MADE FAMOUS BY DUKE ELLINGTON, ERNEST TUBB, JELLY ROLL MORTON, WILLIE NELSON, KENNY ROGERS, HANK WILLIAMS, ELVIS PRESLEY, BOB DYLAN & GLENN MILLER
“Music with a relentlessly infectious spirit and swing that defies time… bursting with joy and vitality.”
—No Depression
“Jim Kweskin should be declared a national cultural treasure.”
—Wide Open Country
“Superb finger-picking guitarist and dedicated explorer of the arcane.”
—USA Today
Following his 2025 long-form NPR interview and a MOJO profile, the legendary Jim Kweskin, at 86 years of age, has announced a new album, A Songster’s Journey. Delivering his toe-tapping blend of folk, western swing, and early jazz, it finds him performing some of his most beloved concert material, including songs made famous by Duke Ellington, Ernest Tubb, Jelly Roll Morton, Willie Nelson, Kenny Rogers, Hank Williams, Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, and Glenn Miller. The album features five-time GRAMMY Award-winning pedal steel player Cindy Cashdollar and was produced by bassist Matthew Berlin (Howard “Louie Bluie” Armstrong). The delightful album comes out November 20 on Jalopy Records via CD and digital release. He has also shared northeast tour dates.
This week, he shared the single “Would You Like To Play The Guitar,” a tongue-in-cheek parody sung to the tune of Bing Crosby’s iconic “Swinging on a Star” that delves into the absurdities of life as a gigging musician. It showcases Jim’s masterful fingerstyle acoustic guitar work.
Hear/share “Would You Like To Play The Guitar” here.
Read Kweskin’s detailed liner notes here.
Watch/share performance video of “Would You Like To Play The Guitar” here.
The album title refers to the Songster tradition of early 20th-century performers who were versed in a wide variety of styles. In the liner notes, Kweskin writes, “They sang it all: whatever song suited them, whatever people wanted to hear. That’s always been my thing, even back in the ’60s with my first band, the Jim Kweskin Jug Band… It is difficult to categorize this collection. It is as varied as the many cultures and traditions from which the material is sourced. The wellsprings are deep: blues, ballads, ragtime, old time, country, dance tunes, jug band, mid-nineteenth century minstrel songs, pop tunes of the day, gospel, string band music, are just a small part of this fantastically rich heritage. This project is not just to keep these great old songs going, but, hopefully, to give them new life.” Instead of covering songs, Jim calls it “recovering” songs, bringing the historic diversity of American popular and vernacular music to successive generations of fans.
Accordingly, there were two sessions with separate groups backing Kweskin: one of jazz players, including Dennis Lichtman (Jerron Paxton, David Byrne, Kronos Quartet), and another with a folk/country group, including GRAMMY-winning Dobro and pedal steel player Cindy Cashdollar and fiddle player Suzy Thompson (Maria Muldaur, Dave Alvin, Alice Gerrard).
Album highlights include a swinging version of the Hank Williams top-ten hit “Mind Your Own Business,” replete with interplaying piano, fiddle, clarinet, and trombone that ends in a full front line. Kweskin adds a new verse that reflects life in 21st-century America. Released exactly a century after Jelly Roll Morton’s original 1926 version, Kweskin’s hot uptempo rendition of “Dr. Jazz” finds him fronting a full New Orleans-style jazz band with horns, piano, and banjo.
“Dig My Grave” comes from the Bahamian music tradition, learned from a Folkways Records LP, with a guitar part inspired by Joseph Spence. Kweskin tackles “The Gambler” with a gang singing the way an audience would in concert, accompanied by Cajun-style fiddle. “Never Let Me Go” was originally recorded by Johnny Ace in 1953. Kweskin performs his arrangement of the Lightnin’ Hopkins gospel song “Needed Time.” Singer and longtime Kweskin collaborator Samoa Wilson joins on the beautiful traditional religious Mexican song “Culpable Soy (Noche Serena).” Willie Nelson’s “Still Not Dead” closes the album with Kweskin’s sense of humor intact.
Of the single “Would You Like To Play The Guitar,” Kweskin writes in the liner notes, “‘Would You Like to Play the Guitar’ is a song that I have played in concert for years and never recorded. The melody is from a Bing Crosby hit ‘Swing on a Star’ from the movie Going My Way, which won the Academy Award for Best Song in 1944. I fell in love with this version the first time I heard it. The words were written by Pat Donohue, a great musician, guitar player, songwriter, and entertainer. I changed it a little, like I usually do. Everybody who sings a song invariably changes it to make it their own. Pete Seeger calls it ‘the folk process.’”
A key figure in the 1960s folk revival, leading the Jim Kweskin Jug Band. They performed at shows where Linda Ronstadt and Janis Joplin were Kweskin’s openers as well as multiple national network TV appearances (they had Johnny Carson playing kazoo with them) and the original Newport Folk Festival five years in a row (1964-68). Kweskin prompted the NY Times to quote rock historian Ed Ward, placing “the Kweskin Band alongside the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Byrds as that period’s most influential groups.” The Kweskin Jug Band directly spawned bands such as The Grateful Dead, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Lovin’ Spoonful, and many more. The legendary 1960s Jim Kweskin Jug Band with Fritz Richmond, Geoff Muldaur, Maria Muldaur, Mel Lyman, and Bruno Wolfe transformed the sounds of pre-WWII rural music into a springboard for their good-humored performances.
Jim Kweskin Tour Dates
October 23 – Cambridge, MA – Club Passim
November 19 – Saugerties, NY – The Local
November 20 – Williamsville, NY – The Meeting House
November 21 – Rochester, NY – Golden Link Folk Society at Greece Baptist Church
November 28 – Brooklyn, NY – Jalopy Theatre
January 23 – Franklin, MA – Circle of Friends Coffee House
Jim Kweskin — A Songster’s Journey Track Listing
Would You Like to Play The Guitar (Pat Donohue)
Just Because (Joe Shelton, Sydney Robin, Bob Shelton)
Dig My Grave (Traditional)
Mind Your Own Business (Hank Williams, additional lyrics Jim Kweskin)
Right Now Blues (Frank Stokes)
I’m Beginning To See The Light (Duke Ellington, Johnny Hodges and Don George, Arranged by Joseph “Sonny” Barbato)
The Moonshiner (Traditional)
I Love You Just Because (Leon Payne)
Chattanooga Choo Choo (Mack Gordon and Harry Warren, arranged by Dennis Lichtman)
The Gambler (Don Schlitz)
Dr Jazz-Stomp (Joe ‘King’ Oliver and Walter Melrose, arranged by Dennis Lichtman)
Bye Bye Blackbird (Ray Henderson and Mort Dixon)
Never Let Me Go (Joseph Scott)
The Glory Of Love (Billy Hill)
Mary Of The Wild Moor (Traditional)
Culpable Soy (Noche Serena) (Traditional, arranged by Leo Blanco)
Needed Time (Traditional, additional lyrics Jim Kweskin)
Still Not Dead (Willie Nelson and Buddy Cannon, additional lyrics Jim Kweskin)
