Jim Kweskin is the founder of the legendary 1960s Jim Kweskin Jug Band with Fritz Richmond, Geoff Muldaur, Maria Muldaur, Mel Lyman and Bruno Wolfe. During the five years they were together, they successfully transformed the sounds of pre-World War II rural music into a springboard for their good-humored performances. Their imitators were legion, including a San Francisco jug band that became the Grateful Dead, a Los Angeles jug band that became the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and a New York jug band that became the Lovin’ Spoonful. No other group attained their unique blend of youthful energy and antiquarian expertise, tight musicianship, loose camaraderie, and infectious swing.
These days Jim is best known as a singer and bandleader, but he also created one of the bedrock guitar styles of the folk revival, adapting the ragtime-blues finger picking of artists like Mississippi John Hurt and Pink Anderson to the more complex chords of pop and jazz. He continues to explore traditional folk and blues with the sophisticated sensibility of a jazz musician, and jazz with the communal simplicity of a folk artist.
Happy Traum was smitten by American folk music and began playing guitar and 5-string banjo as a teenager. He was an active participant of the legendary Washington Square/Greenwich Village folk scene of the 1950s and ’60s, and studied guitar with the famed blues master, Brownie McGhee. A first-rate finger-style guitarist and singer, he has performed throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia and Japan, both as a soloist and as a member of various groups. His avid interest in traditional and contemporary folk music has brought him recognition as a performer, writer, editor, session musician, teacher and recording artist.
Happy and his late brother, Artie, performed together for many years, a duet that, according to Rolling Stone, “defined the Northeast folk music style.”
Happy has written more than a dozen important instruction books which document the playing of the great traditional guitarists. He has also released several instructional videos.
Tickets $25 Advance / $30 Day of Show
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