Search - Jim Kweskin :: Garden of Joy: Jim Kweskin's America

Kweskin's finest

bgandl | Detroit | 12/31/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"For Garden of Joy, Kweskin fleshed out his simple jugband sound with stellar jazz/folk violinist Richard Greene and Bill Keith (later of Neil Young's Stray Gators). The result swings to high heaven and is reminiscent of Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks' "Last Train to Hicksville (Home of Happy Feet)" a few years later. Easily his most sophisticated and jazzy album. I bought my cd version for $50 from Japan...and it was worth that price. Play it for your unititated friends...the sheer goofy joy of this music will force a smile on any face!"

What a find!

Linwood I. Greer | Richmond, VA USA | 03/22/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Stumbling across this set was magical for a number of reasons. Every few months, I would check the internet music sites for a reissue of Kweskin's "America" and it never showed up until... Likewise, for years, I had been trying to remember where I first heard "Minglewood (Blues)" and "If You're a Viper". Ka-Ching! So many wishes granted in one package. Two sides of one of the most estoteric musicians of the sixties and both wonderful. Someone make a movie on the life of Gus Cannon and maybe we'll have a brief rebirth of jug band music up in here."

What a welcome rediscovery!

Alexander P. Simack | Avoca, IN United States | 01/16/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I'm referring to Jim Kweskin's America, which I had feared I would not hear again for many a year. My old lp and tapes are lost, and this is the first reissue I've seen. What deep healing music!



It's an odd repackaging. The old Jim Kweskin before the reborn man, quite a contrast to say the least. The old Jim sings on Garden of JOy, the new man on America.



I don't believe America is for the casual listener, unless he's ready for quite a deep transformation. "Are they all 'in the Spirit'?" my new wife asked me when I recently played it for the two of us. Afterwards she announced herself totally healed of a deep malaise she'd been suffering. I heard it anew myself. It always sounds different to me. Sometimes my thoughts will come crowding in and the "old-timey" music seems suddently far away, and I feel guilty. But I relax and open up again and it's as powerful as ever. It's the saddest, most joyful, far-ranging, profoundest music of America ever sung. Unbelievable that it hasn't reached a larger audience -- but then, maybe it has and people still don't know how to talk about it."