Hillside Echoes presents Jim Kweskin & Samoa Wilson featuring Suzy Thompson

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.

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 fingerpicking of artists like Mississippi John Hurt and Pink Anderson to the more complex chords of pop and jazz. He has maintained a remarkably consistent musical vision since his jug band days, continuing to explore traditional folk and blues with the sophisticated sensibility of a jazz musician, and jazz with the communal simplicity of a folk artist.

Since she was 12 years old, Samoa Wilson has been captivating audiences with a voice the New York Times calls “sweet, effortless, old-timey”. Raised in the riverbed of traditional North American folk music, she came up in the Boston scene, under the wing of jug band and folk legend Jim Kweskin. Her two duos, the Four O’Clock Flowers, and Fatboy Wilson & Old Viejo Bones, have become staples of the thriving New York City folk community. Additionally, her vintage jazz trio has been filling ears with material from the golden era of 20's and 30's musical treasure; a sound at once more bluesy and more contemporary than expected. Her choice of repertoire makes the difference: torchy and honeyed renditions of haunting little-known tunes, from a woman’s perspective. From the source of the traditional and classic material, she poses a modern complaint, salutes the transformation of women’s work and suffering into women’s triumph.

Suzy Thompson has an unusually deep mastery of the whole gamut of Southern old-time music, from prewar acoustic blues to Louisiana Cajun-Creole to old-time fiddle tunes, especially the kind that have a ragtime or blues feel. Over the past three decades, Suzy has been a leading force in many influential roots music groups, including the California Cajun Orchestra (two award-winning CDs on the Arhoolie label), the Blue Flame String Band (with Kate Brislin and Alan Senauke), Klezmorim (who started the klezmer music revival in the 1970’s), the all-woman Any Old Time String Band (featured on the Grammy-winning Arhoolie box set), and most recently, the Bluegrass Intentions (with banjo ace Bill Evans.) She has also worked with Darol Anger, Laurie Lewis, Beausoleil, Peter Rowan, Maria Muldaur, Jody Stecher, Del Rey, Geoff Muldaur, Alice Gerrard, D.L. Menard, Jane Voss, Rinde Eckert, the Savoy-Doucet Cajun Band, Sukay, and Frankie Armstrong, among others.

Suzy currently records and performs in a duet with her longtime musical partner, reknowned flatpicker Eric Thompson, with Thompsonia (Suzy, Eric and Allegra Thompson), with the Aux Cajunals (a Cajun band, in which Suzy plays Cajun accordion and fiddle), in a duet with resonator guitar goddess Del Rey, and with Eric in the Todalo Shakers. She often collaborates with other musicians including Mary Flower; Jim Kweskin; Craig Ventresco and Meredith Axelrod; Geoff Muldaur; Foghorn Stringband; and Laurie Lewis.

General Admission: $30

Students and Seniors: $25

Hillside Club Members: $20 with a promo code. If you need the code contact Ellen at [email protected]

Children under 12 are admitted for free.

Host or Publisher Hillside Echoes