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This Issue 01/19/2006

Also in this issue

• Street beats
• Rocking to his own tune
• Quick kaiseki kick
• Scary new world

It's Tuesday night at Smokey Joe's, and 53-year-old Kenn Kweder is ready to rock.

"Hey, you motherfuckers!" he shouts to a mass of Penn students. Around 100 upperclassmen have flanked the graffitied wooden tables of the popular campus bar for drinks and the weekly musical attraction.

Kweder wears all black: black Levi's, black button-down shirt, black shoes, sometimes a crushed velvet jacket.

As the show begins, students are involved in their own conversations, but as the alcohol flows, Kweder's contagious energy, wild gesticulation and screeching voice drive sloppy twentysomethings shrugging off schoolwork to their feet. Even the students sitting in the pleather booths nod their heads in time to the music.

"What goes on at Smokey Joe's is one of my favorite things," Kweder says. "There's some sort of reciprocity that goes on, a visible energy exchange. And people screaming at you.

Known as the "Mayor of South Street" in the 1970s by fans and critics, the southwest Philly native now lives in the Fishtown neighborhood near Center City. He navigates through Reading Terminal on a brisk Friday afternoon, hailing old friends and highlighting favorite stands. Kweder is taking time from a day normally filled by answering phones, booking his own gigs and updating his website. Glancing at his rosy cheeks and cherubic smile, it's difficult to imagine that he is notorious for his foul-mouthed stage persona. After choosing a relatively quiet spot near the bar of the Reading Terminal eatery, Beer Garden, Kweder rolls up the sleeves of his black corduroy shirt and pushes his dark sunglasses back, revealing electric, aquamarine eyes eager to impress a captive audience with tales of hedonism and music.

Kweder has produced six albums over the past two decades, the most recent of which, 2002's Kwederology Volumes I and II, made number 56 on Philadelphia Weekly's list of the "100 Best Philly Albums of All Time." The guitarist, vocalist, producer, manager, bartender and madman has been playing in Philadelphia for over three decades and off and on at Smokes' for 20 years. During his career, he has opened for Blue Oyster Cult, Cheap Trick and Elvis Costello and even headlined with the Ramones. Rolling Stone Senior Editor David Fricke, a Philly native, once praised Kweder's music as "songs of love, wanderlust and fleeting sanity," but to his devout following of Penn students, Kweder is best known for his Tuesday night performances.

Growing up, Kweder wanted to escape his working-class neighborhood, which to him felt uninspired and empty. By the age of 16, he traded childish dreams of the NBA for music.

"As much energy as I put into basketball, I put into guitar. I had a completely irrational desire to become world famous," he says.