It’s a quarter to midnight at a half–empty Smokey Joe’s, Penn’s go–to campus bar. For the third time of the night, Kenn Kweder is performing “Heroin”—a bizarre anthem that has outlived the rest of his extensive discography. The song’s plot, like the 75–year–old rockstar, is a bit hard to decipher.
Kweder, slashing at his guitar strings with increased intensity this time around, is singing nonsensically about receiving a prescription for heroin by his drug–pushing doctor. Shooting up, as the repeated chorus makes addictively clear, is supposedly the “only way” for Kweder to feel the love of a failed romantic interest again.
The crowd, though light, is emblematic of a usual Thursday night at Smokes’. Student–athletes drink a few to cope with the wear and tear to their bodies. Classic Ivy League overachiever types, who have been programmed to go from A to B their whole life, finally learn to live a little. Top sorority girls. Single men trying (and failing) to get the attention of said top sorority girls. And don’t forget the Smokes’ regulars—a mix of restaurant workers who just got off their shifts and middle–aged blue collar men avoiding their families.
Even with such an eclectic group, they have a few things in common. They’re drunk, and they know every single word to “Heroin.”
“Heroin, Heroin, Heroin—It is the only way!”
Kweder’s 34–year–old residency at Smokes’ is what younger generations know him for now, but the artist has been a mainstay in Philadelphia since the late 1970s. Most notably, he was the frontman of The Secret Kidds, a band that took the city by storm, opening up for the likes of the Ramones and Patti Smith. The Bard of South Street, as he became known, pushed the group to cult stardom in the punk–rock scene through his large personality and onstage antics. It was his second attempt to make it big after the same stunts killed his first love—folk music.
“I was coming out with firecrackers and whips and shit,” Kweder said. “I thought that was going to change the scene. And I got banned, like lifetime banned, from the folk community.”
The rocker has some choice words for Philly’s folk scene to this day.
“They were fascist,” he added. “If you move to the left or the right, all of a sudden, they get angry. I was very creative. I was extremely creative. They should have embraced that.”
Today, Kweder’s antics have outlived many of his original critics. Whether at Smokes’ or one of his other gigs, Kweder still pulls out all the stops to get an audience’s attention—one that he admits has dwindled from generation to generation. He regularly comes to shows with a money gun, shooting fake $100 dollar bills into the crowd. He is known to shout obscenities at the audience, urging them to sing along. The stuntman gives out an impressive amount of merchandise at his shows—from Kweder pins to Kweder stickers to a silver Kweder coin, it’s hard to find something he hasn’t stuck his face onto.
“I used to do a lot of drugs,” Kweder said. “One day, I just stopped. I said, ‘All the money I put in the drugs, I can just put into the stickers.’ They stick around. You get on drugs one night, and then it’s done. The stickers, they stick around. The coin, that’s gonna outlast me.”
If all he had to do was sing and shock audiences, Kweder would continue at his extraordinary pace—which sees him perform an average of 300 shows a year. However, performing makes up just a fraction of his work. Despite a lifetime in the city, the majority of Kweder’s time is devoted to convincing a new generation of bar owners, many of whom prefer a DJ to live music, to let him sing. Running a mostly one–man–show, this aspect of his life has become increasingly stressful and time–consuming at his age.
“I’m just getting tired of that hustle. I love doing what I’m doing, but I mean, I’m pretty old,” Kweder said. “It takes a lot of energy to be really involved in the hustle.”
Last year, he played 262 shows. Next year, he wants to cut that number in half—which he sees as a “retirement.” From there, he is looking to continue slowing down, something he hasn’t done in decades. Frequent collaborator Mark Teague, who has played alongside Kweder at Smokes’ since 1991, doesn’t believe him.
“I’ve gotten to really know [Kweder] over the last 30 years; he’s not the kind of person that can sit still, relax, and watch a TV show. That’s just not Kenn,” Teague said. “He’s up in the morning. He’s out walking around. He’s out going to see people. He’s going to try and find new places to play. He does it all day long. He never stops.”
“He’s not the relaxing type,” he adds. “I don’t think it's gonna happen.”
***
Still, Kweder’s grand persona is not confined to the stage.
He tells stories—ones he’s told countless others before you—with a contagious sense of excitement as though he doesn’t know what word is going to come out of his mouth next. Sometimes he doesn’t. He switches quickly from topic to topic, jumbling decades–old stories. One moment he’s talking about how the Philadelphia mob is misunderstood, then he’s claiming to have discovered a young Taylor Swift while hungover at a coffee shop down the shore. You think he’s moved on, and he’ll suddenly remember an obscure detail about one of his “25 different rock bands” he just told you about—like the one in the ’80s that played exclusively for Philly’s top coke dealers.
Other times, you’ll think you know where a conversation is going, and then Kweder will throw a wrench in it. For example, when explaining a new vinyl pressing he was working on, the conversation fell into his admiration for artificial intelligence.
“I’m thinking about putting out either a double or triple vinyl album of newer Kweder stuff plus older Kweder stuff—done by AI,” Kweder said. “You won’t know which is which. It’s like a whimsical thing of life—sounds hilarious, but it’s gonna cost me the money, but it’s okay. I don’t care. I don’t give a flying fuck about money.”
Now why would Kweder, who has found decades of joy writing and playing his own music, give the reins over to the robots?
He explains it for himself: “Since a lot of people in real life have not yet discovered me, I think AI has discovered me. That sounds weird, but I know AI doesn’t have a conscience … It’s not aware of itself. To me, it’s a whimsical thing. I know AI is probably a bit of sorcery. I believe that, but at the same time, theoretically, let’s say it is like The Devil. I’m going to use The Devil for my benefit.”
In another way, Kweder’s embrace of AI is akin to his onstage extracurriculars that got him into trouble again and again. For one, it’s just as abrasive. Recently, he unveiled "AI Kweder,” who sang alongside him during a gig on South Street. Kweder claims a few of the bar–goers took offense to his new duet companion, telling the rockstar they found anything AI to be a disgrace to human creativity.
Kweder, who still had a few hours left in his performance, responded, “Well, you got to fucking live with me now!”
For the most part though, Kweder is open to listening to his audience—which he refers to as his “oxygen.” Kweder takes a lot of pride in the “fluid experience” of his performances, where taking requests ensures that he never plays the same show twice. The septuagenarian, although usually playing a medley of classic rock hits, generally has his finger on the pulse of what music young bar–goers want to listen to. One of his favorite new age punkers to play is Avril Lavigne. Contrastly, he also knows his fair share of Justin Bieber. A lot of these songs, Kweder admits, he learned from Teague.
“Kenny’s pretty much stayed in his realm of doing the folk rock stuff, but he’s learned a lot of stuff since playing with me,” Teague said. “He’s taken some stuff that I do and actually learned it for when he does other gigs without me. So together, we know a lot of music.”
But, of course, Kweder does have a few tricks up his own sleeve. During a solo performance at the New Deck Tavern, celebrating the Irish pub’s 40th anniversary, he surprised audiences with a few anthems from Northern Ireland. After running out of protest songs, he noticed a few toddlers sitting with their parents. To their delight, the “Heroin” singer played a rather raspy rendition of “Baby Shark.”
“When we started planning the anniversary party last month, the first thing we thought about was music,” New Deck owner Mary Funchion said. “Kenn Kweder was the first person we called. Having him there for our 40th celebration felt like having a piece of Philadelphia history in the room.”
***
Kweder’s story is not without its few hitches. In fact, his grand personality may have turned away as many people as it’s captivated.
After first making it big in the city, a now–infamous television interview turned him into a leper. After being embraced by the punk rockers on South Street, Kweder told a reporter that punk bassists “don’t really know how to play guitar.”
The comment stemmed from Kweder’s belief that he was unfairly labeled a punk rocker because of his over–the–top stunts and emotional playing style. At that point in time, he still saw himself as a folk artist despite being blackballed by the city’s scene. Even though the quote may seem benign in comparison to that of the social media age, it did a lot more than just rub some punkers the wrong way.
“They call this thing the cancel culture,” Kweder said. “I was the fucking original canceled motherfucker in Philadelphia … I walked down the street, and people wanted to kill me.”
As Kweder puts it, he went from being “the hero of Philadelphia” to having the “whole city against” him in 24 hours. Just as the folk artists had banded together to ensure Kweder couldn’t book a gig on their stomping grounds, the punk rockers responded accordingly. Suddenly, at 33 years old, the rockstar couldn’t find any work in the city that once embraced him. So, he left.
With no prospects in Philadelphia, the dejected rockstar briefly moved to England in hopes of making it big overseas. He lived in a Buckinghamshire cottage with Tony Bidgood, a Philadelphia bartender turned talent manager. Bidgood had found previous success managing The Stray Cats but was no longer with the group. The American band, fronted by Brian Setzer, cultivated a large audience in England after failing to do so in the States. Kweder hoped to follow in the band’s footsteps, but his efforts were to no avail. After 11 months in England and a few drinks with Stray Cats’ drummer “Slim” Jim Phantom, Kweder returned to Philadelphia.
Although he failed to launch a career in England, the time away did have its advantages. For one, it seemed that Philadelphia had missed Kweder. The same punk rockers who rallied against him in the years prior to his departure embraced Kweder upon his return—to his surprise.
“And then I come back here, and everyone wants to see me—like they forgot whatever the fuck happened,” Kweder said.
Time didn’t heal all wounds, though. A small sect of old punk rockers, spurned by Kweder’s past comments and still dressed head–to–toe in leather, have it out for him to this day.
In the mid–1990s, Kweder was asked to perform at a funeral for a Philly punk artist who had recently passed away. Although still having a rocky relationship with the community, Kweder obliged. After a week of rehearsing, the day came. Flowers, eulogies, teary eyes, the whole nine yards. He was booed off the stage by a few grudge–holding punkers.
“How many guys do you know that got booed at a funeral? I’m going to put that on a new sticker,” Kweder cracked.
***
Out of all the different communities Kweder has played for and interacted with, one will always stick out: Penn students.
After his short stint in England and a few years back in Philadelphia, Kweder found himself completely detached from music following the death of his friend Billy Schied. He was just 44.
Growing up in southwest Philadelphia, Kweder had clung to the older Schied, as he was the only other person in the neighborhood writing music—making him an “alien” in the neighborhood. Schied taught Kweder the basics of songwriting, and his untimely death shook the rockstar to his core. So he left the music scene in its entirety.
With music seemingly behind him, Kweder began bartending at the Palladium—a bar that was located in the heart of Penn’s campus at 36th Street and Locust Walk. The bar, now the site of Penn’s cultural resource centers, was conveniently across from one of the University’s top fraternities: Psi Upsilon, better known as “Castle” due to the house’s medieval appearance. Because of its placement, the Palladium was a popular pregame spot for frat parties and was readily overrun on the weekends. Kweder, who became increasingly resigned due to his repeated failures and Schied’s death, found unlikely inspiration from drunk college students who stumbled in.
“I was coming face–to–face with young people who had yet to become cynical and wanted to do things,” Kweder said. “It reignited me.”
“All these [other] people I was hanging out with, all of us had failed at some point,” he added. “Novelists, comedians, poets. I was one of those guys. We would have to sit and drink to commiserate.”
Then, Smokes’ came knocking. Kweder had been previously banned from the Penn staple in the late ’70s for—well, he’s not entirely sure because he was high. But he was banned nonetheless. However, during his visits to the Palladium, Smokes’ owner Paul Ryan saw how engrained the then–retired rockstar had become with the Penn students. Ryan offered Kweder the chance to return to playing at Smokes’. He hasn’t left since.
“I have a great amount of gratitude on a cellular level to the Penn community. … I got this job [at Smokes’], and I could see there‘s a different world out there,” Kweder said. “These [Penn students], they want to do something. I always wanted to do something, but I had some obstacles. It was really like—I always say getting ‘oxygen.’”
The appreciation goes both ways.
Alex Ross (C ’24) became a huge fan of Kweder during his time in college. On multiple occasions, Ross booked the rockstar to perform at his frat, Sigma Alpha Mu. Kweder was there to ring in Ross’ 21st birthday and to supply the soundtrack to his last night out before graduating. Last fall, the two got to reconnect when Kweder was invited to play at the Penn Club of New York—a swanky, members–only club for the Ivy’s alumni located in midtown Manhattan.
“We spoke to some of my friends’ parents who had [went to Penn] and remembered him being there, even all the way back … Everyone just loves this guy,” Ross said. “He’s got crazy songs about crazy stuff. He’s very unique. He’s his own guy.”
Added Alan Cherches (W ’26), a Smokes’ bouncer: “Kweder just kind of holds everything together. He is an older guy with a young soul. If we’re all working there until 2 a.m. and it’s a Thursday night, Kweder’s showing up. The time flies so fast because we’re just jamming out.”
For Kweder, it seems to be the people that are making it the hardest to retire. At the New Deck’s 40th anniversary celebration, the Bard of South Street was greeted by a flux of familiar faces who returned for the event: a few reporters who had previously written about his famous antics, some “movers and shakers” from the ’80s and ’90s, bar owners who he had hounded to let him play, and finally some old Penn alumni who made the trip back to see their favorite rockstar from college. Some brought their children. Seeing them all together brought him to tears.
“I want to be part of the brand new parts of these copyrights of happiness,” Kweder said. “You know, I just become a different kind of a species, or something. Like most people my age—nothing against them—I love them, but they just don’t want to come out of their house.”
“I’m going to keep coming out, man. I want to keep doing shit.”
