Kenn Kweder Comments on Eats
Eats
Kenn Kweder has a reputation for alcohol and/or drug insanity, as well as for his music. No review since the seventies has failed to comment. He's earned his titles; and continues to take pride in his Wild Man Extraordinaire image. Still, in over twenty years of staying in the public eye, he's mellowed, like all of the bad boys who've survived.
These days he's preoccupied with the details that allow him to perform a hundred and fifty times a year. That means untold phone calls, visits and letters. How does he find the time to be his own agent, producer, arranger, songwriter and performer?
"I live on the phone," he says. "I make fifteen calls for every gig I do." At a hundred and fifty shows a year, that's a lot of calls. In January he begins to book shows for the summer at the shore.
And he makes lists. He claims he makes post-its in duplicate, hangs them everywhere. He aims to do ten things a day, more if he can.
In more ways than one, he's not who you think he is.
I had my first inkling one night recently when I saw his gig at the Sheraton, in Old City. He looked young and handsome as ever. I was a little surprised. Lots of hard-drinking contemporaries wear the evidence of their habits on their once perfect faces. I've known Kenn since the mid-seventies. He looked remarkably well preserved, I told him.
"It's the GOGH," he said, as if I were supposed to know what the GOGH is. With a straight face, he continued, "It's the Glow of Good Health." He's a funny guy.
"The glow of good health is free. Anyone can have it. All you have to do is stop drinking for two or three days a week," he said.
"Do you have to eat special things?" I asked. "Well of course," he replied, "you have to eat forward food." Here we go again.
"Forward food?" I asked. But Kenn's break was over, and I had to wait for the answer.
Curiosity piqued by the secrets of the GOGH, I suggested we schedule an interview. It would be at my house. We'd e-mail each other. Kenn's a high-tech kind of guy; he's had his electronic mailing list in place for a couple of years. In the meantime, he'd pop by with a press kit on his way to the Palladium, where he tends bar two night a week to an adoring crowd of Penn Kids.
"Kenn Kweder is," he says, "a basically a shy guy." It's a surprising statement coming from a self-proclaimed madman. He can account for the contradictions; "People didn't take me seriously. Not that I wasn't a co-conspirator in my own exploitation. I sorta got a little wacky, sometimes, to confirm people's suspicions about me."
What happened? He grew up, for one thing. Though he still looks youthful at 47, he's aware he's not a Kidd anymore.
"I'm not real scared yet," he says, "but I don't know how many more years I can do it. I don't have any contemporaries. Anybody my age would be out of their minds to pursue what I'm pursuing."
How many baby-boomer musicians would be around if they had to lug their own equipment to gigs, like Kenn does? For every step you climb without twisting an ankle, or pulling your back out, the odds against you increase.
He had some help. "The biggest change in my life was when I went to Europe, and came back and met Ben Vaughn. He was a catalytic enzyme in my life."
And he made some discoveries. "Working at Penn really invigorated me," he said. It still does."
I wondered what could be so great about branding for a bunch of college kids. Kenn explained: "(They're) 21 year old kids (whose) eyes light up & they're talking about the Poetics of Space and & how mankind has always appreciated the intimacy of miniature things, the beauty of miniature spaces." Hmm. That reminded me, what about the GOGH?
"I'm a really nervous guy," he said. "When I'm around people I drink." He continued, "It doesn't work as well as it used to work. I get headaches. When you suffer from amazing hangovers, you really appreciate the relative merit of just being simply healthy. It becomes the Glamour of Good Health."
"I don't understand," I said.
According to Kenn, the kingdom of all edible things can be divided into two groups: forward and reverse food.
Anything that comes out of the ground is forward, while reverse foods include ice cream, garlic, everything round, and dishes that end in a vowel.
"Racquel Welsh, Carly Simon and Calvin Klein are all forward eating mother(#@!!..)s. You look at their diets. They eat forward food, it reflects on how they look. They're older cats, you know."
What about people who eat reverse food?
So much for the GOGH, but Kenn leaps off to an equally entertaining segue.
"I wish I did smoke," says Kenn. "I believe carbon is good for you. I believe second-hand smoke is good for you," he insists, gearing up. "I'm really pissed at this country, the way we're trying to shut down smokers. Aha!
What's this nonsense? Smoking- good for you? Where's this guy been? I wonder. Kenn tosses out yet another amusing, crazy theory. He's still an iconoclast- that much hasn't changed.