- Welcome to... A talk show normally in a diner.

- Your body temperature is normal.

- On tonight's show, I welcome singer-songwriter Kenn Kweder... - If you're going to get into showbiz, you got to make sure people know about you somehow, even if it's firecrackers or rooftop gigs or arriving at a gig on a horse.

Where there's a will, there's a way, right?

- Long-time social justice advocate and the ACLU's first chief equality and inclusion officer Amber Hikes... - You deserve to be affirmed.

You deserve to be validated.

You deserve to have protection.

- And the very funny comedian, Chris Monty.

- I'm an old dad.

I want to pay for my child's college tuition with my Social Security check.

- All right here on Counter Culture.

Mm!

Hi, folks, I'm your host, Grover Silcox, coming to you from the Lehigh Valley Public Media Center while we wait for the go ahead to return to our original home at Daddypops Diner in Hatboro, PA. ♪ Marco Polo, he said, "Hey, man, let's go..." - My first guest's name is synonymous with Philly music.

Born in Upper Darby, he launched his career as a singer-songwriter and musician from the City of Brotherly Love with his first band Kenn Kweder and the Secret Kidds.

His musical influences range from Leonard Cohen to Lou Reed and David Bowie.

He's still going strong from his home base here in Philadelphia.

Please welcome the inimitable Kenn Kweder!

Hi, Kenn.

How are you?

- Pretty good.

Pretty good.

It's it's great to be on your program.

I appreciate it.

Like you and I go back to my God, many decades.

- You were known for being kind of wild.

- I always decided to do things that I thought would be original.

I mean, I've actually showed up at gigs on a horse.

I've done things hanging off the side of the boat like, you know, I mean, just recently during a pandemic, I've been doing gigs off people's rooftops, like during like two months ago because you couldn't do anything indoors.

So I was doing things on rooftops in Manayunk and Roxbourough.

So it's been, you know, where there's a will, there's a way, right?

- Yeah.

- If you're going to get into showbiz, you got to make sure people know about you somehow, even if it's firecrackers or rooftop gigs or, you know, arriving at a gig on a horse, I mean, those kind of things seem actually natural to me, you know?

- Right, right.

It's certainly one way of you controlling the situation.

- I mean, in the early days, I just couldn't really get much work because I started off as a folk singer and I once got thrown out of the Ethical Society, and a lot of wild people showed up at that so-called "folk show".

And the police, the police were called...

It's the first time the Philadelphia Ethical Society was surrounded by police.

But I got some reputation out of that, too.

That was the early days, you know.

- So you've always been a singer-songwriter, of course, musician, but also a performer, because there are a lot of singer-songwriters who are mostly singer-songwriters.

They're not necessarily performers.

♪ Every time I turn around... - When I went on stage, I become a different person, somewhat imitating my mother because she was really dramatic, you know?

- Wow, I was going to ask because I know you grew up in Upper Darby, right?

- Upper Darby, Southwest Philly, those two areas.

- And you wanted to be a basketball player.

That was your first ambition, right?

- I was a serious, serious basketball player, but I started playing all throughout the city too in different tournaments, and it was obvious that there were people way better than me.

So I traded in the basketball for a guitar, a folk guitar, because I loved music.

And that has become sort of my diplomatic way through life since then.

Since I surrendered to basketball, yeah.

- Right, and Secret Kidds, that was your first band, right?

- I wasn't getting many gigs on my own, so I was going to create a myth, a mythology of Kenn Kweder.

So I created 10,000 posters and a poster dump all over the city.

And then I hit all of the mass transit locate where people were going to get on trains or whatever.

I did that for like a year.

So my name was everywhere.

But there was no information, like where was I playing?

Then when I started to look for gigs, people, they would hire me.

They hired me.

It was crazy.

- And then the '80s, it really took off.

- Yeah, the '80s.

By then I had made a lot of friends like at WMMR with Jack Quigley and a few other folks that took a liking to me.

Then I left the country and then I came back.

I lived in England for a while then I came back and I just kept releasing stuff I wrote, like, Two Little Bugs was something that came out of that.

And then a million other songs and CDs, vinyl, cassettes.

Everything, you know?

- How would you describe your music?

And then what comes first, the lyrics or the music?

- The the music has always come first.

I look at the music as the anatomy of your body or spinal column, and then the lyrics are what you chisel in to fit it, the flesh and then the jacket and the suit.

And in terms of what I would describe myself as just a robo troubadour, I'm just not stopping.

I mean, up until like I said up until the pandemic, I was doing 275 shows a year.

And then I had of course I cut back to not much.

It's picking up now, but then I started to go on to Facebook Live and doing in April this year I started to do live broadcasts from my living room, then I started to add puppets, like The Kenn Kweder Puppet Show which I know nothing about puppets, but it took off!

It was insane!

- You go to school with our own Mike McGrath, host of You Bet Your Garden.

- We went to Temple together.

We didn't really know each other well at that point, but we were aware of each other because both of us are pretty eccentric, you know?

- Yeah.

- And you wrote the theme song to Mike McGrath's show, You Bet Your Garden.

- I did a little bartending on Penn campus and he popped in one dirty and he's going, "You know that song about bugs?

"Do you mind if I utilize it because I want to kick "off a gardening show?"

I said, "Take it, Mike.

Just take the song.

"I'm excited that you're interested in it.

"I mean, and if something happens, something happens.

"If it doesn't..." And he's been using it for over 20 years, which is great.

I love Mike, yeah.

- I see you have some of your tools of the trade in and around you there.

- I have a guitar like right here.

- Yeah.

Can you give us a little Kenn Kweder riff?

Something from Kwederology?

♪♪ ♪ Ooh, yeah, yeah, yeah, baby Yeah!

- There you go, I can feel the energy!

I tell you, you are a true Philadelphian and I can just feel the energy.

And boy, people need it more than ever, even if it's virtual.

So what's on the horizon?

Things are coming back now?

You're slowly but surely starting to get some live gigs?

- Yes.

Like I said, I did...

I mean, even in the summertime, I was doing like safe-distance barbecue parties.

Like, I didn't stop.

I just do a lot of stuff on Zoom.

What I'm doing now is I'm writing a counterfeit.

A Kenn Kweder Counterfeit Press Conference that'll happen in 2022, assuming the pandemic begins to resolve itself.

And that's I wrote I will I've written all the questions and I'm going to have phony journalists ask me questions about Philadelphia music and just my persnickety way of looking at food, vitamins.

Like, you know, "I don't eat anything "that ends in a vowel.

"I don't eat anything that's round."

I mean, it's gonna be a lot of stuff about how I my life is.

But it's phony because I wrote all the questions.

Of course I have all the answers in advance.

And then after that show, I'm putting together this huge, gigantic, cartoonish Elvis Presley tribute that will take place maybe in Ardmore or the World Cafe Live.

But that's going to be nuts.

I got searchlights, bodyguards already set up, you know, the whole the whole thing.

So I'm always having fun with what I'm doing so...

But I'm like, I'm not...

The thing is, like I said, I'm a robo troubadour, I ain't stopping.

And, you know, I got things up my sleeve.

I hope to go for the next couple of years, you know?

- Great.

Well, Kenn, I want to thank you for joining us.

And we can't wait to see what you have up your sleeve because we know you always have something there.

- Thank you, Grover.

It's really, I've got to thank you for inviting me.

And like I said, I hope in the near future we meet up real time.

- Same here, Kenn Kweder.

He once led the Secret Kidds, but his talent as a singer-songwriter is no secret, especially to his fellow Philadelphians and fans across the country.

- We must commit ourselves to being what I call "political in place", and standing as allies to one another.

- My next guest advocates for those who are marginalized and excluded in our society.

She has been a strong voice for social justice from her days at the University of Pennsylvania, where she earned a master's in social work to her role as executive director of the Philadelphia Mayor's Office of LGBTQ Affairs, to her current position as the first chief equity and inclusion officer for the American Civil Liberties Union.

It's a pleasure to welcome Amber Hikes to the counter.

Amber, how are you?

I love the fact that you have that big photo of Philadelphia behind you.

- Oh, absolutely, Grover.

Philadelphia all day.

Every day, even when I moved to Brooklyn, always representing Philly.

And this is actually some... let me move my chair here, some awesome local art from one of my neighbors, Ross Brown.

Ross Brown is an incredible photographer in Philly and I have his art all over my house so always repping Philly whenever I can.

- I mention the Philadelphia photo because I read where you said you were born in Okinawa, Japan.

- That's right.

- You grew up in Atlanta, Georgia.

But Philly is where you came into your own.

Philadelphia is home.

- Absolutely.

And you're right, a lot of people don't know.

I was born in Okinawa, a military kid.

I think that probably gives it away a little bit.

So literally born on an Air Force base.

And we moved around a lot.

I lived in Hawaii, Louisiana, Delaware, but absolutely my formative years were spent in Georgia.

But but Philadelphia and in particular the Northeast is where I really was able to to get my start.

I did grad school in Philly at Penn.

But even before then, when I was an undergrad at the University of Delaware, go Blue Hens, I would always come up to Philly.

Folks always ask like, "You went to school "at Delaware, what the... "What the heck did y'all do in Delaware?"

I said, "Well, went to Philly."

That's it, that's all you do in Delaware is come to Philly.

So Philly has been in my heart since I was I was a young one and I put roots down here.

Bought a house here in 2008 and have always even when I moved around the country to do different different jobs, have always come back.

Philly has always been my my home root and my base.

And even during this time of the pandemic, I am working at my work, my base is in New York City.

But I came back down to Philadelphia because we could work from home now, so I said, "Let me leave "Brooklyn and come back down to Philly."

So I came here officially, I would say probably around my undergrad.

So it was around 2005, 2006, and then just stayed from then on.

- So you became very active in the LGBTQ community.

You are, I read, an unapologetic queer black woman.

Is that the correct terminology?

- You got it right, Grover, don't be scared of it!

You got, you got it, unapologetic queer black woman.

You got it exactly right!

- Even at Penn, when you were going for your Master's, you were involved as a social work intern.

- Yeah, so I was.

I had the opportunity to kind of get my start working with young people at the Attic Youth Center, which is our LGBTQ youth center in Philadelphia.

And I think that was the time that really clicked for me, that I wanted to do social work with young people, young people who are activists, who are advocates, who who are deeply committed to their own experience and making sure that they don't just elevate their own lives but find ways to uplift and elevate folks who are connected to them or in community with them.

And so I made sure that young folks had access to to education and to resources.

And during that time, there were a lot of young people really not just in Philadelphia, but around our state who were actually experiencing discrimination, bullying, violence in their schools.

And so I was able both with the Attic Youth Center and then with an organization called Equality Pennsylvania at the time to really do trainings around around the state to make sure that not just young people, but school administrators understood the rights of LGBTQ young folks, making sure they weren't bullied, they weren't being abused in schools.

And frankly, if they were, the administrators knew that we were going to sue the hell out of them.

And so that's actually I guess now that I work at the ACLU, been kind of a theme.

"You messed up, we're going to sue the hell out of you."

So, better to do right on the front end, right?

- Right, right.

And I guess it's almost hard to put into words what it feels like to be in a situation where you're being bullied just for who you are and to be excluded from everything else and to know that someone has your back and that someone reaffirms your value, you must have so many stories of individual experiences.

- You're so right, Grover.

For so many of these these young folks, right, it wasn't just the bullying they were experiencing in schools.

They were also many of them had been kicked out of their homes as young folks.

And so many systems had failed them.

So they were very much alone.

So you're exactly right to have any kind of entities or adults come in and say you have value, you also have rights, and we are going to put our full force of our resources behind you to make sure that you can live authentically as you are.

And then at a bare minimum, just not be harassed and bullied, it was just incredibly validating for young folks who had been failed by so many different systems, to have adults coming in and saying, "You deserve to be affirmed, "you deserve to be validated, "you deserve to have protection in this institution that's "supposed to be educating you and taking care of you."

For a lot of them, it was the first time they actually felt like they had that kind of support.

And so it was an incredibly important kind of mental shift for these for these young folks.

- You gained a lot of experience working with youth and with others in the community by the time Mayor Kenney, Jim Kenney of Philadelphia, appointed you to the Mayor's Office of LGBTQ Affairs.

- That was such a transition.

You know, I spent a lot of time in my early career of doing activism and so often kind of fighting outside of City Hall.

So this opportunity to be at the table where the decisions were being made and actually being able to advocate for so many different communities that were under that umbrella was a real shift for me.

I'll never forget on my very first day when when I was being on-boarded by my boss at the time, he had this kind of list of the folks that I needed to meet around around city government in the first couple of weeks.

And at the top of the list were police commissioners and prison commissioners, right, because we had to talk about LGBTQ folks that were incarcerated and it had never been my experience, especially as an activist, right, to sit down with the police commissioner and the prison commissioner to talk about the conditions of confinement for LGBTQ folks.

We were able to just in that one initiative, create some of the most inclusive policies for police and prisons that regard to with regard to trans and non-binary folks who were incarcerated, and these are some of the most inclusive policies in the entire country.

So and the reason we were able to do that in Philadelphia was truly because of the police commissioner at the time, the prison commissioner at the time, those folks coming and saying, "Yeah, we want to have some "of the most progressive legislation that we can here.

"How do we get there?"

But that was just one of the one of the opportunities that I got to really sit at the table with folks who were, frankly, had very different kind of perspectives and ideologies to me and find out how we can work together to make a better Philadelphia for all of our residents.

- And now let's talk about the ACLU, the American Civil Liberties Union.

You became the first chief equity and inclusion officer.

- I always think the people who the ACLU is, but not all of the time people do.

So we are a 101-year-old organization.

Many folks hear "ACLU" and they think free speech, yes, fair, but our work covers the waterfront, right?

So if you're new to the ACLU, we just want to be clear that, you know, integrated schools, Brown v Board of Education, that was us.

Reproductive freedom, Roe v Wade, that was us.

Miranda rights, the right to remain silent, knowing your rights.

Those are us, right, integrated neighborhoods, the right to protest, the right to have a jury that looks like you, the right to not have your mail searched, the right to teach evolution in public school and as of summer of 2020, the right to keep your job no matter what your sexual orientation or gender identity.

ACLU, ACLU, ACLU.

For the first time in 2019, we wanted to really bring in someone who could make sure that our insides were matching our outsides, right?

And so that that's my job to make sure that we are holding ourselves to the same standards that we're holding America to.

- The people who you speak for certainly benefit from your strong voice and activism.

That seems to have begun from the very beginning.

- Thank you so much, Grover.

It's really a pleasure.

I'm so lucky to still be doing this work and finding more expansive ways to do it every day.

- Thank you so much for joining us.

- Absolutely, it's a pleasure.

- Take care.

Amber Hikes, a social justice advocate who works every day to make the promise of the Declaration of Independence a reality for everyone.

- And I got a tip for anybody who's dating online.

Update your profile picture!

I should be able to recognize you when you walk into the restaurant.

That's all I'm saying!

- If you ever had to make a risky decision, and who hasn't, you'll appreciate my next guest.

He currently stars in an Amazon Prime special called... - Halloween is just an inconvenience to me.

"Trick or treat!"

I'm like, "Great," I'm going through the junk drawer, "Here you, go kids, Duck sauce, soy sauce..." - It's an hour of hilarious stand-up comedy.

And as one viewer said, after watching my next guest perform, "He's so funny, it hurts!

"For someone to do an hour with nonstop laughter "is rare indeed," unquote.

- We don't have an hour, but we always have time for the hilarious comedy of my old pal Chris Monty.

Welcome, Chris.

- Thank you for having me, Grover, it's a pleasure to be here, sir.

- The last time I saw you, we were talking about this, you were performing down and around Philadelphia, killing, killing the crowd.

Your style is very loose, very smooth.

It's kind of 1960s supper club.

- Yeah, in New York, they call me the Frank Sinatra of comedy.

You know, I mean, I'm going to wear the suits.

You know, I got the French cuffs.

I always have a Jack Daniels off to the side.

- You know, that's my style.

That's my, that's the music I listen to.

That's the way I grew up.

My father's family is very Italian.

So all the men are always dressed sharp.

And, you know, I kind of aspired to that as a kid, you know?

- Yeah.

You grew up in New York?

- Yeah, I'm from...

I lived in Queens a very long time, and I lived in Manhattan for quite some time.

I was born in a little town called Elmont, right outside of the city, in the suburbs on Long Island.

- And does your Italian lineage come into your act?

- Yeah, absolutely.

I definitely bring in bits about my my grandmother and my family.

I got married very late.

I've actually got married a few years ago.

Being over 40 and not being married in an Italian Catholic family.

It was, you know, every family gathering, you know, I was the topic of conversation among all aunts.

All the aunts, all the cousins are all in the kitchen.

And the drunker you get, the less you know how to whisper.

They think I can't hear them in there.

"What's the matter with him?"

- And your wife's first name?

- My wife is Kristin, and she's a New York City schoolteacher.

She's so used to me being home, we have we have a little baby.

So I'm the daycare all day long.

And she teaches and she's teaching from home, but she goes down into the basement where she has an office.

And so now I'm not there.

So it's kind of like, "Ooh," and I said, "Hey, "don't get used to me being home all the time "because things are going to start opening up "and it's going to go back to normal."

And I'm basically 30 weeks a year at least I'm on the road from Thursday to Sunday, you know?

- Right, yeah, but when you have the baby and the marriage and everything, it does help add material to your act.

- Absolutely.

I have I have a ton of new stuff.

It's and I'm an old dad like I always make fun of...

But I'm in my late 40s and I've just screwed up my whole chance of any fun retirement.

I just I always tell people, "I'm going to pay for my child's college tuition "with my Social Security checks!"

- So, you know, I'm in my late 40s and I have a 20-month-old.

So, it's funny.

It's like I never had a schedule before and now I have a schedule like now...

I used to sleep till noon, make coffee at 1:00pm, sit in my boxer shorts, watch Judge Judy.

That was my whole day.

Now now I wake up and it's bottles, cereal, Sesame Street, bottle, nap.

And then on top of that, there's my daughter's schedule.

- Wow!

Tell me a little bit about your Amazon Prime special.

- We didn't know where we were going to put it.

We shot the special.

We shot it in New York.

Beautiful theater, the Madison Theater at Molloy College.

Great theater, holds 500 people, we did like a four camera shoot, we put it together.

It's very hard, you know, in this business, it's very hard to place a special somewhere.

You call Netflix, you call Hulu, you call everybody.

And Amazon Prime was good enough to say, "Yeah, we would," they, they... We submitted it to them.

They they accepted it.

It's called What's The Worst That Can Happen?

It's up on Amazon now.

Back in '77 when your show was on, it was on!

Shut up, it's on!

It's material that's fun for the whole family, it's adult but not dirty or vulgar.

So you can watch it with your grandmother or your children and not be worried it's going to be offensive.

- But you've been on a lot of the talk shows.

Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, you're also an actor.

Talk a little bit about that and how different that is from stand-up.

- It's very different.

You know, I've been in, I was on a show called Vinyl on HBO, which was a drama.

I was on a show called Orange is the New Black.

I was in an episode of that, same thing, wasn't a comedy.

I did do a part in a show called Red Oaks with Paul Reiser, and that was on Amazon Prime.

But it is different because I'll never forget a story I heard about when Rodney Dangerfield got his first movie, Caddyshack, and he would come in and deliver his lines.

And the director would say that, "Rodney, that's fantastic.

And he'd go, "It's terrible!

"How come nobody's laughing?"

The director would say, "We can't laugh, "we're shooting a movie!"

- Right.

- It's it's that way, you know, when you when you're doing a comedy as an actor, you know, as a comedian, you're so used to that response.

But then you deliver your funny lines.

I was in the movie Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2.

The only time you're allowed to laugh is when you re re-watching the film of what you just shot.

OK, well, I see you know your way around a p133.

- I do... - But I love it.

I love acting.

It's great.

I studied acting in New York City with Joanna Baxter.

I studied Meisner, I studied commercial acting in all different drama classes and stuff.

It helps you in your stand-up because you can create characters in your act.

Now, when I speak of my immigrant grandparents or my father or my mother, I actually become them in the act.

So it helps both.

It helps both.

Being a comedian helps your acting because you're your own writer, director, producer and star of the show every night.

So I think it's I think it's a good thing on both sides.

- You're a headliner.

And when we do get back in the swing of things like previous to the pandemic, you know, people go, "How do I get the gig?"

Well, if you win the crowd, you get the gig.

- Everybody wants to be Jerry Seinfeld or Chris Rock or whoever it is that you idolize.

They have wonderful careers and they're big superstars.

But you can make a really good living doing this without being a superstar.

- Right.

- And you can you know, I look at it like this.

You have one life is like like Joey Kola says, "Life is you're on this earth for a half an hour "and it's over."

He always says that, and it's true.

So you might as well do what you love and bring joy to your life.

And this is what I do.

I love show business.

- Right, and you get them right from the beginning.

As soon as you walk out, people are already getting the message, "This guy is funny."

- It's his face.

- Yeah, right!

Right.

- I think they get the the one thing I learned about this business and you know this as a performer, you have to be genuine.

You know, it's like some guys are characters and they're genuinely that character.

But as long as you're genuine and you're real, they get that, and they and the audience, the audiences aren't dumb.

They understand what funny is and they understand that this is someone that's good at what he does because he loves what he does or he's good at what she does because she loves what she does.

So if you're not fake about it, I think you'll be successful.

I try to be nice, you know, like like Gleason said, and I'm quoting all my idols, you know, "Be nice to the people you meet on the way up, "because on the way back down, you're going to meet "the same people."

- Yeah, well, he had something there for sure.

Chris, thanks so much for joining us.

Good luck with your gig.

You know, when this thing ends, good luck getting back into the swing of things.

- For those people out there, they can go to... and check out my touring schedule and my videos and all my fun stuff.

And I thank you so much for having me, Grover.

It's a pleasure to see you.

And it's an honor to be here.

- Well, that's my suggestion for anyone who needs a laugh, whether it's live or virtually go see Chris Monty.

You'll do yourself a favor.

Everyone needs a laugh, especially now.

Thanks so much, Chris.

- Thank you, brother.

- Chris Monty, a guy who turns the worst that could happen into one hysterically funny stand-up routine that'll make you laugh at the worst that can happen.

Well, that's all for this episode, I want to thank my guests, Philly's own singer-songwriter Kenn Kweder, Chief of Equity and Inclusion for the ACLU Amber Hikes, And funnyman Chris Monty.

And thank you for stopping by.

Don't forget to tune in next week for more amazing guests and great conversation right here at the counter.

Now stay tuned for More Than Money with Gene Dickison.