Hot Tuna (USA) a collaboration with Blue Sky Promotion
A Musical Odyssey
From their days playing together as teenagers to their
current acoustic and electric blues, probably no one has
more consistently led American music for the last 50 years — yes! — than
Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady, the founders and continuing
core members of Hot Tuna.
The pair began playing together while growing up in the
Washington D.C. area, where Jack’s father was a dentist
and Jorma’s father a State Department official. Four
years younger, Jack continued in junior high, then high
school — while playing professional gigs as lead
guitarist at night before he was old enough to drive — while
Jorma (who had played rhythm guitar
to Jack’s lead)
started college in Ohio, accompanied his family overseas,
then returned to college, this time in California.
Along the way, Jorma became enamored of, then committed
to, the finger-picking guitar style exemplified by the
now-legendary Rev. Gary Davis. Jack, meanwhile, had taken
an interest in the electric bass, at the time a controversial
instrument in blues, jazz, and folk circles.
In the mid 1960s, Jorma was asked to audition to play
guitar for a new band that was forming in San Francisco.
Though an acoustic player at heart, he grew interested
in the electronic gadgetry that was beginning to make an
appearance in the popular music scene — particularly
in a primitive processor brought to the audition by a fellow
named Ken Kesey — and decided to join that band;
soon thereafter he summoned his young friend from Washington,
who now played the bass.
Thus was created the unique (then and now) sound that
was The Jefferson Airplane. Jorma even contributed the
band’s name, drawn from a nickname a friend had for
the blues-playing Jorma. Jack’s experience as a lead
guitarist led to a style of bass playing which took the
instrument far beyond its traditional role.
While in The Jefferson Airplane, putting together the
soundtrack of the 60s, the pair remained loyal to the blues,
jazz, bluegrass, and folk influences of the small clubs
and larger venues they had learned from years before. While
in San Francisco and even in hotel rooms on the road, they
would play together and worked up a set of songs that they
would often play at clubs in the Bay Area and while on
the road, often after having played a set with the Airplane.
This led to a record contract; in fact, they had an album
recorded before they decided to name their band Hot
Tuna.
With it they launched on an odyssey which has itself continued
for more than 35 years, always finding new and interesting
turns in its path forward.
The first thing an early Hot Tuna fans discovered at their
concerts of the early 1970s was that the band was growing
louder and louder. In an era in which volume often overtrumped
musicianship, Hot Tuna provided both. The second thing
a fan would discover was that Jack and Jorma really loved
to play. “Look around for another
band that plays uninterrupted three- to six-hour sets,” wrote reviewer
Jerry Moore. What Moore could not have known was that had
there been no audience at all, they would have played just
as long and just as well, so devoted were they to making
music. Of course, the audience wasn’t superfluous
by any means; it energized and continues to energize their
performances. Album
followed album — more than two
dozen in all, not counting solo efforts, side projects,
and appearances on the albums of other bands and performers — and
they continued to develop their interests and styles, both
together and in individual pursuits. In an era in which
old bands reunite for one last tour, Hot Tuna can’t
because Hot Tuna never broke up.
Along the way, they have been joined by a succession of
talented musicians: Drummers, harmonica players, keyboardists,
backup singers, violinists, mandolinists, and more, all
fitting in to Jorma and Jack’s current place in the
musical spectrum. And along the way
there was no list of outstanding guitarists that didn’t
include Jorma, nor was there anyone who seriously thought
there is a better bass player than Jack.
After two decades of acoustic and electric concerts and
albums, the 1990s brought a new focus on acoustic music
to Hot Tuna. More intimate venues with a more individual
connection to the audience became increasingly frequent
stops. Soon, the loud electric sound (and
the semi trailer load of equipment) disappeared entirely from Hot Tuna tours.
Maturity brought the desire to do things not instead of
but in addition to being a touring band. Both had become
interested in teaching, passing along what they had learned
and what they had uniquely developed to a new generation
of players.
In 1998 Jorma and his wife Vanessa opened Fur
Peace Ranch Guitar Camp, in the beautiful rolling Appalachian foothills
of southeastern Ohio.
Here, on a sprawling and rustic yet modern campus, musicians
and would-be musicians come for intensive and enjoyable
workshops taught by Jorma, Jack, and other extraordinary
players, learning things that range from different styles
of playing to songwriting and even storytelling (the musician
in performance has to say something while changing that
broken string!), to making a song one’s own.
In addition, there is now BreakDownWay.com, a unique interactive
teaching site that comes closest of anything yet to make
individual instruction available to students anywhere there
is a computer and an Internet connection.
But the teaching doesn’t replace Hot Tuna’s
busy tour schedule; it’s in addition to the tours.
Nor have they lighened up their individual schedules. Jack
released his first solo CD, Dream
Factor, on Eagle Records
in 2003.
He has a busy and elaborate website at jackcasady.com.
Jorma has a website, too, and achieved enormous critical
acclaim and a Grammy nomination for his 2003 solo album,
Blue Country Heart. (Both are in the Rock and Roll Hall
of Fame due to their pioneering work in The Jefferson Airplane.)
As 2006 began, they launched another exciting website,
Hot Tuna Tunes, where fans may inexpensively download professionally
made recordings of full Hot Tuna concerts in both MP3 and
lossless encodings, suitable for portable player and home-burned
CDs respectively. Hot Tuna Tunes is added to all the time,
so it’s almost as if Hot Tuna were releasing numerous
live concert albums every year. Collect the entire set!
For the last few years, Jorma and Jack have been joined
in most of their Hot Tuna performances by the mandolin
virtuoso Barry Mitterhoff. A veteran of bluegrass, Celtic,
folk, and rock-influenced bands including “Tony
Trischka and Skyline” and “Bottle
Hill,” Barry
has found a new voice in working with Hot Tuna, and the
fit has been good — watching them play, it’s
as if he’s been there from the beginning and they’re
all having the time of their lives.
Beginning in 2004, Hot Tuna returned to some of its own
roots by adding an electric set to their acoustic one.
For the electric sets, they are joined by Erik
Diaz, a
sharp young second-generation drummer with the energy,
talent, and skill to match anything that Jack and Jorma — once
famous for working drummers nearly to death — throw
at him.
While the days of the six-hour uninterrupted sets are
long over, Erik does much to help rekindle the feeling
that permeated the legendary Hot Tuna concerts of decades
ago. It is in the electric sets, too, that Barry brings
out a wide array of electric mandolins and similar instruments
that most people have probably never seen or heard before.
It’s all a real treat.
Jorma and Jack certainly could not have imagined, let alone
predicted, where playing would take them. It’s been
a long and fascinating road to numerous exciting destinations.
Two things have never changed: They still love to play
as much as they did as kids in Washington D.C., and there
are still many, many exciting miles yet to travel on their
musical odyssey.
