{"id":313274,"date":"2025-11-25T18:50:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T18:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/313274\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T18:50:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T18:50:08","slug":"despite-touring-retirement-ohio-based-rock-and-roll-hall-of-famer-plans-to-keep-playing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/313274\/","title":{"rendered":"Despite touring retirement, Ohio-based Rock and Roll Hall of Famer plans to keep playing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Though he was born and fostered his earliest musical ambitions in Washington D.C. — where his father worked for the U.S. State Department — Jorma Kaukonen planted some of his strongest musical roots in Ohio<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It was at Antioch University during the late 50s where he was taught fingerstyle guitar playing by classmate Ian Buchanan, who also introduced him to Reverend Gary Davis and other American roots artists. <\/p>\n

He was a coffee house and folk club denizen when he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area during the early 60s — even accompanying an upstart Janis Joplin there — but went electric with Jefferson Airplane in 1965. (Check out his \u201cWabash Avenue,\u201d his Record Store Day Black Friday release from previously unreleased solo performances that same year.)<\/p>\n

Kaukonen has nevertheless stayed true to his roots. He and childhood friend Jack Casady, the Airplane\u2019s bassist, started Hot Tuna in 1969 to play more blues and roots music, and are still doing that today. <\/p>\n

On his own, meanwhile, Kaukonen has maintained a stylistically diverse career that\u2019s run the gamut from folk blues and jazz to psychedelic rock. <\/p>\n

These days you\u2019ll find Kaukonen in southeast Ohio, where he and his wife Vanessa operate Fur Peace Ranch, a spread where they invite musicians to come study and play, sometimes with other \u201ccounselors\u201d such as Warren Haynes, Tommy Emmanuel and Larry Campbell. <\/p>\n

With his 85th birthday coming on Dec. 23 Kaukonen has announced he\u2019s retiring from heavy touring, but he promises we\u2019ll still be hearing from him nevertheless:<\/p>\n

No more touring? Say it\u2019s not so…<\/p>\n

Kaukonen: (laughs) Yeah, I guess time is marching on and we\u2019re gonna be changing things up. I\u2019m not retiring, but I don\u2019t think I\u2019m going to be doing any more extended bus tours, etc. etc. Just the thought of a three- or four-week tour on a bus… If Captain Kirk could get Scotty to teleport me, I could do it every night. It\u2019s a conflicted situation on a lot of levels, \u2018cause I love performing. The passion is certainly there. <\/p>\n

And so is the playing acumen.<\/p>\n

Kaukonen: It\u2019s hard to be objective about it, but I think in many respect the acumen is improved. Jack and I were talking about this; I think both of us have been in this game for a long time, and on some levels the playing has improved in a lot of ways. I\u2019m probably not as fast as I used to be, but who is? I think as a much younger player, must the passion and the excitement that I was able to do it at all sort of carried me through in a lot of ways. <\/p>\n

Today I\u2019m more consciously aware of the story involved in what I\u2019m doing when I\u2019m playing. My\/our audience has allowed me to tell and retell my story in different ways for many years, and I appreciate that.<\/p>\n

So what\u2019s that story — and has it changed much over the years?<\/p>\n

Kaukonen: Back in 1960, as da 19-year-old, I think me and some of my contemporaries had some sort of romantic vision of becoming Lightnin\u2019 Hopkins or something like that. But my path obviously has been different, being somewhat of a privileged white guy. I didn\u2019t have to put up with any of the stuff they did.<\/p>\n

White guy blues is nowhere near as romantic; I never hopped a freight train and all that kind of stuff, but the metaphor certainly spills into all of our lives. So to find myself this many years later as a part of the flow of that sort of thing, the story, and telling that story, has come to mean more to me.<\/p>\n

What led you to Ohio and Antioch?<\/p>\n

Kaukonen: My goal as a college student was to stay involved in school as long as I could so I wouldn\u2019t get drafted. When I picked Antioch, my pals from Woodrow Wilson High School back in D.C. were like, \u201cSo you\u2019re going to that Commie, free love school in the Midwest? (laughs) I heard it rumored that, while they didn\u2019t have coed houses (students) were actually allowed to socialize, which doesn\u2019t seem like much today but in that area it was a big deal. <\/p>\n

So I went to Antioch, and the first year nothing much happened, but when I went back there (for a second year) I was in off campus housing, and that house was just incredible. Everyone in the house played music of some sort; I don\u2019t know if it was done intentionally or if we just lucked out that way, but it was just a perfect storm for a guy like me.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s where you learned fingerstyle playing. What was the allure if that to you?<\/p>\n

Kaukonen: There was just something about it that set me on fire. It\u2019s really funny, \u2018cause there are so many talented guitarists in this country and world these days that do stuff, fingerstyle music, that would have been incomprehensible back in those days. Back then, it was sort of an oddity and not that many people did it. For me it was a complete musical experience, like a one-man band thing. The fact that as a guy who loved music I could play a complete song by myself was pretty cool.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s interesting to hear that era of yourself on this \u201cWabash Avenue\u201d release.<\/p>\n

Kaukonen: On a lot of levels that was amazing. When we — that\u2019s the imperial we — recorded that, me and some of my pals were gonna do a release of our own, a vinyl thing. I did some of that recording at the Offstage, which was a little coffee house where many of us started out; in fact, (future Jefferson Airplane bandmate) Paul Kantner and Paul Foster from the Merry Pranksters ran the place for awhile. <\/p>\n

And the rest of the recording was done at a place called the Shelter, owned by another friend of mine. It was gonna be a big deal, I was gonna make a record! That was the summer of 1965, in and right around that time Paul Kantner invited me to try out for August the Airplane and I got sidetracked by that, and (the album) got sidetracked.<\/p>\n

What was it like to transition from what you were doing into the electric rock of the Airplane?<\/p>\n

Kaukonen: I guess on some levels they dragged me kicking and screaming into it. Again, it was a confluence of circumstance; I\u2019d just recorded the Wabash Avenue stuff. I was thinking about moving to Europe, maybe going to Denmark and being an expat musician or some nonesense. Who knows what I was really thinking back then. And the Airplane ball got rolling, and the rest is history <\/p>\n

Legend has it that you came up with the Jefferson Airplane name.<\/p>\n

Kaukonen: I threw it out there, yeah. The classic story, which also happens to be true, is that we were sitting around and I remember Marty (Balin) came up with the Other Side, and we went, \u201cY\u2019know, we\u2019re in San Francisco. If we use the Other Side people are going to think we\u2019re all gay\u201d — not that there\u2019s anything wrong with that, but we weren\u2019t. Before that, I had friends and we\u2019d sit around coming up with these blues names for ourselves, some legendary nickname that would outlive us. <\/p>\n

And my friend Steve had said, \u201cYou could be Blind Thomas Jefferson Airplane.\u201d So when we were agonizing over the Airplane name and it was fraught with emotional peril. Finally I couldn\u2019t take it anymore and I said, \u201cYou want a silly name? How about Jefferson Airplane.\u201d They went, \u201cY\u2019know, we like it,\u201d and that was it. It was one of the few times we agreed really quickly on something.<\/p>\n

\u201cEmbryonic Journey\u201d did give you a chance to show off your fingerstyle with the Airplane. How did you get that into the mix?<\/p>\n

Kaukonen: I had just learned the Drop D tuning… and I was just messing around with it and my college roommate went, \u201cThat\u2019s almost a song. You should think about it.\u201d So it became this one-minute and 59-second song, and when Rick Jarrard had me do it for the \u201cSurrealistic Pillow\u201d album (in 1967) I thought it was a horrible idea; \u201cThis is a rock album. No one wants to hear fingerstyle guitar!\u201d <\/p>\n

So that\u2019s probably a second take, live; there was no real overdubbing back then, as we know it today. I played the song and he put it on the record, and I thought, \u201cWhat a terrible idea.\u201d I\u2019ve since reassessed my opinion.<\/p>\n

What led you to the blues and kept you interested in it for all these years?<\/p>\n

Kaukonen: Growing up when I did, before the advent of rock \u2018n\u2019 roll as we know it, (pop) music was just so insipidly saccharine and blues spoke about real life. <\/p>\n

I think that appealed to my desire to grow up as quickly as I could. I didn\u2019t hear the blues at home, but my parents like gospel music, of all things, and I did hear Mahalia Jackson, and I got to hear Pete Seeger… and even though that stuff wasn\u2019t even blues, all of that stuff — blues, gospel or folk — was all folk to me back in those days. And that kind of set me on fire. <\/p>\n

Jack Casady\u2019s older brother had a huge collection of Chess Records, Chicago blues of that era — Little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson, Muddy Waters, that whole chance gang of that era, and Hubert Sumlin playing guitar as a youngster. There was something seductive about all that. In 1959 noting could be mor romantic than a John Lee Hooker album and a bottle of 3.2 beer, which is what they had in Ohio in those days.<\/p>\n

You and Jack have been friends and bandmates for more than 70 years, which is a pretty impressive run for any two people. Do you just have a lot of compromising photos of each other, or…?<\/p>\n

Kaukonen: Those secrets will go with us to the grave! (laughs) He\u2019s been my best friend forever. We were each other\u2019s sidekick. He\u2019s a little bit younger than me, so in that era he was probably more my sidekick. But he was the one that got all the jobs, so in that respect I as his sidekick. But we liked the same stuff — the same music, EC comics, all that stuff. And it\u2019s funny \u2018cause back in the day Jack was very harmonically advanced. <\/p>\n

He listened to a lot of jazz. In our little band Jack was the lead guitar player and I was the rhythm player, and then when I went away to college I was never there for his transition into bass. Danny Gatton needed a bass player and Jack said, \u201cI\u2019m a guitar player,\u201d and Jack\u2019s story to me is Danny said, \u201cIt\u2019s got four strings. How hard can it be?\u201d He started playing bass with Danny for a couple of gigs, and that became his instrument.<\/p>\n

You have some 85th birthday shows coming up in December. What else is on the docket?<\/p>\n

Kaukonen: I\u2019ve been really lazy over the past couple of years in terms of writing. I write stuff down all the time, but actually finishing songs… So I\u2019m going to put my nose to the grindstone and see if I can write an album\u2019s worth of material. And I\u2019m not going to quit working gigs; the lengthy touring is going to change. <\/p>\n

But I\u2019ll still play. It\u2019d drive me crazy if I never get a chance to play for somebody other than Vanessa and our dog, Percy. <\/p>\n

Jorma Kaukonen celebrates his 85th birthday, joined by John Hurlbut, at Natalies Music Hall<\/a>, 945 King Ave. Columbus. 614-436-2625 or nataliesgrandview.com. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Though he was born and fostered his earliest musical ambitions in Washington D.C. — where his father worked…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":313275,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,216],"class_list":{"0":"post-313274","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}