HOT TUNA
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 las
HOT TUNA
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.
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.
In 2006, they launched an 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!
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.
LEFTOVER SALMON
Looking back over the past 25 years of rootsy, string-based music, the impact of Leftover Salmon is impossible to deny. Formed in Boulder at the end of 1989, the Colorado slamgrass pioneers took their form of aggressive bluegrass to rock and roll bars at a time when it wasn’t so common, helping Salmon become a pillar of the jam band scene and unwitting architects of the jamgrass genre. Today, Leftover Salmon is: Vince Herman (vocals, acoustic guitar, washboard); Drew Emmitt (vocals, acoustic and electric mandolin, electric guitar, fiddle); Andy Thorn (vocals, acoustic and electric banjo); Greg Garrison (vocals, acoustic and electric bass); Alwyn Robinson (drums).
”On September 15th, 2014 at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, TN Herman announced a brand new long player, High Country, set for release on November 28th, Black Friday, initially to participating Record Store Day indie outlets nationwide.
High Country is a 12-song, rock/country/bluegrass/blues masterpiece, featuring 10 spanking new LoS offerings, including Thorn’s rollicking title track complete with requisite blistering banjo solo, Herman’s Cajun-flavored kick off, “Get Up And Go,” but also sporting 2 covers- a Payne/Robert Hunter tune called, “Bluegrass Pines”and a Lowell George/Keith God chaux classic, “Six Feet Of Snow,” immortalized on Little Feat’s, Down On The Farm. Then there’s Emmitt’s progressive ramble n’ roll, “Two Highways,” destined to become an LoS classic. All in all, High Country slips seamlessly in and out of character, disposition and style offering the full palette of Leftover Salmon’s aesthetic, from lightening-powered pick n’ grin to thoughtful blues balladry and all in between. The record’s a classic, if we’ve ever heard one.
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