Jorma Kaukonen has new CD and tour, but musician honors those from past
Paul Liberatore
Posted: 02/26/2009 10:37:13 PM PST
Marin Independent Journal
'Nobody is fonder of songs about death than I am.' says Jorma Kaukonen, guitarist and founding member of the legendary rock band Jefferson Airplane. 'It s not something I find depressing. It s just how it is.' Jorma Kaukonen is 68, a remarkably youthful 68, especially for a musician who burst onto the
scene 40 years ago in the drug- and alcohol-fueled days of the San Francisco Sound.
Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a founding member of the Jefferson Airplane, the muscular, tattooed Kaukonen has been clean and sober for a dozen years and has contributed mightily to the continuing popularity of traditional acoustic blues and country music.
As he has for nearly four decades, he still tours with former Airplane bandmate Jack Casady in Hot Tuna. Over the course of his long career, he's become one of America's foremost practitioners of fingerstyle guitar, teaching what he's learned to others at his Fur Peace Ranch Guitar Camp in the Appalachian foothills of southeastern Ohio.
As the senior member of the Guitar Blues tour he's co-headlining with fellow guitarists Robben Ford and Ruthie Foster, he's been playing night after night in performing arts centers, concert halls and theaters across the country. Kaukonen and company play Friday at the Marin Veterans Memorial Auditorium.
"It's hectic," he admitted, speaking from Falls Church, Va., before a recent show. "This tour means playing six or seven days in a row, which I don't normally do. But as far as the personnel and the music, it's the greatest."
A glowing review in North Carolina's Greensboro News & Record bears that out, calling Kaukonen "the cleanest player in blues, every note polished to a brilliant sheen É"
"I wouldn't necessarily say it's my best work, but I definitely think it's some of my best work," he said. "I feel really good about it. I guess we'll see if other people feel the same way."
It looks as if they do. The Washington Post says "Front-porch folk music doesn't get much better." And a review in the Hartford Courant in Connecticut calls it "a pleasant surprise when an act of Kaukonen's vintage proves he's still got it as convincingly as he does on 'River of Time.' It's a gentle record, full of blues and folk tunes that showcase Kaukonen's considerable skill on acoustic guitar."
I was impressed by Kaukonen's sweet, almost boyish vocals on several finely wrought original songs that reflect, as the album's title suggests, the wisdom that comes with age and experience, the grace in honoring those close to us who are gone and the acceptance of one's own mortality.
"At 68 years old, you think a lot about that stuff," Jorma told me. "You've got to write about what you're into. As we get older, more people we know pass away and, let's face it, we're all gonna cash in our chips some day. Nobody is fonder of songs about death than I am. I find that a pleasing metaphor to work with. It's not something I find depressing. It's just how it is. So you might as well embrace it."
Kaukonen has family ties to Marin. His late father lived here, and, in his liner notes, Kaukonen thanks Ida, his paternal grandmother, for coming to him in a dream and inspiring the title track, "River of Time."
"Some years ago I had that dream," he said. "My father's mother came to me and said, 'People who are dead are on the shore.' My wife said, 'You should write that down. You're gonna need it some day.' She was right. Good old Ida laid some words on me that I was able to turn into a song."
Beginning with "Been So Long," a song from the second Hot Tuna album, the memory of friends and lovers come and gone runs like a stream of nostalgia through "River of Time."
"Cracks in the Finish," for example, was inspired by a favorite guitar that outlasted an unhappy marriage .
"I have this old Gibson J-50 guitar," Kaukonen recalled. "When I married my first wife in 1964, we went to Yosemite and we were playing it around the campfire. The next morning, because of the hot and the cold, the finish cracked.
"It occurred to me later on, because our marriage wasn't necessarily the happiest one, that I should have heeded those cracks in the finish as a metaphor. The song went somewhere else, but that's where it started from."
He uses the guitar as metaphor again on a cover of Merle Haggard's "More than My Old Guitar."
"That song is on a rare Haggard album called 'Roots Volume I.'" Kaukonen said. "It's hard to find. That song's got that line, 'I love my guitar more than God loves the poor, but I love you even more.' What a great line. I wish I'd written that."
Grateful Dead fans will be pleased to know that he honors the memory of Ron "Pig Pen" McKernan with a playful acoustic rendition of the original Dead keyboardist's song "Operator." And he pays his respects to the Rev. Gary Davis with an interpretation of Davis' "There's a Bright Side Somewhere."
In the liner notes to "River of Time," Kaukonen goes so far back as to honor the memory of his first musical mentor, the late Ian Buchanan, writing, "In the winter of 1960, for reasons known only to himself, he chose to teach me to play the guitar in a way that has defined my life. You live in my heart."
Far from living in the past, though, Kaukonen and his wife, Vanessa, are busy running their ranch and raising a daughter, Israel, who will be 3 in June. He also has an 11-year-old son, Zach, by a previous marriage.
He includes a song for his daughter, "Izzie's Lullaby," on "River of Time."
"I wish I made her go to sleep," he said with a laugh. "When I play it for her, she just wants me to play it again. I have young children in my life and that gives me an anchor my dad wouldn't have had at my age. It allows me to look at the full spectrum of life in an enjoyable kind of way."
IF YOU GO
- What: Guitar Blues with Jorma Kaukonen, Robben Ford and Ruthie Foster
- Where: Marin Center, Marin Veterans Memorial Auditorium, 10 Avenue of the Flags, San Rafael
- When: 8 p.m. Feb. 27
- Tickets: $18 to $40
- Information: 499-6800;
www.marincenter.orgContact Paul Liberatore via e-mail at
[email protected]
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