Jorma Kaukonen

The Hot Tuna musical trip carries the audience along on a fantastic journey. With both quality and craftsmanship, Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady create a propelling sound, cruising through new songs, old songs, traditional songs and instrumentals.

The Hot Tuna musical trip carries the audience along on a fantastic journey. With both quality and craftsmanship, Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady create a propelling sound, cruising through new songs, old songs, traditional songs and instrumentals.

Few musical journeys spanned as long and varied as Jorma and Jack's. As pioneers of the premier San Francisco electric sound with Jefferson Airplane, something else much bigger was meant to spawn and thrive for decades to come. Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady have held the foundations of their lifelong band and partnership Hot Tuna together for over forty-three years.

Jorma and Vanessa Kaukonen will open the doors to The Fur Peace Ranch Center for Art & Culture, Meigs County, Ohio in a grand celebration bringing the country the Psylodelic Gallery and the Psylodelic Sit-In.  The event will shine a spotlight on the art and installations at the new Psylodelic Gallery and provide a prime opportunity for area representatives to echo the inspirations and goals of the psychedelic era. Big Brother and the Holding Company will perform at 8 p.m.

Hot Tuna’s show provides quality without question! Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady have created a sound with an underlying, propelling drive which carries their audience along on a musical trip. Alongside Jorma and Jack is multi-instrumentalist and mandolin wizard Barry Mitterhoff and, when electric, defining the rhythm and setting the beat drummer is Skoota Warner.

Jorma Kaukonen has been and continues to be an inventive player from his timeless music as member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame band, Jefferson Airplane days, through out Hot Tuna, and his own dynamic solo career. All shows include Barry Mitterhoff on a variety of instruments. Barry Mitterhoff is a mandolinist who cannot be pigeonholed.

On Friday night the Oriental Theater in Denver saw a stout admission line abuzz with anticipation for the evening’s acoustic Hot Tuna performance. No opening act. No excess equipment up on stage (aside from mandolin player Barry Mitterhoff’s rack of stringed instruments). Just Jorma Kaukonen, Jack Casady and Mitterhoff, three chairs and mic stands.

It was sometime in the early 90s when I first heard Hot Tuna. One of the older hippie kids in my neighborhood who used to flow me Dead tapes (and weed) said "hey man, you dig Hot Tuna?" I was the furthest thing from hip to what he was saying, and probably replied with something along the lines of "I don't know them." He said something like "shit, you don't know Tuna.

It was Jorma Kaukonen’s big San Francisco homecoming on his current tour with G.E. Smith. Kaukonen, who grew up to be an accomplished guitar player in Washington D.C., moved to San Francisco just in time for the psychedelic rock of the sixties, and was one of the founding members of Jefferson Airplane; San Francisco’s golden fleece of psychedelic rock in the 60s. Since Jefferson Airplane, Kaukonen’s career has taken a far left turn in another direction.