[2 articles] Standing on the other side of life with Jorma Kaukonen
http://media.www.themacweekly.com/media/storage/paper1230/news/2009/02/27/TheArts/Standing.On.The.Other.Side.Of.Life.With.Jorma.Kaukonen-3649885.shtml By: Sam Robertson Issue date: 2/27/09 Jorma Kaukonen is best known as the high-flying guitarist of Jefferson Airplane who pioneered psychedelic rock in San Francisco in the late 1960's. Although they were only together for a half dozen years, Jefferson Airplane became one of the most popular bands of the 1960's. Their songs such as "White Rabbit" and "Somebody To Love" helped form the soundtrack for the Summer of Love and the counterculture. Along with Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead and John Cipollina of Quicksilver Messenger Service, Kaukonen helped create the sound that is now known as acid rock with his loud, screeching, psychedelic guitar playing. However, even during Kaukonen's wildest years with Airplane, he never forgot his blues and folk roots. On his new album, "River Of Time," he revisits those roots and shows that he possesses a side that those who have only heard him in Jefferson Airplane may not be aware of. Before joining Jefferson Airplane, Kaukonen was a regular in the San Francisco beatnik coffee shop scene, playing traditional blues and folk songs on his acoustic guitar. On "River Of Time," Kaukonen doesn't pick up an electric guitar-the album showcases his acoustic fingerpicking and his gritty, bluesy voice. It seems like whenever an "Americana" roots rock album comes out, it's destined to be compared to "Music From Big Pink" by The Band, since it remains the standard for all albums in the genre today. "River Of Time" was recorded in Levon Helm's (drums and vocals in The Band) home studio, in Woodstock, NY. The album was recorded just down the street from "Music From Big Pink," and Levon lends his talent to the album, playing drums on a few of the songs. Helm's drumming is sparse, but perfect. On the traditional country tune, "Trouble In Mind," the band is just finishing up the song when Helm's freewheeling drumming launches them into a raucous acoustic jam instead. Like this song, the whole album has an organic, informal feel to it. The album sounds like a group of friends relaxing on a back porch or around a campfire in the woods, just playing feel-good country rock tunes. What's different is that this group of friends is unusually talented. Besides Helm, Kaukonen also enlists the help of mandolin-extraordinaire Barry Mitterhoff and Larry Campbell, the most talented man in Americana roots music today. Just within the last decade, Campbell has toured with Bob Dylan, Levon Helm, and Phil Lesh & Friends, playing lead guitar in addition to mandolin, pedal steel guitar, dobro, cittern and more. Besides playing a dozen instruments on the album, Campbell produces the album and does a great job giving it a rustic, wistful, warm sound. Campbell's wife, Theresa Williams, who is an accomplished singer and also tours with Levon Helm and Phil Lesh and Friends, also appears on the album, singing duets with Kaukonen on "Nashville Blues" and "Preachin' On The Old Campground." The album opens with "Been So Long," a song written by Kaukonen that he recorded with Hot Tuna in 1971. However, it reappears on "River Of Time" in a different format, with emphasis on Kaukonen's eerie fingerpicking and vocals and Campbell's terrific mandolin playing. "Cracks In The Finish," an autobiographical song written by Kaukonen, is another highlight. It features some beautiful instrumental work by Kaukonen on acoustic guitar and Larry Campbell on fiddle along with Levon's funky drumming. Kaukonen credits Reverend Gary Davis as his biggest guitar influence and pays tribute to him by covering "There's A Bright Side Somewhere." Kaukonen also covers the Grateful Dead's "Operator" and Merle Haggard's "More Than My Old Guitar" on the album. He does them both justice - the latter especially. The album is a very well assembled collection of six Kaukonen originals with various covers that sound unique and fresh yet familiar all at the same time. For those who have only heard Kaukonen in Jefferson Airplane, this album reveals a wildly different side of him. However, for those who have followed his career closer, this album is not anything radically new. Starting with Hot Tuna's self-titled album, Kaukonen has released several acoustic blues album similar to "River Of Time." But even though the album isn't anything groundbreaking or new doesn't mean that it's not worth hearing. Kaukonen's voice has aged like fine wine, and he sounds richer and more soulful than ever right now. He has also evolved as a musician, relying less on deft fingerpicked guitar solos and more on vocals, lyrics, and the subtle contributions of other musicians. As a result his music has become less showy and more wholesome. "River Of Time" won't have much commercial success, but it is as good as anything else Kaukonen has ever done and is an album that any fan of acoustic blues, folk or country music will enjoy immensely. -------- Jorma Kaukonen has new CD and tour, but musician honors those from past http://www.marinij.com/lifestyles/ci_11797233 Paul Liberatore Posted: 02/26/2009 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." After every concert, he adjourns to the theater lobby to autograph copies of his new Red House Records CD, "River of Time," a tasteful acoustic album recorded at Levon Helm's rustic studio in Woodstock, N.Y. "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.org -- Contact Paul Liberatore via e-mail at [email protected] . --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sixties-L" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sixties-l?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
