Thirty-five years after
becoming a rock star with the psychedelic band Jefferson Airplane, Rock
'n' Roll Hall of Famer Jorma Kaukonen is still on the road, but he's
now playing what he calls "pure fingerpicking music." He's come full
circle, moving away from rock and the hard country blues of his longtime
band Hot Tuna to record the kind of music he listened to as a teenager.
Working in Nashville with Sam Bush on mandolin and fiddle, Jerry Douglas
on Dobro and Weissenborn, Béla Fleck on banjo, and Byron House
on upright bass, he recently recorded the CD Blue Country Heart,
covering early country classics by Jimmie Rodgers, Cliff Carlisle, and
the Delmore Brothers. Digging deep into the beginnings of commercial
country music, it's an old-fashioned slice of white blues with a new
twist, informed by the last two decades of bluegrass, newgrass, and
rock 'n' roll. Kaukonen's friend blues guitarist Roy Book Binder said
of it, "You finally made the album you wanted to make when you were
20!"
Kaukonen started college
at Antioch College in Ohio and finished at Santa Clara University in
northern California, where he spent his early 20s jamming with friends,
teaching acoustic guitar, and working as a backup guitarist for Janis
Joplin. He'd only been fingerpicking for a few years when he cofounded
Jefferson Airplane, which began as a quintet playing acoustic folk-rock.
Then came the Summer of Love, and two years later, the Airplane's second
album, Surrealistic Pillow, went gold, introducing a new generation
to fingerpicking guitar (via the instrumental "Embryonic Journey"),
sending San Francisco psychedelia around the world, and making Kaukonen
a star.
After the demise of Jefferson
Airplane in 1973, Kaukonen would go on to record a dozen solo projects,
but his main outlet has been Hot Tuna, which he formed in 1970 with
bassist Jack Casady as an acoustic duo. Hot Tuna evolved over time into
an acoustic-electric quintet and is still going strong, having survived
its late-'70s heavy metal period and returned to a more acoustic format.
I spoke to Kaukonen after a gig at New York City's Bottom Line, where
he played songs from Blue Country Heart with Barry Mitterhoff
(mandolin) and Sally Van Meter (Dobro). He was excited about plans to
record an acoustic album with Casady and was looking forward to his
return to Pomeroy, Ohio, where he lives with his wife Vanessa. Together,
they've spent the last five years running Fur Peace Ranch (www.furpeaceranch.com),
an acoustic guitar camp that offers weekend classes from February through
November. At 62, Jorma Kaukonen is still learning, playing, and teaching
acoustic guitar.
What drew you to the
material on Blue Country Heart?
Kaukonen
I was approached by [coproducer] Yves Beauvais, who asked me what kind
of a project I wanted to do. I really like material from this period
[the 1920s, '30s, and '40s]. I'm certainly not an authority on it, but
I'm comfortable with the songs. I like the spirit of them, the sense
of rising up against the Depression.
How many songs did you
start out with?
Kaukonen
I'm guessing 200–250,
and they were all great songs. A couple of weeks before I went down
to Nashville, I narrowed the list down to the 15 or 16 songs we recorded.
But I lived with the whole thing for over a year, just weeding through
stuff, listening, and having a great time with it.
How did you go about
learning the songs well enough to record them?
Kaukonen
I stick the song on
my CD player on repeat and listen to it over and over and over again,
so the song is absolutely in my brain. Then I write the words out, and
then I take out my guitar and try to capture the signature licks that
make each song what it is and start putting them together. Then I try
to figure out a key that I can actually sing it in.
Which of these songs
was the hardest to learn?
Kaukonen
One of the hardest
was "Those Gambler's Blues" [Jimmie Rodgers' variation on "St. James
Infirmary"]. It's not the hardest to play, but it's so different for
me. It sounds like it's just two chords, the I and the V, but in reality,
there are all kinds of really odd little anomalies. I was listening
to it in the studio, and Sam [Bush] said, "Let me write this out for
you." He wrote it out for me, and I went, "Whoa! I didn't realize that
passing chord was there!" I've been a Jimmie Rodgers fan since I was
a kid, and one of the things that constantly surprises me is the odd
way he handles time. The first time I listened to "You and My Old Guitar,"
I thought he was playing part of it in threes, until I realized that
it was in fours, but with an odd accent. It's fun ferreting out these
things. Woody Guthrie is like that, too. You listen to Woody and think,
"Gosh, that's really simple." But I played on a Woody Guthrie tribute
that Nora Guthrie put together ['Til We Outnumber 'Em], and we
had to learn these songs. When you actually write them out, they're
in, like, 13!
How does your rock 'n'
roll background affect the way you play these old songs?
Kaukonen
It really rears its
head in what my thumb does. A lot of the sophisticated Piedmont-style
players have very complex bass lines and lots of moving, nifty stuff
that goes up and down. But for me, my thumb really plays a pretty solid
boom-chang rhythm in fours—the essence of roots rock 'n' roll.
Do you ever attempt to
be historically accurate in your technique?
Kaukonen
No, I don't. That's
not important to me. When I first started playing, it was. I really
wanted to get inside the heads of the guys I loved. But my own style
has developed and "I gotta be me." I try to make the song mine, to play
it without sounding like I'm trying to recreate somebody else's performance.
What were the songs you
started out playing as a kid?
Kaukonen
The first songs that
I played were old-timey murder ballads like "Down in the Willow Garden"
and real simple stuff like "Worried Man Blues" and "Jimmy Brown the
Newsboy." And then, after convincing my dad that I was really serious,
he grudgingly bought me a guitar. I took lessons from this guy Sophocles
Papas, who worked with Bill Harris and Charlie Byrd in D.C. Sophocles
was repulsed by my desire not to learn, so he punished me with
songs like "This old man, he played one." But the good news is that
I started to learn how to make chords, and I started listening to songs
I could pick off of records, like real simple Johnny Cash. I listened
to a lot of stuff before I started playing rock 'n' roll. I really liked
fingerstyle blues, but I didn't learn how to fingerpick until I was
20 years old.
How far did you get as
a flatpicker?
Kaukonen
I never played outside
the first position. I just played these real simple Flatt and Scruggs
bluegrass licks, and I got pretty good at doing that.
How long did you play
with Janis Joplin?
Kaukonen
It was a casual thing.
I played with her off and on for a couple of years. She lived in San
Francisco, and I lived down in Santa Clara, and when she needed somebody
to back her up—you know, her ducks weren't in a row—she'd
call me up, and I'd say, "I'm there." She was always such a pleasure
to play with.
How did you get into
fingerpicking?
Kaukonen
Well, I'd been to
see Pete Seeger at Constitution Hall, and I'd seen Sonny Terry and Brownie
McGhee, so I knew the stuff was out there. When I went to college at
Antioch, one of my roommates was this guy Ian Buchanan (now deceased).
He was a really fine fingerpicking guitar player, and he took me under
his wing. The fingerpicking thing really started to dominate my life.
That would have been 1960 or '61.
Do you remember the first
time you heard a song by Reverend Gary Davis?
Kaukonen
That would have been
about 1960. Ian played both his version and the version off the record,
and I just went nuts. I thought it was the coolest thing I had ever
heard. Over the years, I heard all kinds of great players, like Scrapper
Blackwell, Big Bill Broonzy, the whole pantheon. But the one that really
set me on fire was the Reverend.
And you were listening
to Robert Johnson at around the same time?
Kaukonen
That's right. John
Hammond was with me that same year at Antioch, and he had the as-yet-unreleased
Robert Johnson tapes that his dad had given him. He played it for us,
and I thought, "Oh, that is just too weird." I mean, I loved it, but
it was so idiosyncratic. All you could hear were these odd rhythms.
Conceptually, I found the Reverend's music easier to relate to, because
it was closer to a sort of classical music format, with a bass part
and a melody part.
Is it different playing
songs from the new record onstage with Barry Mitterhoff and Sally Van
Meter than it was playing them with Sam Bush and Jerry Douglas?
Kaukonen
It's very much in
the same ballpark, but you just get the feeling of the different musical
personalities. For example, Sam is so manic, when you're playing with
Sam, you're along for a dandy ride. And Jerry is an extremely adventuresome
soul. When I played with Jerry and Sam and the guys, we only had four
days to record the whole album, so it was all done live. We really were
jumping, trying to get an arrangement and a feeling and get it recorded
quickly while we could still remember it. I know all these songs better
now.
What are you learning
by working with these players?
Kaukonen
I sit on the groove
a little more than I would if I were playing this stuff solo as a fingerstyle
thing. And I'm learning more about playing structured music. It's really
fun. I mean, for Barry, Sally, Cindy [Cashdollar], and G.E. [Smith],
who have done this stuff for years, it's a lesson they learned young.
But I started out as a solo guitar player, and then I got into a rock
'n' roll band where we could write our own ticket, so we did what we
wanted to do. And that wasn't bad, because we developed a sound. The
Airplane, God bless 'em, wrote a lot of real unpredictable stuff, which
was part of its charm. I learned things I probably wouldn't have learned
any other way, I had a great time playing with them, and as a result
of the notoriety, I've been a decently paid folk musician for the rest
of my life.
What's the most recent
lesson you've learned?
Kaukonen
One good one that
I'm constantly relearning is that the guitar sounds better if you don't
hit it real hard—especially live, because I'm playing an amplified
acoustic guitar. And I'm constantly learning how to develop a solid
picking feel without depending on strength. My right-hand technique
has improved a lot.
What else have you been
working on?
Kaukonen
I really like mining
this period—the '20s, '30s, and '40s—but I haven't quit writing
stuff. I've been writing a bunch of instrumentals and some songs, too.
I've got a six-record deal with Sony, and I'm hoping they'll want to
exercise their options. The company has helped me in a lot of ways,
and it would be great if they said, "Gee, it would be nice to have you
and Jack [Casady] make a record." We're going to make a record anyway,
no matter what, but it would be nice to have it on a major label so
you could actually buy it. This is the first time in years that people
have been able to buy my new record without knowing me personally or
where I park my truck. And you're still really involved with Fur Peace
Ranch.
What's the main lesson
you're trying to teach there?
Kaukonen
Well, it depends on
whether it's an advanced, intermediate, or beginning class, but the
thing we work on more than anything else is not breaking the groove.
I hear a lot of people who fingerpick pretty well, but they just can't
sustain a groove. And regardless of how complicated or simple a song
is, the groove is what makes it happen.
How do you teach that?
Kaukonen
Repetition. Picking
real simple songs and getting people to play them. Even if you make
a mistake, no matter what you do, never stop playing.
How long have you been
teaching?
Kaukonen
I've been at the Ranch
for five years now, and I really enjoy teaching—doing things slowly
and meticulously, thinking about it, explaining it, being able to play
a song real slow. Along the way, I've had to actually learn a bunch
of basic music theory. You don't need to know that stuff to play, but
if you want to relate it to somebody, it helps to know some of it. It's
really fun. I get to stay at the Fur Peace Ranch, teach guitar, and
be visited by these great players. And I get to play with them—Guy
Clark, Arlo Guthrie, Robert Lockwood, John Hartford, Rory Block, Kelly
Joe Phelps, Roy Book Binder . . . It's the greatest. Plus, I get a chance
to be at home with my family. It doesn't get much better than that.
Excerpted from
Acoustic
Guitar magazine, January 2003,
No. 121.
