Hot Tuna’s Stop at Woodstock 50 Brings Jorma Kaukonen Full Circle: Exclusive Interview
Jorma Kaukonen will never forget taking the stage with Jefferson Airplane before almost half a million people during the original Woodstock on Aug. 17, 1969, at a dairy farm in Bethel, N.Y.
In Been So Long: My Life & Music, Kaukonen’s candid and compulsively readable autobiography from last fall, the guitarist said the experience was like an an excursion into a parallel universe “whose portal opened unbidden and closed just as mysteriously, leaving a vivid memory.”
Billed as “3 Days of Peace and Music,” Woodstock is far from the only highlight in Kaukonen’s career. With Jefferson Airplane, he composed enduring songs like “Embryonic Journey,” his fingerstyle tribute to blues and gospel singer the Rev. Gary Davis. Kaukonen’s arrangement of the folk standard “Good Shepherd” combined acoustic picking, electric shredding and alternative tuning, and has influenced countless guitarists. Later, he formed the offshoot band Hot Tuna with childhood friend and Jefferson Airplane bassist Jack Casady, prefiguring the Americana genre – and they are still touring today.
Woodstock ’69 Artifacts Headed To Museum 50 Years Later
A bass guitar and handwritten song lyrics will be among the artifacts related to the original Woodstock concert heading to a museum for display.
The museum at the site of the concert in upstate New York says it will open for the 2019 season on March 30 with an exhibit marking the concert’s 50th anniversary.
The Museum at Bethel Woods says the exhibit will include instruments, clothing, equipment, art and photography. Highlights include a bass guitar and a tunic from Jack Casady of Jefferson Airplane and handwritten lyrics for “Goin’ Up the Country” by Alan Wilson of Canned Heat.
The famous three-day concert kicked off Aug. 15, 1969, in Bethel, New York.
New Jim Marshall Documentary Show Me The Picture: The Story Of Jim Marshall, Features Jefferson Airplane And Interview With Jorma Kaukonen
Jim Marshall, the artist behind some of classic rock’s most legendary images, including Jimi Hendrix lighting his guitar on fire at Monterey in 1967 and Johnny Cash flipping the bird at San Quentin in 1969, is the subject of a new documentary film. “Show Me The Picture: The Story of Jim Marshall,” directed by Alfred George Bailey (“Gregory Porter Don’t Forget Your Music”), holds its South By Southwest (SXSW) premiere on Friday, March 15.
The film features interviews with Peter Frampton, Graham Nash, John Carter Cash, Jorma Kaukonen of Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna, actor Michael Douglas and Marshall’s longtime assistant, Amelia Davis, who worked with the photographer from 1998 until his death in 2010. Davis and her partner now carry on Marshall’s legacy and maintain his impressive archive.
Jefferson Airplane Co-Founder Marty Balin Dead at 76
Jefferson Airplane vocalist-guitarist Marty Balin, who co-founded the San Francisco psychedelic rock band in 1965 and played a crucial role in the creation of all their 1960s albums, including Surrealistic Pillow and Volunteers, died Thursday at the age of 76. Balin’s rep confirmed the musician’s death to Rolling Stone, though the cause of death is currently unknown.
“RIP Marty Balin, fellow bandmate and music traveler passed last night,” Jefferson Airplane bassist Jack Casady said in a statement. “A great songwriter and singer who loved life and music. We shared some wonderful times together. We will all miss you!!!!”
Jefferson Airplane’s Kaukonen Is Still On Embryonic Journey
LOS ANGELES — Long before he wrote and recorded the Jefferson Airplane classic “Embryonic Journey,” Jorma Kaukonen was on a decades-long journey of discovery of his own.
From shy, sometimes bullied upper-class son of a globe-trotting U.S. diplomat in post-colonial Pakistan, Kaukonen would evolve into a hard-drinking, hell-raising teenager racing his motorcycle through the streets of the Philippines in the mid-1950s.
Q&A: Jorma Kaukonen’s New Book ‘Been So Long’ Recalls His Journey from Jefferson Airplane to Hot Tuna and Beyond
Jorma Kaukonen has been a force in rock music for more than a half-century. A founding member of two groundbreaking bands – Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna – the singer-guitarist has just released his new autobiography, Been So Long: My Life and Music. Read More
Apple Music: Jefferson Airplane – The Early Years
When Grace Slick quit her own band The Great Society to join Jefferson Airplane just before their second album, they became San Francisco’s first supergroup. Their magical blend of folk-rock harmonies, acid-fried electric guitars, and complex jazzy rhythms defined the Summer of Love.
Jefferson Airplane Founder Marty Balin BeingHonored By Mill Valley, His Longtime Hometown
As one of this year’s judges for Mill Valley’s annual Milley Awards, I happily joined my colleagues in voting to give the award for achievement in music to Marty Balin, a founder of the Jefferson Airplane and one of the principal architects of San Francisco psychedelic rock.
Rolling Stone: Jefferson Airplane – 12 Essential Song
“Don’t you want somebody to love?” goes the chorus of Jefferson Airplane‘s best-known hit. Love was more than just an age-old crutch for pop songwriters in 1967, the year the Grace Slick–sung “Somebody to Love” was released; it had taken on a metaphysical dimension, and Jefferson Airplane were at the vanguard. The Summer of Love launched the band into the pop charts, but also into the eye of the psychedelic storm that was brewing in their native San Francisco. But even hippie anthems like “White Rabbit” couldn’t keep the eerie weirdness of the times at bay.