Culture
Jorma Kaukonen interview: Hot Tuna, Jefferson Airplane and Athens Porchfest 2026
By: Nicholas Kobe
Posted on:
ATHENS, Ohio (WOUB) – Few figures loom larger in the history of psychedelic rock than Jorma Kaukonen.
After cutting his teeth as a solo guitarist in San Francisco, he joined Jefferson Airplane, helping shape its sound into enduring classics like “White Rabbit” and “Somebody to Love.” Alongside bassist Jack Casady, he also launched Hot Tuna, a band that continues performing more than five decades later.
Kaukonen, a longtime Athens/Meigs County resident, will perform with collaborator John Hurlbut for free this weekend at Athens Porchfest — on both Saturday and Sunday — before Hot Tuna plays an acoustic show at Stuart’s Opera House (52 Public Square) in Nelsonville on July 17.
WOUB’s Nicholas Kobe spoke with Kaukonen ahead of the shows. A transcript of their conversation, edited for length and clarity, follows.
Nicholas Kobe: How would you describe Hot Tuna in one sentence?
Jorma Kaukonen: An original roots jam band.
What makes you say that?
Kaukonen: What we know now as the jam band thing is really a whole way of life. When Hot Tuna sprang out of the Airplane, it wasn’t a known quantity the way it is today, and I don’t think we thought about ourselves in those terms — mostly because those terms didn’t exist yet. But looking back, that’s how I’d describe it.
Speaking of Hot Tuna and your relationship with Jack, how have you managed to maintain not only a strong musical partnership but also a close friendship over the years?
Kaukonen: Jack is probably my oldest living friend. I first met his older brother when we were in high school, building hot rods and hanging out. Jack had already been taking guitar lessons before I started playing, but we both loved music and naturally gravitated toward each other. Once I picked up the guitar, we started playing together — it was really more of a living room band than a garage band. But when Jack came out to California in ’65, that’s when we got serious about it.
What would you say was different about breaking into the music industry back then compared to now?
Kaukonen: I keep telling people in interviews that I’m the luckiest guy in the world, because you can’t script what happened to me, Jack, and our friends in Jefferson Airplane and the San Francisco scene in general. I was going to school at the University of Santa Clara, giving guitar lessons and just playing. I was kind of a minor local guitar hero.
One of the guys I had met, Paul Kantner, one of the original founders of the Airplane, had dropped out of Santa Clara. A friend of mine was living as a beach bum in Santa Cruz and introduced me to him. Paul was doing what we called back then “commercial folk music” — like the Limelighters or Peter, Paul, and Mary, that kind of thing. It wasn’t really my thing, but we became friends because we were all playing fretted instruments.
When Paul moved to San Francisco, he got pulled into the band that would ultimately be called Jefferson Airplane, and they were looking for a lead guitar player. Now, I’d never played lead guitar — I was strictly a solo acoustic player. But they said, “Want to come up and try out?” Back in those days, we were all buying, selling, and trading instruments. I had stumbled into an incredible deal — which I wish I’d kept, but that’s another story — on a mid-’30s Gibson L5 acoustic and an early-’50s Fender amplifier. Today those would be worth a lot of money. I wasn’t really using them for gigs since I was playing acoustic with mics, but I owned them.
So when Paul said to come up and try out, I brought the L5 and the amp and just played. I wasn’t really sure what I was doing, but honestly, they weren’t really sure what they were doing either. What hit me was that this was fun — and I decided to hang around and see what happened.
The legacy of Jefferson Airplane has lived on for quite a while. Was there a moment when you realized the band had really caught fire and that people truly loved what you were doing?
Kaukonen: I’ve got a kid who’s still in college and she’s a musician, and I always tell her that everybody gets their time — it’s not like my time was the best time. But we got so lucky, because all of a sudden in San Francisco, which has always been an odd little town, people started listening to bands that weren’t just playing covers. That had never really happened before. Back then, if you were a young musician starting out, you played Paul Revere and the Raiders or whatever the hits of the moment were. But all of a sudden, there was a group of people who weren’t schooled rock musicians in the traditional sense, playing their own music — and audiences were showing up to see it happen. We had places to play, the scene was there. You just can’t script that kind of thing.
One last question before we go: what is the recipe for a perfect guitar face?
Kaukonen: Wow, that’s a good question. Let me think about this. Why do we make those faces? Who knows? I think the perfect recipe is if you can somehow capture exquisite yet ecstatic agony.
You’ve got to look like you’re a little bit in pain, but also enjoying it.
Kaukonen: Yeah, to the max. Somebody should really do a study on that sometime. I think of my buddy David Bromberg — all of us who play guitar have these little things we do without thinking. Every time David would bend a note, the left side of his lip would curl up, like they’re hooked together. The string goes up and the lip goes up right along with it.