I did a search in this forum and found no posts about Hot Tuna! A few remarks here and there in other posts but no main listing. So, I went and saw them recently. For those that don't know Hot tuna is mainly Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Cassady. These dudes were the lead guitarist and the bassest for Jefferson Airplane back in old San Fran during the Daze. Around 1970 or so they started moonlighting as Hot Tuna while they played with the Airplane. Now they play acoustic electric stuff of a wide variety such as blues, and a mix of country, bluegrass, blues and rock styles. Kaukonen is known for his fingerpicking fretwork and Jack for expert bass. They've been together scince high school and have 27 albums as Hot Tuna plus the Airplane stuff. The show was about 2 1/2 hours long. The first half was electric acoustic. No drums. Really good. 2nd half was electric electric. First time in years they have played electric rock and roll style, like the old Airplane stuff. Also really good. They were very informal, talking to the audience, picking up the wrong instruments, tuning stuff after every song and jokeing with each other while someone took forever to tune a 12 string. A roadie kept walking on stage while they were playing, after they played, before they palyed etc. and was constantly rearrangeing straps, cords and instruments. The band members said they were in his way all the time. Once Cassady took about about 4 minutes to figure out which bass he wanted to play. He'd put one on, take it off, walk around and try another, and reject it, then go back to the first, etc. He had 4 of them sitting around. Jorma just stood there asking him what the big deal was. any who Hot Tuna!
Hot Tuna are great. I especially like their acoustic songs. They play some great old blues tunes like SF Bay Blues, Keep on Truckin and Candyman. Where did you see them? I saw they were playing in Harriburg PA this week.
They live on a farm in SE Ohio, just ran through HBG, then drove 22 hours to Fl then back up to Balt. All in 3-4 days.
