Features

Reel Time: Hot Tuna

Photos by Jeff Tamarkin

“I don’t know what that was but we’re keeping it! You’re on a tear now. That was some absolutely cool Jorma-esque shit!”

Producer Larry Campbell is shouting down to Jorma Kaukonen from behind the recording console at Levon Helm Studios in Woodstock, N.Y. Kaukonen, seated on a chair on the studio floor a few dozen feet below—headphones secure and guitar in hand—is peeling out electric lead guitar licks that will be overdubbed onto the digital master recording of “Easy Now Revisited,” the sequel to a song that appeared on Hot Tuna’s Phosphorescent Rat album back in 1973. Campbell, a multi-instrumentalist best known for his several years as a member of Bob Dylan’s band and for his work with Helm, The Band’s erstwhile drummer, is working on what will become Tuna’s first new studio album in two decades—a largely electric affair they’re calling Steady as She Goes. Campbell likes what he hears.

So does Jack Casady, Hot Tuna’s bassist since he and Kaukonen formed the group in the late ‘60s, when they were both still in Jefferson Airplane. Ensconced on a comfy sofa behind the board, Casady listens intently to the playback after Kaukonen’s latest run is inserted into the mix.

“Now that is some rock and roll!” he says as he, Campbell and engineer Justin Guip crack up with laughter.

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The date is Dec. 6, 2010. Exactly 41 years ago to the day, Kaukonen and Casady were onstage at the Altamont Speedway in California, where the Airplane was a featured act on one of rock’s darkest days. That all seems like another lifetime now. Kaukonen, who will turn 70 in a couple of weeks, and Casady, 66, are well aware that many days have passed. But listening to their new work in the studio—and to their performances from the previous weekend at New York’s Beacon Theatre, where Hot Tuna put on two incendiary, guest-star-studded shows—it’s obvious that the quality of their artistry has not lessened in the slightest. If anything, their playing is more nuanced and creative today. And the new material that they’re recording, mostly written or co-written by Kaukonen, is some of their finest and most diverse to date. The inventive mandolinist Barry Mitterhoff and powerhouse drummer Skoota Warner fill out the current configuration of Hot Tuna which ranks alongside any iteration in the group’s history.

“I’ve never felt more at home and in tune with my instrument than I do now,” says Casady a few days later. “There are certain attitudes that you lose as you get older, but that doesn’t diminish what you have to say or your ability. You’re supposed to get better at this craftwork.”

Indeed, Steady as She Goes, which will be released this spring by Red House Records—the Minnesota-based indie label that issued Kaukonen’s last solo album, 2009’s River of Time —is unlike any other Hot Tuna record before it. The songs are tightly structured and intense in firepower like Hot Tuna always was in the old days, but also exhibit an accessibility that approaches classic pop at times. Having only reemerged in the past few years from an extended acoustic-only period, Tuna is enjoying the resurgence of electricity in their music, and they’ve reached a balance that’s wholly apropos of where the band members are as people and as musicians today.