Tommy Emmanuel and Jorma Kaukonen – Deep River Blues

Tommy Emmanuel performed two sold out nights at Jorma’s Fur Peace Ranch during the 2012 season! Jorma came out on Saturday to join Tommy! This is one of the few songs they played together!”

It’s hard to keep up with everybody, especially old friends that you made music with way back when. Now I’m not talking about Jotma Kaukonen or Tommy Emmanuel, I’m talking about mandolinist Barry Mitterhof, who is currently in Jorma’s band. Barry recorded with me way back in 1978 on my first guitar album. When I heard the news about him landing the Jorma gig I thought, wow, Barry is perfect for this! Now I will put up a vid with Barry soon and talk more about him, but for now I better stip and say say a little something about Jorma Kaukonen.

He’s really got it going in my opinion with this Deep River Blues, and has such a unique approach that I can’t say I’ve heard before. Definitely has an awful lot to say on his guitar!

Tommy of course is amazing, and the two of these guys are simply making music together- I’d like to thank Miche Archetto for finding this video and sharing it with us over at our facebook site.

Hot Tuna Bio with Jarma Kaukonen:

“From their days playing together as teenagers to their current acoustic and electric blues, probably no one has more consistently led American music for the last 50 years — yes! — than Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady, the founders and continuing core members of Hot Tuna.

The pair began playing together while growing up in the Washington D.C. area, where Jack’s father was a dentist and Jorma’s father a State Department official. Four years younger, Jack continued in junior high, then high school — while playing professional gigs as lead guitarist at night before he was old enough to drive — while Jorma (who had played rhythm guitar to Jack’s lead) started college in Ohio, accompanied his family overseas, then returned to college, this time in California.

Along the way, Jorma became enamored of, then committed to, the finger-picking guitar style exemplified by the now-legendary Rev. Gary Davis. Jack, meanwhile, had taken an interest in the electric bass, at the time a controversial instrument in blues, jazz, and folk circles.

In the mid 1960s, Jorma was asked to audition to play guitar for a new band that was forming in San Francisco. Though an acoustic player at heart, he grew interested in the electronic gadgetry that was beginning to make an appearance in the popular music scene — particularly in a primitive processor brought to the audition by a fellow named Ken Kesey — and decided to join that band; soon thereafter he summoned his young friend from Washington, who now played the bass.

Thus was created the unique (then and now) sound that was The Jefferson Airplane. Jorma even contributed the band’s name, drawn from a nickname a friend had for the blues-playing Jorma. Jack’s experience as a lead guitarist led to a style of bass playing which took the instrument far beyond its traditional role.

While in The Jefferson Airplane, putting together the soundtrack of the 60s, the pair remained loyal to the blues, jazz, bluegrass, and folk influences of the small clubs and larger venues they had learned from years before. While in San Francisco and even in hotel rooms on the road, they would play together and worked up a set of songs that they would often play at clubs in the Bay Area and while on the road, often after having played a set with the Airplane. This led to a record contract; in fact, they had an album recorded before they decided to name their band Hot Tuna. With it they launched on an odyssey which has itself continued for more than 35 years, always finding new and interesting turns in its path forward.” read more