The world of classic rock recently mourned the death of Joey Covington, drummer for both Jefferson Airplane and the electric version of the Airplane offshoot Hot Tuna, who died in a June 4 car crash.
That’s the sad news. The positive news is that Hot Tuna, best known in its original acoustic duo format – with Airplane members Jorma Kaukonen on guitar and Jack Casady on bass – continues to perform their ever-changing style of the blues. They make a concert stop as a trio, with Barry Mitterhoff on various stringed instruments – at the Somerville Theatre on Tuesday, June 18.
Kaukonen checked in by phone last week from his home in "a small town in southeast Ohio," and spoke about his early days in music, joining up with the Airplane, forming Hot Tuna, and his thoughts on the ’60s.
You played violin and piano before guitar. How did the guitar come into your life?
I took piano till I was about 9 years old, and I only played violin for about six months in junior high school. I learned a lot about music, in general, from piano, and I did enjoy it. It just wasn’t my instrument. But my dad’s secretary, Dolores, and her husband used to come over to our house, and she would play guitar. There was just something about the instrument that I thought was cool, which was funny because in my junior high school and high school years, the guitar was not a cool instrument; it was a geeky instrument. The cool instruments were accordion, saxophone and drums. But I just liked it. When I was about 15 I got a buddy of mine who played guitar – mostly old-timey music and songs that were on the country hit parade – to teach me a couple of songs. I played them for my dad, who grudgingly, because I’d shown some initiative in actually learning something, bought me a guitar, and the rest, literally, is history.
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