Jorma Kaukonen
Jorma Kaukonen
Jorma Ludwik Kaukonen, Jr.is an American blues, folk and rock guitarist, best known for his work with Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna. Rolling Stone magazine ranked him #54 on its list of 100 Greatest Guitarists...
kids rocks rock-and-roll
Of course when you are a kid you listen to what your parents had around. A lot of gospel, jazz. Now when I started to listen to music on my own it was around the time of the birth of rock and roll. Shortly thereafter I started to get into more blues and more traditional rootsy American music.
dad home long
My dad is from Ironwood and the last time I was in Marquette was in 1995 when my dad was still alive. Dad would have loved this. Even though my family is long gone from this area it still feels like home.
song fun writing
I started with the chorus of that song, kind of like a fun bouncy thing to play, and then one of the lines popped up: 'I got things to do today, people to see, things to say.' I wrote about a dozen verses for it, but no song needs to be that long unless you're Bob Dylan. So when we recorded it I started to tear it down to some of the lines I thought were the funniest.
music fun blessing
The blessing of this music is that it is fun to do and it keeps evolving.
drawing years stuff
We do a wealth of stuff (live), drawing from over the years.
ddt long care
I don't care if my lettuce has DDT on it, just as long as it's crisp.
song teaching writing
We were on a tour, and there were some chord formations that were tough for me to play when I was a kid...it had become apparent that there was some stuff I wanted to do that [would require me] to learn how to do that. So I wrote the song and used some of these chord formations so I would have to play them. I thought it would be a great teaching vehicle for a while, and it was, but it ended up as a performance song.
song stupid heart
Some hit songs are really stupid, and who knows why they're hits. But a lot of hit songs are really good. I agree with Jim [Lauderdale] in that I think the really good ones are songs that when you hear it [sic]...there's just something about it that touches your heart, and you don't know why.
anybody basically came coming everybody grace jack sound various
I was basically a blues-folky kind of guy, Jack came from various R&B things in D.C., everybody was coming from a different place. And Grace didn't sound like anybody else.