Indeed… a little bit more Springlike today and we’re loving every minute of it. Several good dog walks already and a live show in the Quarantine Concert Series tonight. It’s going to be a good day!
‘See’ you all there!
Photo by Phil Jacobs
Just a hair over a year ago we played our last road gig at River City in St. Louis. David Bromberg and his guys were with us. (I stand corrected, Tuna soloed at the Casino. Memory is a fragile thing. :)’
Photo by Phil Jacobs
We headed for home after the show… and then, like everyone else, it was all gone!
Just a little remembrance with hopes for better things on down the road for all of us.
Zei gesundt!
So… just a brief update on this fine Sunday. It’s Spring Break for the High School gang and the Kaukonen Family broke out of their cocoon and headed up go Seven Springs in Pennsylvania to take the girls skiing. We recorded #40 on Wednesday last so we could make this trip. All that being said, I so glad we got back from the slopes in time to grab dinner and get on the chat.
Now I say ‘we’ got back from the slopes which is a loose description. My downhill skiing days are over I fear. I’ll stick to paddle boarding and motorcycle riding. Speaking of riding…. the girls are snow boarding… riding, not skiing. This was made abundantly clear to me. 🙂
OK… the set from last night:
Jorma Kaukonen 11, 2021
Quarantine Concert Series #40
The Fur Peace Station
Darwin, Ohio
Saturday, March 6, 2021
It was important for Vanessa and myself to be able to weigh in on the chat, even though we were on ‘vacation.’ The QC concert folks have become like family to us and we didn’t want to miss out on being able to be part of the conversation in some way.
So be it.
I’m going for a hike.Â
Henry Goldrich
May 15, 1932-February 16, 2021
I just heard about Henry’s passing moments ago. There are so many stories about Manny’s on 48th Street back in a time when 48th St. meant something to us musicians. I don’t need to remind anyone about all the famous musicians who bought endless piles of gear at Manny’s. I don’t need to remind anyone about all the kids who got their first instruments from Henry. These are the stories of legend known to most people who dabble in such minutia.
I bought my first Gibson ES-345 and two fender twin reverbs from Sherman & Clay in San Francisco. That was the first time I bought something on time and started to establish my credit, such as it was. Electric guitars took a back seat to pianos, brass, woodwinds and violins at Sherman and Clay, but in New York on 48th Street, band instruments were taking on a more modern meaning.
For some reason, Manny’s was the first of those stores Jack, Paul and I went into and that pretty much became my home port for gear. As Jefferson Airplane established itself in the music business world it is understandable that we would just be able to pick out stuff and be billed later. What I remember is that in the 80’s as I was dismantling my life, Henry always extended me credit when I needed something and I will never forget that. Without putting words or thoughts into his mouth and head, it seemed to me at the time that he believed in me when I had trouble believing in myself.
I was grateful for that then, and I am grateful for it now.
Henry you were a true Mensch!
May your memory be a blessing!
Fair winds and following seas brother…
Photo by Jorma Kaukonen
Izze and Nessa went to Newark (or Nerk as we say) for a volleyball tournament. They left around 0530. It could be worse. A male kid playing ice hockey would require lots more driving. Anyway, left home alone, I took Mav for a walk down our Hwy 61 in between storms. Rain or not, at least it’s warmer and any day now I expect to hear peepers.
Well, we sent out # 39 to our brothers and sisters in Radio Stream Dreamland last night, and here’s what we did:
Jorma Kaukonen 10, 2021
Quarantine Concert Series #39
The Fur Peace Station
Darwin, Ohio
Saturday, February 27, 2021
West Coast Blues was the first finger style songs I ‘got’ when I was first starting out finger picking in 1960. thanks brother Ian! I owe more to you than I was ever able to tell you, may your memory be a blessing! I rarely do it as a performance piece so it was big fun to start the set with it. I hadn’t performed Brother Can You Spare A Dime since one of the very earliest shows of the Quarantine Concert Series so it was equally great to bring that beauty to light again. Now I’m already thinking about #40. Hmmmm….
Photo by Jorma Kaukonen
I’ve got a Sunday Zoom lesson coming up but I just wanted to get this post up and running.
More will be revealed!
Except for some of the deepest piles, the snow is gone. Maverick, the big Dog and I took a two mile walk in the morning mist and then I dittoed that with Perseus, The Little Guy. Nice to be able to walk around outside without being bundled up like a kid in a snowsuit. (Remember those, older folks?)
It looks like some road gigs may be coming my way, but these are still thoughts and nothing is even close to being written in stone. Based on ongoing discussions my colleagues and I have, it will be a very long time (if ever) that touring returns to pre-2020 levels. That said, what else are we going to do except, well… the best we can.
Well, it’s always warm in the Fur Peace Station, so I hope to ‘see’ you all there tonight.
Stay well!
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
March 24, 1919-February 22, 2021
When I moved to the Bay Area in Northern California in 1962 I settled in Santa Clara, where I was to go to school. San Francisco was a Mecca to me back then. The whole Beat headspace had been calling my name for years. Santa Clara was a backwater, but San Francisco was less than fifty miles away. As soon as I was able to find a like-minded spirit with a car, we saddled up and headed north up the 101.
North Beach had been calling my name for a long time. Coming back from the Philippines some months before, a stop at an English-speaking bookstore in Tokyo had outfitted me with some Henry Miller books… hard if not impossible to find in the States back then. At City Lights Bookstore there on Columbus Avenue in North Beach, all things were possible from The Rosy Crucifixion to Black Spring. That was 59 years ago, and at that callow age all things were still possible.
A couple or so years later in 1966, Jefferson Airplane would play a show at the Fillmore Auditorium. That in itself would not be that interesting. In some respects, the Airplane was almost like a band in residence. I lived up the street from the Fillmore in the Western Addition and the other band members did not live far away.
Anyway, the ‘opening’ act that night was Lawrence Ferlinghetti and the young Russian poet Andrei Voznesensky. Lawrence read, then Andrei read… then Lawrence read the English translations of the work that Andrei had just manifested. Hard to imagine an unformatted ‘rock’ show like that today. Bill Graham wasn’t into cookie cutter shows, that’s for sure!
Bill would die in 1991, Andrei in 2010 and Lawrence in 2021.
As Lawrence said, ‘The greatest poem is lyric life itself.
Fair winds and following seas brother!
Feb. 23, 2021
#38 was yet another good time for us here at the Fur Peace Ranch. Instead of waiting until our 8 o’clock start time, we started recording at four. We’ve had some nasty weather here (I know we’re not alone) and the temperature dropped to 8 degrees F last night. We just couldn’t have our people driving these country roads late at night under those conditions. Things look like they’re warming up, if a little rainy. We’ll be live and in person for #39!
While I’m making corrections, for years I’ve been crediting Snooks Eaglin with Uncle Sam (or Questionaire Blues as it is also called.) I also went back last night and checked the Folkways LP I have been referencing. The song is not there. Armed with these facts, I can’t remember where I got the song and why I blamed Snooks. Could it have been Ian Buchanan? Perhaps, but that’s not even an educated guess. I stand corrected… the true facts may be lost in antiquity.
Moving on… the set list from last night:
Jorma Kaukonen 9, 2021
Quarantine Concert Series #38
The Fur Peace Station
Darwin, Ohio
Saturday, February 19, 2021
Like I said… 8 degrees when I got up this morning… and then things started to warm. After Izze’s volleyball practice, we collected Vanessa and drove to Columbus for a delicious dinner at Akai Hana, one of Columbus’ premier Asian eatery.
Back home we look forward to warmer if rainy days. Got some great ideas already for #39.
Like so much of our country, Southeast Ohio is cold, cold, cold. My RV is nestling in it’s shed waiting for warmer days and a trip out into the world. As I was walking the dogs this morning in the 18 degree chill, I remembered that years ago in northern Sweden while speed skating I used to imagine I heard the wound of wolves in the darkness that wrapped most of the winter days. I realize now that those circling creatures were only heard by me as I tried to navigate a dark season in my life.
Now the only dark season is the winter outside our windows and the sounds of keening are real too as coyotes roam through our forest here at the Fur Peace Ranch.
Good times!
I’ve had my second Pfizer shot, Spring is distantly visible and we’ve got a live Quarantine Concert (to wit #38) for you all tonight! How good does it have to get?
I don’t have the link for tonight’s Quarantine Concert yet but just go to YouTube at 8PM and find Fur Peace TV and we’ll all ‘see’ you then!
Here is the YouTube page link.
More will be revealed.
Stay well!
Here is the link folks!
Yesterday I spent almost four hours manhandling five hundred pounds of salt melt on our driveway… which is almost a quarter of a mile long. Myron and I got back from Nashville just in time to miss the storm there, and welcome the storm here. The live music experience is always rewarding and in an odd way, so is dealing with winter. I enjoy the physicality of it and am more than grateful that at 80 I still have the strength and endurance to do so. I remember getting frostbite back in Jãmtland in northern Sweden back in the 70’s. At least I learned to feel that coming so I can avoid it. Hard earned knowledge is priceless.
Today the girls and I shoveled and spread more salt for a couple of hours… trimming the morning’s accumulation and getting ready for the onslaught of the evening storm.
A little earlier as I was writing down some guitar serial numbers I got a call from my old friend John Hammond, the great blues artist. He and I have been friends for sixty two years. We were both at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio in 1959 when he brought tapes of what we would come to know as the two Robert Johnson LP’s from New York. John was already well versed in the idiom and I was just starting out. Rev. Davis called out to me in a more approachable way as far as a musical direction but back then we were surrounded by the great ones, many of whom were still alive. Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Howling Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson (both one and two), Hubert Sumlin, Champion Jack Dupree, John Lee Hooker… so many great ones. I would see John Lee at Gerde’s Folk City in 1960. He was surrounded by beautiful ladies. Blues was looking good to say the least.
John would become the John Hammond we know within six months with a Columbia record deal and gigs across the country. I would move to California in 1962 and finish college at the University Of Santa Clara while I developed my style and ability to perform. John would stop by Santa Clara in late ’62 on his way north after gigs in LA. He was driving a ’56 Ford Victoria… Black and white with a white interior. Glass packs and fender skirts, of course… We hung out together for a couple of days and drove up to Fremont before the three digit interstates. We hiked through the cliffs surrounded by petroglyphs. Two young friends starting on a path that would become the highway of their lives. The petroglyphs are gone having made way for an eight lane highway, but the two friends are still here and still playing music.
The rise of 60’s ‘modern’ rock and roll changed my world in more ways than I can really count but without that time spent playing tiny coffee houses with a guitar and sometimes a mike, none of that would have happened. To be so fortunate to realize that you have a true calling when you are young is miraculous! As I transited from being Jerry Kaukonen the folk singer to being Jorma Kaukonen the lead guitar for Jefferson Airplane I experienced a dimensional shift. Life is indeed a funny old dog.
On a cold, grey, snowy day it is good to have these thoughts to keep one’s soul warm.
Mine is warm indeed…
The summer I have been thinking about today has nothing to do with seasons…
