I drove our daughter to Athens high School a week or so ago so she could be there for the last day of school. What a concept. I actually remember that age. She’s in for a ride just like we were. Her fifteenth birthday is right around the corner and she’s working at Avalanche Pizza in town. If you’re in town… order a Hot Tuna Pie and tell them, Jorma sent you. She’ll be a junior next year. Life is fraught with excitement and change.
Nessa and I hosted QC 50 on Saturday and all of you who took the ride with us for the last year and a half need to know how much this meant to my collective family. We are all in it together… and though we would have done it anyway… you made it all the more worthwhile. The Quarantine Concert Series has given me a new sense of family… the family of man.
Thanks for that!
Drone Shot by Jorma Kaukonen
It was cold on Saturday so Jack and I bundled up but seeing live people in the audience helped keep us warm.
Quarantine Concert #50
Hot Tuna 2, 2021
Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady
Fur Peace Ranch Depot Stage
Darwin, Ohio
Saturday, May 29, 2021
- Trouble In Mind
- Highway Song
- Song For The High Mountain
- Broken Highway
- Ain’t In No Hurry
- How Long Blues
- Turn My Life Down
- Great Divide Revisited
- Let Us Get Together Right Down Here
- Good Shepherd
- Come Back Baby
- True Religion
We’ll be leaving for Florida tomorrow morning and we are so excited about starting to work again.
More will be revealed!
Photo by Jorma Kaukonen
Yeah… so David Flammang and Jenny drove in from Greene Iowa with a bunch of Flammang Guitars. I’ve been playing two of David’s J-35 esque guitars and they are dandies. One of the things I love about David’s designs is that they are not clones. He has a lot of evolving ideas and creates many styles as you may be able to see in this little picture. Each guitar is quite different! It’s always guitar heaven around here, but this weekend I was positively beatified!
Selfie by Vanessa
Great times for all of us.
Our daughter sees the end of high school looming… Two years might seem like a long time to her, but we know it will go by in the blink of an eye! The Quarantine Concert Series came in for a landing… but wait, I hear there is going to be a bonus round. QC 50A… stay tuned, we’ll keep you posted!
I’ve posted this before… but it never gets old to me!
My Daughter Asleep
Carrying a child,
I carry a bundle of sleeping
future appearances.
I carry my daughter
adrift on my shoulder,
dreaming her slender dreams
and I carry her beneath the window,
watching her moon lit palm open and close
like a tiny folded map,
each line a path that leads where I can’t go,
so that I read her palm not knowing what I read
and
walk with her in moon light on the landing,
not knowing with whom I walk,
making invisible prayers to go on with her where
I can’t go,
conversing with so many unknowns that must know her more
intimately than I do.
And so to these unspoken shadows and this broad night
I make a quiet request to the great parental darkness
to hold her when I cannot, to comfort her when I am gone,
to help her learn to love the unknown for itself,
to take it gladly like a lantern for the way before her,
to help her see where ordinary light will not help her,
where happiness has fled, where faith will not reach.
My prayer tonight for the great and hidden symmetries of life
to reward this faith I have and twin her passages of loneliness with friendship,
her exiles with home coming, her first awkward steps with promised onward leaps.
May she find in all this, day or night, the beautiful centrality of pure opposites,
may she discover before she grows old, not to choose so easily between past and present,
may she find in one or the other her gifts acknowledged.
And so as I helped to name her, I help to name these powers,
I bring to life what is needed, I invoke the help she’ll want
following those moonlit lines into a future uncradled by me but parented by all I call.
As she grows away from me, may these life lines grow with her, keep her safe,
so
with my open palm whose lines have run before her to make a safer way,
I hold her smooth cheek and bless her this night into all these other unknown
nights to come.
-David Whyte
Amen Brother David!
Tomorrow morning Jack and I set sail in the RV’s.
More from the halfway point.
If I missed the post regarding the design of the 2021 tour shirt please forgive me ; if not; what is the meaning of it. Florida experiences an earthquake and I bet that can be traced to when Jack plugged in and hit his first notes! I can see the headline now…..Hot Tuna finally makes it back to Florida and Casady causes a rare earthquake while warming up ……
All one can say is, “what’s not to love?”
Thank you Jorma, ‘Nessa, Myron, Andie, Izze, and all the FPR family close in Meigs County and in far flung points abroad. What a ride it’s been! Many thanks.
Wonderful post. Try not to blink my friend because she’s going to go from high school to college and graduated from that before you open that eye again.
Thanks for Q50. Dug it.
Drive safe.
See you 12/4 @ the Capital.
Izzy, Andy, Myron. Vanessa, John, Jack and Jorma, Your generosity over the past year
certainly soothed countless souls on this Long, Strained Trip that was cast upon us. Safe travels and good health to all. Looking forward to seeing you on the road. Saturday nights will not be the same but thats a positive step toward what I can only hope to be a cautious return to some semblance decency throughout the land.
My first Tuna show was November 1976 at the Capitol Theater in Passaic, NJ. That show, or most of it anyway, is available on iTunes. Coming on 45 years now. (Sure do wish they’d release that Palladium-WNEW broadcast from around the same time.)
The Q series was truly a guide through the chaos for me. Thank you with thoughts of love. Peace✌🏻️❤️Love All Ways🔥🚲🌹🙏🏻🖖🏼
Turn my life down ! Is it true Jack is going to sing Coming back to me?
If you go to the Flammang Guitars facebook page, he has posted a couple of videos of Jorma and Jack practicing. Bonus tracks. Nice to watch.
Jorma:
It’s hard to express what an amazing journey it was to travel with you through those Saturday night shows. The first concert I ever attended in NYC was Hot Tuna @ Carnegie Hall in 1972. HT was my first deep exposure to country blues, and all these years later, I’m a contributing writer for Living Blues magazine. I had the pleasure of reviewing The River Flows last year. What you did with those quarantine shows was truly groundbreaking. I can’t think of another example of an artist engaging so intimately with the audience over such an extended period of time. You drew upon the hard times we all experienced with the pandemic and created something uplifting that enhanced all our lives. I don’t know what next Saturday night will be like for me, but you, Vanessa, Jack, John, and the crew will certainly be missed. I look forward to seeing you down the road. Stay safe. Keep on trucking’. Peace. Bob Cataliotti
Hi Jorma,
I asked you about Long John Baldry the other day, and it enabled me to go back and look up his life. I read about so many things I wasn’t aware of. So asking that helped me .. thanks lol. You guys have many artists in common that you worked with , one thing I found out.
The other thing I have is will you post a set list for the Sunday, May 30 Tuna show? I understand if you can’t because this might be “50A”
Enjoy Florida
This quarantine concert series was a real eye opener for me. It fostered a new found obsession/love for Hot Tuna. Re-discovering and re-acquainting myself with the Tuna catalogue was awesome. You dusting off some old favorites took me back in time! Who says you can’t go home????? Moreover, I met and “friended” soooo many great people via chat, this blog or Facebook. Can’t thank you enough for making this happen. Eagerly await a return of Hot Tuna to Colorado. Cheers!
Beautiful post that sums it all up: family, friends, music.
Thank you so much for everything. And have a great time time Florida.