But if you’re talking about making it
through this cold winter month one day at a time, the Tuna’s show made
the night a long one to get through, which the audience seemed to find
a comforting warmth in despite the 25-degree temperatures outside. The
band took the stage just after 9 p.m. and only paused to take a brief
20-minute intermission during their 25-song set that swam till well
after 1 a.m.
And despite the weekday all-nighter, the
Tuna’s ability to tap into a sonic cosmic continuum that few musicians
have the ability to fly caused the 300-plus in attendance—split equally
between 20- and-30-year-olds and 40- and 50-year-olds—to disregard the
fact that most of them had to get up early for work as hardly anyone
left before the final notes were reeled in.
After the Haggard ballad, the Tuna
followed with a cut by an oft-forgotten innovator of the blues pianist
of the 1930s, Lloyd Carr, called “How Long Blues” that was first played
on their self-titled 1970 debut album. The theme of the song is a
contemplative continuation of the previous “Making it through
December,” as the lost-my-best-woman lyrics {“How long has that evenin’
train been gone/ it’s been gone since the blood red sun went down”}
suggest the feeling of those long dark nights of winter can recur
anytime of the year given the right kind of wrong luck.
The name of the band was coined when an
associate yelled out “Hot Tuna” in response to the lyric of the Blind
Boy Fuller song “Keep on Truckin’” that posed the question, “What’s
that smell like fish, oh babe?” For those who have never tasted Tuna,
the band formed out of the peak lineup of the Jefferson Airplane of the late 1960s. Sensing that the band was on the cusp of falling apart, Airplane bassist Jack Casady and guitarist Kaukonen formed their own splinter group in anticipation.
While the Airplane was steeped in psychedelic indulgence,
Hot Tuna maintained more of traditional Americana vibe, playing
standard blues from a time that was then already long gone. But at the
Westcott, the Tuna proved they can tap down deep at the roots of the
American spirit, as the same music they played from the 1920s and 30s
nearly 40 years after in the late 1960s, had the crowd feeling those
same ethos this night in 2008 the same way it most likely did 40 years
ago. And it means more now than ever to see ambassadors trying to keep
the kindle of American dream aflicker.
That’s why these guys are still around, and that’s how
certain musicians transgress the stigma of just being “music” and take
it to another level. Casady and Kaukonen were revered as two of the
finest musicians of the late 1960s when they first taxied the runway on
the Jefferson Airplane, and their virtuosity has aged like a bottle of
vintage.
Kaukonen plays an intricately dexterous
Piedmont blues finger-picking style, in which the thumb plays the bass
line and the fingers play melody on the treble strings. Casady’s
rhythmic bass-as-a-lead mind-benders gave the Jefferson Airplane its
distinct and instantly recognizable sound. As Casady fits into the
category of “imitated but never duplicated,” like himself, Jimi Hendrix
went so far as to track him down and convince him to sit-in on some of
his live gigs with the Experience, as well as contribute bass on the
song “Voodoo Chile,” on his Electric Ladyland studio album. Fast-forwarding to the Westcott, joining them on stage this night were drummer Erik Diaz and multi-instrumentalist Barry Mitterhoff,
both as equally skilled as the former Airplane veterans. These four as
a collective do something many jazz musicians strive for: they’re as
equally appreciated by musicians as they are the casual fan.
And as all things pass, Hot Tuna has
always been their own entity and rarely—if ever—do they perform and/or
rest on their laurels from the Jefferson Airplane song catalog.
However, they did perform two songs that were part of the Airplane’s
repertoire, “Rock Me Baby,” made famous by Muddy Waters in the 1950s,
which Kaukonen sang on the 1968 Jefferson Airplane album Bless Its Pointed Little Head—arguably
and in this reviewer’s opinion, one of the best live albums of all
time. The other Airplane tune the hardcore fans let out a “hip-to”
cheer for was the instrumental “Embryonic Journey,” a song Kaukonen
composed for the Airplane’s landmark 1967 Surrealistic Pillow LP.
Aside from those two, the rest of the
night’s tunes were an aural trip down the American highway, with
lyrical stops at love, heartbreak, seeing the light and death—and all
the little mile-markers that connect those off-ramps.
Among the other crowd pleasers were “99 Year Blues” and “True Religion” off their 1972 album Burgers, as well as “Funky #7” and “Serpent of Dreams” off 1975’s America’s Choice.
Either the string players in the Tuna couldn’t make up their mind, or
they really do search out the philosopher’s note for every song as
there were 15 guitars sitting on stands across the stage that they
would trade off an on with for each new song. Naming every guitar would
be a hoot for all the musical techies out there, but as some of them
looked like survivors from the Airplane days, Kaukonen summed it up by
simply saying, “I love the sound of these vintage instruments” as he
was strapping himself with a new one.
The Tuna also performed the song “I Know
You Rider,” another traditional blues tune which many people in the
audience might have recognized from the concert repertoire of one of
the Airplane’s Haight-Ashbury neighbors, the Grateful Dead, seemed to
be a rejoinder of the December theme the band started off the night
with. The lyrics “The sun will shine in my back door someday/ March
winds will blow all my troubles away” reminded everyone that the
darkness of a blink lasts only as long you keep your eyes closed to
thoughts out of season.
—Tom Kahley
