Photos by Jeff Tamarkin

“I don’t know what that was but we’re keeping it! You’re on a tear now. That was some absolutely cool Jorma-esque shit!”

Producer Larry Campbell is shouting down to Jorma Kaukonen from behind the recording console at Levon Helm Studios in Woodstock, N.Y. Kaukonen, seated on a chair on the studio floor a few dozen feet below – headphones secure and guitar in hand – is peeling out electric lead guitar licks that will be overdubbed onto the digital master recording of “Easy Now Revisited,” the sequel to a song that appeared on Hot Tuna’s Phosphorescent Rat album back in 1973. Campbell, a multi-instrumentalist best known for his several years as a member of Bob Dylan’s band and for his work with Helm, The Band’s erstwhile drummer, is working on what will become Tuna’s first new studio album in two decades – a largely electric affair they’re calling Steady as She Goes. Campbell likes what he hears.

So does Jack Casady, Hot Tuna’s bassist since he and Kaukonen formed the group in the late ‘60s, when they were both still in Jefferson Airplane. Ensconced on a comfy sofa behind the board, Casady listens intently to the playback after Kaukonen’s latest run is inserted into the mix.

“Now that is some rock and roll!” he says as he, Campbell and engineer Justin Guip crack up with laughter.

The date is Dec. 6, 2010. Exactly 41 years ago to the day, Kaukonen and Casady were onstage at the Altamont Speedway in California, where the Airplane was a featured act on one of rock’s darkest days. That all seems like another lifetime now. Kaukonen, who will turn 70 in a couple of weeks, and Casady, 66, are well aware that many days have passed. But listening to their new work in the studio – and to their performances from the previous weekend at New York’s Beacon Theatre, where Hot Tuna put on two incendiary, guest-star-studded shows – it’s obvious that the quality of their artistry has not lessened in the slightest. If anything, their playing is more nuanced and creative today. And the new material that they’re recording, mostly written or co-written by Kaukonen, is some of their finest and most diverse to date. The inventive mandolinist Barry Mitterhoff and powerhouse drummer Skoota Warner fill out the current configuration of Hot Tuna which ranks alongside any iteration in the group’s history.

“I’ve never felt more at home and in tune with my instrument than I do now,” says Casady a few days later. “There are certain attitudes that you lose as you get older, but that doesn’t diminish what you have to say or your ability. You’re supposed to get better at this craftwork.”

Indeed, Steady as She Goes, which will be released this spring by Red House Records – the Minnesota-based indie label that issued Kaukonen’s last solo album, 2009’s River of Time – is unlike any other Hot Tuna record before it. The songs are tightly structured and intense in firepower like Hot Tuna always was in the old days, but also exhibit an accessibility that approaches classic pop at times. Having only reemerged in the past few years from an extended acoustic-only period, Tuna is enjoying the resurgence of electricity in their music, and they’ve reached a balance that’s wholly apropos of where the band members are as people and as musicians today.

The basic tracks, cut with the four current Hot Tuna members hashing out tunes simultaneously in the studio – unlike so many contemporary artists that piece recordings together electronically – have already been completed. New additions to the Tuna canon – the acoustic “Second Chances” (co-written by Mitterhoff), a funky, Memphis-style R&B tune called “Morning Interrupted,” the churning folk-rocker “A Little Faster” and the quasi-jazzy “Goodbye to the Blues,” have largely been wrapped – save for some last-minute touches. The gang is here now to add the augmentation and fine-tuning that makes a finished recording sound finished.

One highlight of the work in progress is a mid-tempo ballad titled “Angel of Darkness,” co-written by Campbell and Kaukonen. The crew commences on the afternoon of December 7 to flesh out the basic track. “Larry had half of that written and I finished the lyrics,” says Kaukonen after the session. “I’d never even heard it before we got to the studio but it’s a great song. I was proud to be asked to write on a song like that.”

Another co-write is “Smoke Rise Journey,” an unfinished tune that Casady brought to the table – only after they’d all convened in Woodstock did Campbell polish up the music and Kaukonen provide words. The band and producer created several tracks on the fly, tossing out ideas until a finished song emerged. “I guess it might be nice to have everything pre-rehearsed before you start recording,” says Kaukonen, “but in a way, I think it’s more exciting – especially with the team that we have now – to be able to do that stuff on the spot. You get some really unself-conscious creativity.”

Watching these seasoned pros at work in the studio is a treat. Campbell and Guip are perfectionists who don’t have reservations about going back over the tiniest detail until it’s just where they want it. For what seems like an hour, Campbell has Kaukonen replay, ad infinitum, a short run that he wants to use to shore up an instrumental break in a new rocker, “If This Is Love, I Want My Money Back.” With the volume and distortion cranked high, Kaukonen dutifully repeats the lick, playing it a slightly different way each time. The guitarist’s trademark sustain becomes part of the fabric of the overdub and on one take, he coaxes feedback from his instrument.

“Is that up all the way?” Campbell asks him from above.
“Of course it’s up all the way. I’m Jorma fucking Kaukonen!” the guitarist shouts back. Everyone in the room laughs.

With that lick locked down, Mitterhoff joins Kaukonen and they proceed to work out the harmonic lines of a guitar-mandolin duet.

“What I’m hearing,” Kaukonen says to his bandmate, “is a minimalistic, almost ‘Louie Louie’ kind of solo.”

Mitterhoff gets it immediately – it needs to be rawer – and they nail it quickly.

“Don’t lose that A lick,” Kaukonen instructs Campbell when they’ve finished. “That was the best A lick I ever played!”

Not every minute of a recording session is packed with creative excitement. Downtime is plentiful. While Campbell and Guip are mixing, hours can go by when nary a new lick is played and the same work-in-progress recording might be heard a hundred times while the technicians finesse it. A visitor dropping by during one of those times might wonder exactly what’s going on in this room – at one point, everyone except for the producer and engineer is engrossed in games or busywork on their smartphones or laptops. Casady, for one, hasn’t picked up his bass since the basic tracks were completed days ago. At this stage, he’s here primarily to support the others.

That’s all part of the process too – the mutual respect displayed by these pros toward one another is a large part of the reason that the music coheres so well. Kaukonen and Casady only have positive words to say about Campbell, and the feeling is mutual.

“I was always a Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna fan from the late ‘60s,” says Campbell after the sessions are done, “so my desire was to take the essence of those two musical entities, and what made them cool to me, and transfer it to what they’re doing now. Their musicality is fully intact.”
“Larry really becomes a member of the band,” says Kaukonen. The band’s trust in the producer is such that when Campbell descends from the board to the studio floor to demonstrate the attack he’d like Kaukonen to put into a guitar lick, the 50-year veteran doesn’t complain or take offense but watches closely, then adapts what Campbell has shown him to his own style.
“Some producers that some of my friends have worked with try to bend them to fit them into their mold or make them be who they think they ought to be,” Kaukonen says after the sessions. “Larry just lets us be us, but he came up with a bunch of great ideas.”

Campbell and Kaukonen first met about a decade ago while Jorma briefly served as a member of Phil Lesh and Friends. Lesh’s band opened for Bob Dylan who Campbell was playing guitar with at the time. The two met up again in 2007 for a New York event called the American Beauty Project, where various artists interpreted the songs from one of the best-loved Grateful Dead albums. That’s when, Jorma says, they bonded. Kaukonen subsequently asked Campbell to produce River of Time. Casady had not met Campbell until recently, however. Once he did, they hit it off like old friends.

“Everybody in the band trusted Larry’s thinking to follow through and see what the logical conclusion was, rather than cut him off at the knees,” says Casady. “There was no personality conflict and no musical conflict. That gives you the freedom to work on your stuff. So many musicians have encountered producers where they’ve felt that their freedom was infringed upon. For our purposes, our freedom was released.”

Levon Helm Studios is set back from the main road, deep in the country. It’s an open studio, which means that there is not glass separating the main room from the recording console. The wooden building that’s also used for Helm’s regular Midnight Ramble concerts, is airy and warm, but because of it’s rustic nature, if a car were to pull up or a dog bark outside, those sounds could find their way onto someone’s album. Still, it’s that very down-home quality that brings artists here to record.

“The vibe here is so incredible,” says Campbell. “The acoustics in this room – the physical makeup of this room – are really conducive to making good music. Then, there’s the ethereal quality. It just feels good in here.”
“The synchronicity of this whole thing is amazing,” adds Kaukonen.

Once the sessions are nearly over, Campbell assess how he thinks Hot Tuna’s loyal fan base will react to the project.

“All I’m thinking about is what pleases us,” he says. “Our hearts are in it so, hopefully, it will hit fans the same way. I just pinch myself that I’m lucky to be around cats like this. Their musicianship is something I’m totally in sympathy with and their personalities and humanity are just a joy to be around.”