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Jorma Kaukonen answered questions, read from his new memoir and played a few tunes when he held court in front of 60 devotees Nov. 15 inside Bexley, Ohio’s, Gramercy Books.

The guitarist’s only bookstore stop on his tour to promote “Been So Long: My Life and Music” was billed as “An Exclusive Evening with Jorma Kaukonen” and found the Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna co-founder perched on a barstool taking questions from former Rock and Roll Hall of Fame chair and Zeppelin Productions founder Alec Wightman and the audience; reading from the book; and showing off his unique picking style on chestnuts such as the Airplane’s “Embryonic Journey” and the “trad.” “How Long Blues.”

With his Jorma Kaukonen Martin custom edition guitar – serial No. 1 – at the ready, the musician and author was relaxed in jeans and a sport jacket, glasses perched on his head. For a riveting hour, he talked about playing Monterey Pop, Woodstock, Altamont and the Furthur Festivals, building his Fur Peace Ranch, just 100 minutes from Bexley, on a former pot farm in Meigs County, Ohio, and how his oldest friend and Airplane and Tuna collaborator Jack Casady is much more talkative than his onstage demeanor would suggest. 

Casady once told an interviewer, “We’ve wanted to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame since we were kids,” Kaukonen said in response to a question about his feelings about being inducted as a member of the Airplane. 

“I said, ‘Jack, they didn’t have a Rock Hall when we were kids,’” Kaukonen said. “But I knew what he meant. It’s cool.” 

The guitarist, who’s kept a journal most of his life, said he was moved to write the book after meeting with a publisher who wanted to bring in a ghost writer to take down stories of Kaukonen’s dealing with “people more famous than I am.” Those people include Janis Joplin, Jerry Garcia and Grace Slick, whom Kaukonen talks with on a regular basis in the wake of the recent deaths of Paul Kantner, Signe Anderson and Marty Balin and who has “no verbal boundaries whatsoever.”

But Kaukonen knew these people before they were famous and didn’t have dirt to share. 

Garcia produced Surrealistic Pillow when the Airplane and the Grateful Dead were still basically local bands in San Francisco and helped the Airplane turn noise into song, even though Kaukonen said his outro solo in “Somebody to Love” is “flat.” As for Joplin, he knew her in her “Bessie Smith days” before Big Brother & the Holding Company. And, besides, “we didn’t have sex or do drugs together,” and Kaukonen wouldn’t embellish, so the publisher lost interest.

And that’s a good thing as the guitarist decided to write “Been So Long” on his own and his readings demonstrated his strong storytelling abilities:

“Our first moments of existence grow in the darkness of our mother’s wombs,” he read. “At some point the moment comes when we venture from darkness to the light of the world. It seems that we have been waiting for a long time. My first memories of light in the world would seem to be about 2 or 3 years of age, and I remember this because that light came to me in the form of my mother’s song. … Music seemed to me to be the reward for being alive.”

Gregarious, contented and articulate, he spoke lovingly of his friend Ian Buchanan, who taught him to fingerpick, and of his wife, Vanessa, and his children, Zachary and Izze. Both of Kaukonen’s kids make music, but the musician, who turns 78 in December, said he is confident they will each make lives for themselves independent of Dad.

Before retiring to a table to sign copies of the books that came as part of the ticket price, Kaukonen’s answered “lots” when an audience member asked what is still on his bucket list. He’s grateful that his health is holding up – he knocked his forehead in place of wood when he said this – and is looking forward to long motorcycle rides in Southeast Ohio, spending time with friends and family at Fur Peace and taking a trip to Italy with his family next summer.

Thus ended the formal program, a program the at-ease Kaukonen made so informal that you half-expected him to invite you on the European vacation with him.