Jorma Kaukonen

Blue Country Heart
Jorma Kaukonen
Columbia

Jorma Kaukonen’s career has gone from longhaired flower child in the Jefferson Airplane to head boogieman in Hot Tuna to shorthaired flatpicker and music camp owner (Fur Peace Ranch in Ohio). All along he’s played the hell out of a guitar, and this time he does it with some rather talented picking buddies. Blue Country Heart features Kaukonen on guitar, Sam Bush on mandolin and fiddle, Jerry Douglas on Dobro, Byron House on bass and Bela Fleck’s tasty banjo on a few cuts. The material is all “old-timey” country standards, such as “Blue Railroad Train” from The Delmore Brothers, and a handful of Jimmie Rodgers cuts, played in a nice relaxed style. Maybe too relaxed — a little fire would have livened things up a bit, and given some of these guys more room to play, but one imagines that this record is aimed somewhat at the O Brother, Where Art Thou market. Nothing wrong with that, but it does mean that some of the inherent wildness of this type of music is toned down somewhat. Jorma still plays a great guitar, and his vocals, while sounding eerily like Jerry Garcia at points, deliver the songs like he wrote ’em. This is a good record, make no mistake — I’d just like to see this band live with a few beers in ’em, letting loose.

Originally published Ink 19, 2002

Jerry Garcia/David Grisman

Grateful Dawg — The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Jerry Garcia/David Grisman
Acoustic Disc

It can certainly be argued that Jerry Garcia and The Grateful Dead did as much to introduce bluegrass to the masses as anyone in the last 30 years. The crowd at a recent Sam Bush concert looked (and acted) like one you would see at a Dead show — tapers abounded, hacky sacks got kicked. Garcia’s “Friend of the Devil” has become a bluegrass jam standard, and some of The Dead’s finer moments came from their treatment of bluegrass classics.

Garcia wanted as a youth to become a Bluegrass Boy — that is, a member of Bill Monroe’s band. Lacking the nerve to ever introduce himself to Big Mon, he instead found like-minded individuals and began to jam. The most fruitful meeting might have been his encounter with mandolinist David Grisman in 1964. The two formed a life-long friendship and working relationship, forming the legendary “Old and In the Way” band — Garcia on banjo, Grisman on mandolin, Peter Rowan (a former Bluegrass Boy) on guitar, Vassar Clements on fiddle, and Jerry Kahn on bass. As the years went on, Garcia devoted his energies to The Dead, and Grisman developed his own style of music, known as “Dawg” music, a blend of bluegrass, jazz, and rock that revolutionized acoustic music.