Hot Tuna – North Shore Center, Skokie, Nov. 5, 2025
- chicagoblueseditor
- 13 hours ago
- 8 min read
By Mark Plotnick
Photos: Jim Summaria
Hot Tuna – North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie, IL
George Van Dusen Theatre
November 5th, 2025
By Mark Plotnick
Photos: Jim Summaria
Fifty-six years ago, I first experienced the musicianship of Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady as members of the Jefferson Airplane. The place was Chicago’s Aragon Ballroom and the venue conditions were far from ideal. But none of that troubled me. I was attending my first bona fide rock concert and witnessing one of my favorite bands.
So much had changed when on November 5th, 2025, I sat down in a comfortable seat to watch Hot Tuna perform at the Van Dusen Theater in Skokie, IL. After attending hundreds of concerts, I was now wearing hearing protection. This modern facility offered an array of amenities including excellent sound, clean bathrooms and refreshments that didn’t require rolling paper.
As for singer/songwriter/guitarist Jorma Kaukonen and bassist Jack Casady, they no longer looked and dressed like counterculture revolutionaries; “Hey, I'm dancing down the street, got a revolution…got a revolution.” And last but not least, Hot Tuna’s performance was many decibels quieter and more laidback. In fact, the evening had the vibe of a Garrison Keillor Prairie Home Companion show.
But what hadn’t changed was the exceptional musicianship and interplay between two long-time friends (over six decades) who’d been there and done that (Monterey Pop, Woodstock and Altamont). It was a bittersweet two hours knowing that father time was nipping at the heels of these Rock and Roll Hall of Famers and Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners as members of the Airplane.
But this night belonged to Hot Tuna. Jorma and Jack formed the unit back in 1969 when they desired to play and perform American roots music outside of the Airplane’s repertoire. As Hot Tuna, the two have performed thousands of concerts and released more than two dozen records.
Tonight’s stop in Skokie marked the midway point of a twelve-city tour that concludes in mid-December. The first five stops are billed as Acoustic Hot Tuna shows while the remaining dates feature Jorma with special guests. With Jorma turning 85 on December 23, several performances have been designated as birthday celebrations.
The tour also coincides with the November 28th (Record Store Day Black Friday) release of Jorma Kaukonen’s new album Wabash Avenue. This double vinyl package includes a collection of unreleased tracks from 1965 that have been restored from the original reel-to-reel recordings along with bonus interviews and other goodies.
THE BAND
Ably supporting Jorma and Jack on this particular night was harmonica virtuoso Ross Garren who is also a recording artist, keyboardist and composer. Garren added complexity, atmosphere and surprises to the evenings compositions. Meanwhile, the drumming of Justin Guip – a long time Hot Tuna collaborator and three-time Grammy winner - provided percussive punch and steady rhythmic momentum.
As the four quietly took their seated positions on stage, the audience let out a roar with pockets of spontaneous “whoops.” For obvious reasons, there was a sense of specialness in the air.
Sitting at a small table to the left side of the stage was Garren, armed with several harmonicas and metal muting devices. To his right was Jack Casady, one of the world’s most lauded bassists who Paul McCartney asked to meet when the Beatles traveled to the West Coast.
Casady treated concertgoers by playing his Guild Starfire II that he performed with at Woodstock. The instrument disappeared shortly thereafter and following modifications, was found and returned to Jack around 2015. This historic instrument was gorgeous in tone, artistic design and customized electronics.
The Washington DC native has long favored hollow body basses that offer a more open, acoustic-like sound and enables him to play walking bass lines that are melodic and fluid. Jack has long admired stand-up bass players like Charlie Mingus but has been equally influenced by the relentless drive of James Brown’s rhythm section.
Seated to the right of Jack was Jorma, the finger picking expert playing his treasured Flammang acoustic guitar built by luthier David Flammang in Greene, Iowa. The guitarist has been long respected as an interpreter of folk, country, jazzy, ragtime and gospel blues along with his rock ‘n’ roll credentials.
THE PERFORMANCE
So, what’s with the name Hot Tuna? Well, it’s better than the original name Jorma and Jack considered (hint: hot + crap). The Tuna part was derived from a Blind Boy Fuller song with the lyric “What’s that smell like fish, mama?” Don’t you love the origins of band names!
But back to the show. Throughout, Jorma kept his words to the audience and bandmembers to a minimum. After sixty years of friendship and collaboration, simple nods, non-verbal glances and telepathy were Jorma and Jack’s forms of communication. Tonight, the music was what mattered more than narrative.
Surprisingly, it wasn’t the evening’s two stars who launched the first song. Jorma’s song “Been So Long” opened with deep atmospheric notes emanating from Ross Garren’s bass harmonica.
Jorma then remarked about where a lot of his friends were going due to advanced age and he wasn’t referring to retirement communities in Florida. Frank Goodman’s “Water Song” revealed the meaning:
“Come hell or high water, the creek gonna rise.
We’re still hanging on but we’re dropping like flies.
Oh Lord, where have my old (good) friends gone?”
The song offered an example of Jorma’s three-fingered picking technique. Goodman - an outstanding practitioner of several acoustic blues styles – had sent Jorma the song’s lyrics and chord chart so that he could learn and perform the song. The Yonkers-born Goodman was impressed when he received a video of Jorma’s rendition.
Speaking of fingerpicking styles, Jorma was heavily influenced by his now deceased mentor Ian Buchanan, Reverend Gary Davis (who was a two fingered picker) and other folk blues artists well before he mastered electric guitar playing with the Airplane. In fact, Jorma acoustically backed Janis Joplin on folk blues recordings made at his house in 1964 and released a few years ago as the LP The Legendary Typewriter Tapes.
Jorma followed the Goodman tune with three of his own: “Great Divide: Revisited”, ”Letter to the North Star” and “Too Many Years.” During the song “Great Divide,” Jorma sang,
“Time goes by my window like shadows on the sun.
It often seems to me that life’s like living on the run.”
It’s a sentiment many of us can relate to. Before launching the song “Too Many Years,” Jorma took the opportunity to introduce “my good friend Ross Garren.”
The instrumental collaboration between Jorma and Jack appeared seamless on these songs and others. According to Jorma, it comes from playing with Jack for so many decades. As he puts it, “The art of playing together comes from listening and mutual respect. But it’s also about taking chances…If mistakes happen, nobody dies…blues is about feeling the music as it happens, which leads to different notes, different interactions and different outcomes.”
Despite a printed setlist taped to the stage, Jorma put the “taking chances” credo to work by deviating from the setlist from the sixth song onward. Identifying songs became challenging, but Jorma resumed with “Come Back Baby,” a traditional blues written and recorded by Mississippi born pianist Walter Davis.
Ray Charles made “Come Back Baby” a top ten rhythm ‘n’ blues hit in 1955, but Kaukonen and the band took the tune further back to its country blues roots. Ross Garren blew some old school blues on harmonica.
Following the song, Jorma turned to Jack and said, “You’re so well behaved tonight.” The meaning behind this remark was known only to the men who simply smiled and chuckled. The Hot Tuna unit then dipped into the Jefferson Airplane bag for “Trial by Fire’ from the band’s 1972 Long John Silver album. It was the first of two Airplane songs Jorma and Jack would cover.
For many of us, it’s common practice to mentally compare songs we hear in concert against versions previously recorded. I found myself doing this for the song “Sea Child” which Hot Tuna first recorded in 1972 for the Burgers album. That version sounded like Volunteers-period Airplane. Although tonight’s acoustic version sounded quite different, Jorma and Jack captured the 1972 intensity by stomping their feet in unison as Jack’s eyebrows “danced” and his head “bass-necked,” both signature Casady quirks.
Concertgoers erupted with the opening notes of “Hesitation Blues,” a concert favorite with tricky tempo changes. This traditional folk blues has been credited to several writers but adapted by many more including Kaukonen’s idol Reverend Gary Davis. Jorma also backed Janis Joplin on a version the two recorded at Jorma’s house back in 1964.
Jorma often tells humorous anecdotes about his daughter and tonight was no different. He wrote the song “Take Your Time” for his daughter during the pandemic but doubted she’d ever listen to it. She once told her father, “You know dad, this is not my kind of music.” But it was the kind of music those in attendance wanted to hear.
It was time for some ragtime blues by Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton. The actual title of his 1939 song “Winin’ Boy Blues” has been debated and like Morton’s nickname, the song contains sexually suggestive idioms.
It was back to old time gospel with “Good Shepherd,” a traditional folk song that appeared on Jefferson Airplane’s 1969 album Volunteers. Kaukonen sang lead vocal and was credited with the Airplane’s arrangement that included elements of gospel and blues…a reminder of the Bay Area band’s original folk roots.
Ross Garren stepped forward with a riveting harmonica solo that gave tonight’s rendition a haunting dimension. So much so that the eyes of Jorma, Jack and drummer Justin Guip were transfixed on the harmonicist. After the extended jam, Jack Casady rolled his shoulder and smiled.
Then Jorma remarked, “We’re doing one of our favorites.” Fans anticipated the start of the Reverend Gary Davis song “Death Have No Mercy.” Jorma’s vocals matched the Reverend’s often darkly religious subject matter:
“Death don't have no mercy in this land.
He'll come to your house and he won't stay long. You'll look in the bed and somebody will be gone.”
Many years ago, Reverend Davis’s music grabbed Jorma viscerally. According to Kaukonen, Davis steered away from a traditional, repetitive blues vocabulary. He excelled at using inventive transitional chords, something Kaukonen admired.
The guitarist of Finnish and Russian Jewish ancestry was at his most talkative point of the evening when he thanked everyone for coming. He then jested about fabulous Hot Tuna merchandise in the lobby.
“Ice Age,” the evening’s pre-encore closing, featured a moment when the ensemble ventured into jam territory. The tempo quickened as Jack’s bass lines countered Jorma aggressive and complex chording patterns. His Guild Starfire II bass delivered a smooth and pronounced tone that made every note deliciously audible. Justin Guip’s drumming picked up the pace until the song ended.
It didn’t take long before the ensemble returned for an encore…the instrumental folk meets rock “Water Song” from the 1972 Hot Tuna album Burgers. Jorma remarked, “I imagine we’re going to get together again.” Was this comment meant for Jack or for those in attendance? Maybe both?
In a 1993 Bass Player magazine interview, Jack cited the “Water Song” an example of how he’s able to take the bass guitar out of the realm of a linear instrument. “Jorma’s approach allows me to play chords, to pick up and finish phrases he starts, and to play melodies while he provides accompaniment. It’s the best example of the melodic bass concept I’ve developed in this context.”
The band then left their playing positions, took a bow to deafening applause, said goodnight and left the stage at the two-hour mark.
Now in their 80s, Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady are clearly comfortable in their own skins and still enjoy playing together. They remain highly skilled and inspired by the music that means the most to them today. Casady once said, “I think that as you grow older, you’ve got more to say in a different way…and my favorite show is really the one I’m about to play.”
Tonight, both men and their outstanding supporting cast proved his point.
Jim Summaria began professionally photographing rock concerts in 1973 at the age of 19 when he became the staff photographer for the Chicago rock concert promoter Flip Side Productions. Jim's photos have been published in numerous books, magazines and CDs. His rock ‘n’ roll photos have been viewed at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the Illinois Rock & Roll Museum and Hall of Fame on Rt.66 and the Grammy Awards. Jim and writer Mark Plotnick co-authored the books Classic Rock: Photographs From Yesterday & Today and the October 2024 release ‘70s Chicagoland Rock Concerts, available on Amazon. Jim and Mark also co-host the radio podcast That Rock Show on the Illinois Rock & Roll Museum platform.
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