Sunshine Music Festival returns to St. Petersburg
Jorma Kaukonen's really excited about coming to St. Petersburg this weekend. He's going to get to see one of his favorite bands.
"For me, the best thing about it is that I'm going to get to see so much great music," Kaukonen said in a phone interview from his southeast Ohio home. "To be at the show with Susan and Derek, that's going to be amazing. It'll be a great show for me." Susan and Derek are Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks, who front the Tedeschi Trucks Band. They're headlining the Sunshine Music Festival, which will be at Vinoy Park in downtown St. Petersburg on Saturday.
"Susan's an amazing guitarist," Kaukonen said. "And Derek can do anything -- rock, blues, even Indian music. We got into Indian music in the '60s, but basically we just smoked a lot of pot and tried to sound like Indian musicians. Derek has actually studied with the masters."
Besides being one of Tedeschi Trucks' biggest fans, Kaukonen is a legendary musician himself, and he knows a little bit about the 1960s. He was the lead guitarist for Jefferson Airplane, one of the defining bands of the era.
Since then, his most high-profile project has been his band Hot Tuna, which he formed with Jefferson Airplane bassist Jack Casady in 1969. It was supposed to be aside project, but it has lasted for nearly half a century.
"Basically, I get to play music with my friends," Kaukonen said. "Jack and I have been buddies since 1959, inside and outside of music."
In St. Petersburg, Kaukonen will be playing a solo show. "Just me and my guitar," he said.
His speciality is American roots music, but he's likely to dip into the Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna canons. He still loves to play "Embryonic Journey," the virtuosic acoustic guitar instrumental from the Airplane's breakout album, "Surrealistic Pillow."
"I've learned and forgotten and re-learned a lot of songs," he said. "Some have fallen by the wayside. The ones that have remained are the ones that I still have fun playing, and that's one of them."
Kaukonen was only in Jefferson Airplane for about eight years, and the band split more than 40 years ago. But it's still a big part of his life and his musical legacy.
"I don't go back and listen to my old stuff too much," he said. "But I was listening to some old Airplane and I said to Jack, 'You know, we were pretty good.'" He still keeps in touch with his old band mates, including Marty Balin, who lives part-time in Tampa. He even performs with them in various combinations from time to time. Singer Grace Slick doesn't perform any more, but he still talks to her regularly "because she's so much fun to talk to."
Beside Tedeschi Trucks and Kaukonen, The Sunshine Music Festival features Indigo Girls, Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue, Joanne Shaw Taylor, the Bobby Lee Rodgers Trio, the Jerry Douglas Band, the Revivalists, Hard Working Americans and Karl Denson's Tiny Universe.
Details: 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m. Jan. 16, Vinoy Park, 701 Bayshore Drive NE, St. Petersburg. Tickets $49.99 general, $99.99 reserved seats, $189.99 VIP. Information: sunshinemusicfestival.com.
Marty Clear, features writer/columnist, can be reached at 941-708-7919. Follow twitter.com/martinclear.
This story was originally published January 13, 2016 at 6:16 PM with the headline "Sunshine Music Festival returns to St. Petersburg ."