CONCERT REVIEW:

HOT TUNA (with special guest Susan Tedeschi)

THE DAVID BROMBERG QUINTET

THE WILBUR, BOSTON

NOVEMBER 28, 2021

"How Long Blues" by Hot Tuna. The Wilbur, Boston, November 28, 2021

All Hot Tuna @ Wilbur photographs (c) Harold Lepidus 2021

“Jorma wails, Jack sails …”

Fifty years ago, I became a fan of both David Bromberg and (via the Jefferson Airplane) Hot Tuna. At the time, the only way for me to find out about cool music was through music magazines, Top 40 AM radio, television appearances, and word of mouth. My classmate Keith Foelsch was the only kid in my grade that had any cool records. I’d go to his house, we’d hang out in his room, listen to his LPs, and talk about music. One day he put on Jefferson Airplane’s 1971 album, Bark. I was intrigued by the mystique and the elaborate packaging, as well as the groovy sounds coming from his speakers. I already had the Woodstock triple album, but for someone just learning about this stuff, Bark was really out there. I loved everything about it, but what I really gravitated towards were songs written by Jorma Kaukonen, which I soon learned were proto-Hot Tuna songs. The following year, I saw the second Tuna album, First Pull Up, Then Pull Down, probably on sale in a waterfall rack at a Korvettes department store, and bought it without having any idea what it would sound like.

I was hooked.

DAVID FROST SHOW with George Harrison, Ravi Shankar, and, at 26:00, David Bromberg.(Very short audio excerpt only, unfortunately)

I also remember the exact day I became aware of David Bromberg. He was a guest on the December 3, 1971, episode of The David Frost Show, along with George Harrison and Ravi Shankar, who were there to bring pressure on Capitol Records to release The Concert For Bangla Desh benefit album, already four months old at this point, and about to miss the lucrative Christmas holiday shopping season. I didn’t have any idea who Bromberg was, although I now know he had already played with Bob Dylan on a couple of his albums, among many other luminaries. On the Frost show, Bromberg performed two humorous original songs, “Suffer to Sing the Blues'' and “The Holdup.” The latter was co-written with Harrison, and host Frost cajoled the ex-Beatles to join in to replicate some of his backing vocals from the album track, which was quite a coup since the ex-Fabs rarely performed live in those days. Bromberg’s eponymous debut LP was released the following year, which also featured an uncredited Dylan playing harmonica on the closing song.

One of the many advantages of growing up close to New York City was being able to tune into one of the first underground rock radio stations, WNEW-FM. Since I was in high school at the time and too young to go to clubs, I still got to enjoy their live broadcasts of Bromberg’s Bottom Line gigs. Soon after I moved to Boston in 1977, I finally got to see Bromberg in concert at Boston’s Symphony Hall, with Steve Goodman as the support act. Bromberg was at the height of his powers, with a great band. I wish I remembered more about the specifics of the show, but Bromberg was not only a master instrumentalist, as were the members of his band, but he was funny and entertaining, as great as the Bottom Line shows I’d heard.

Over the years I’d occasionally go see Bromberg and Kaukonen whenever I could. I remember attending shows by each of them in the winter of 1979, if I remember correctly, at Boston's Paradise Theater. Doc and Merle Watson were also in the mix at the time. I remember this was in sharp contrast to all the cool and au courant New Wave shows I was attending around then at the same venue - The Jam, Graham Parker and the Rumour, Rockpile, the Ramones, the B-52s, Iggy, etc. I was thinking that while I’ll always love the music of such Americana treasures as Bromberg and Tuna, it felt like music from a long lost era, the ancient past, it sounded - dare I say it? - dated. However with 20/20 hindsight, it's those New Wave acts that fill me with nostalgia these days, while David and Jorma’s music sounds timeless. It still resonates. It’s got soul.

David Bromberg "First Time She Quit Me" 2021-10-10 Ann Arbor, MI

I last saw Bromberg about a decade ago at the Somerville Theatre with the added bonus of having Larry Campbell in his band (both alumni of Jorma’s Fur Peace Ranch in Ohio), with Loudon Wainwright III also on the bill. However, as the support act for Hot Tuna at the Wilbur last month, even though his set was truncated, I felt the Bromberg Quintet was even better there.

From the stage, Bromberg announced he was previewing songs from his next album, long delayed due to Covid. An early highlight was a Bromberg-trademarked hilarious take on the blues, “The First Time She Quit Me (This Month).” He also let each of the band members shine throughout the set, and even dipped back to play “Tennessee Waltz,” from his second album, which, Bromberg quipped, “was an old song when I recorded it!” The set was brilliant, with Bromberg as great as he was back in 1977, and a good omen of things to come in just a few minutes. Both Bromberg and the audience appeared to be disappointed when he had to leave after nearly an hour, but all I could think of was the rabid Hot Tuna crowds at the Commack Arena, who were not exactly hospitable to opening acts like Happy the Man and Elliot Murphy.

All Bromberg @ Wilbur photographs (c) Harold Lepidus 2021

I apparently have a Pavlovian response whenever I hear the words “Hot Tuna.” In the mid-1970’s, Hot Tuna was my band. I was fortunate to see them three times in eight months during the Rampage Years - legendary shows at New York's Palladium and the Commack Arena (a.k.a. The Suffolk Forum, the Island Music Center, etc.) I’d turn on WNEW-FM and could tell when Jorma was playing just by the tone of his guitar. When I was at Bill Graham’s San Francisco store the summer before my first show, I bought a Hot Tuna concert poster. To this day, whenever I attempt to sing and play my guitar, I realize it’s just a pale imitation of Jorma. When I came to the realization that it was time to cut my hair and make it shorter, I thought about that Jorma had done it, so I guess it was ok for me to do it as well.

Yet over time, I couldn’t really remember much specifically about the actual Commack Arena shows, other than waiting in line from three in the afternoon in the parking lot in order to get up front to watch Jorma’s fingers. Hot Tuna is unfortunately not as visually well documented as some of their peers.

After I interviewed Jorma last April, it sent me back down the Hot Tuna rabbit hole. I watched, streamed, upgraded and downloaded. I reserved out-of-print CDs from the library, scoured the internet, and went to used record stores to fill in whatever was missing from my collection. (I still need Land of Heroes, though).

My interview with Jorma Kaukonen, April 1, 2021

When I interviewed Jorma, he mentioned that the shows in Commack were “a party.” While doing my research, I did find two 1970s videos online of Electric Tuna, both laughingly listed as “full concerts” - four songs originally broadcast on the old In Concert TV show in 1973, and less than an hour of footage from a November, 1976, show at New Jersey’s Capitol Theatre. It reminded me how rowdy the Tuna crowds were. However, I never even paid any attention to them. I was focusing on Jorma’s fretboard.

The memories all came flooding back. For me, 2021 was the year of the Tuna. Not only did I listen to more Tuna-related music this year than by any other artists, but I probably listened to more Tuna tunes this year than any other year ever.

All of this was going on with me as I entered Boston’s Wilbur Theater on November 28, almost exactly 45 years to the day after I saw Hot Tuna at the Palladium. In the interim, I’d seen various permutations of Tuna throughout Massachusetts, including Tuna both acoustic and electric, Jorma solo and with Barry Mitterhoff, Jack’s SVT, and even Jorma with Phil Lesh and Friends during Bob Dylan’s incendiary fall 1999 tour. I also more recently watched Jorma’s weekly Quarantine Concert Series shows which he performed from his Fur Peace Ranch, sometimes with Jack.

Hot Tuna, a few days later, at the Capitol Theater, 12/4/21

Nothing, however, prepared me for what I witnessed at the Wilbur. Hot Tuna has boiled everything down to its essence. For almost two hours, I was transported back to the Commack Arena. The set list was perfect, the playing fluid and intuitive, joyous and playful. Early on, while Jorma was adjusting his equipment, feedback began emanating from the speakers, Jack smiled a knowing smile at Jorma, and Jorma knowingly smiled back. Clearly a lifelong friendship, and these guys are doing what they love, as only they can, better than anyone else, and they make it look effortless.

The Wilbur setlist was the stuff made of serpentine dreams, almost all from 70s Tuna, every album represented except Yellow Fever, plus “Ice Age” from the 80s, and a glorious “Good Shepherd” from the Airplane days as a closing benediction. It was billed as “Acoustic and Electric Hot Tuna,” but the whole show was completely electric, at least in spirit. Jorma and Jack were so comfortable and in sync, it was an education to watch them in action, still together, twin brothers from different mothers.

Back in the day, with the myopic tunnel vision of adolescence, I’d mostly pay attention to Jorma. At the Wilbur, I was finally able to focus on the importance of Jack’s bass playing, and its interaction with Jorma’s riffs. He even had two places to stretch out and shine - the set closing “Funky #7,” of course, but also one of my favorite covers of theirs, the hilarious (at least to me) “Bowlegged Woman, Knock Kneed Man,” which Jack coolly began while Jorma was still adjusting something with his amp. One of the memories I do have from the Commack shows was people yelling, “Jack speak!” (He’s the quiet Tuna.) Once he went up to the mic, looked like he was about to speak, smiled, then returned to his original place without uttering a word. At the Wilbur, he did actually say something after leaving the stage temporarily following “Funky #7.” Justin Guip on drums was also a great addition, possibly the best I’d ever seen with Tuna.

While I’m not opposed to artists playing newer material, it was almost as if Jorma could read my mind. Tonight I wanted to travel backwards in time. I remember it was “uncool” to actually want Tuna to play their “hits” like “Water Song” and “Keep on Truckin’” back in the day, because that was for amateur fans. We wanted the deeper cuts, and that, for the most part, is what we got at the Wilbur. Every song was stellar, and each was built upon the previous one.

Maybe they focused on their classic catalog because there was a special guest who was brought on after only four songs - Susan Tedeschi, of the Tedeschi Trucks Band. Apparently she just stopped by to say “hello” before the show, but was then invited to join the band for a couple of numbers. It was a real, improvised guest spot, not one of those phony strap-on-a-guitar-and-play-inaudible-rhythm deals. This was some real back-at-the-Fillmore sh*t. When the band got going on the first song with Tedeschi, Jimmy Reed's “Take Out Some Insurance,” Jorma began by just wailing away, completely in the zone. I’m not sure if he was just doing that to let Ms. Tedeschi get comfortable, or the music was taking him into the stratosphere of his mind. In any case, Jorma eventually came back to earth, and Susan sang and traded solos on that song and the vaudeville blues standard, “Trouble in Mind.” It was glorious, and the joy emanating from the stage traveled all the way up to the balcony.

With their history and experience, Kaukonen and Casady are in a similar place in the history of popular music as Bob Dylan. They are all about the same age, deeply rooted in Americana, and continue to perform miracles on stage. Luckily, they are all aging gracefully and artistically by staying connected to their original muses. Although Tuna’s setlists are filled with the music of their early days, there is nothing dated about what they were playing. No, they didn’t play for five hours, and no, they didn’t jam for 22 minutes on “Feel So Good.” They didn't have to. They took the best of what they do, then edited it down so that every note mattered. Some of these songs are old covers anyway (which Tuna always made their own), but at the Wilbur, everything sounded as fresh as it did in the 1970s. Similar to what Dylan referenced in his recent song, “My Own Version of You,” Tuna is taking things from beyond the grave, and giving them life.

I’ve been trying to analyzing why Hot Tuna’s music resonates the way it does, when so many other power trios play similar music. Besides the obvious, such as the unique interplay between Jack and Jorma, and their superior, deeply rooted material, I think some of the unique appeal comes from Jorma’s fingerpicking style, mixed with Jack’s funky basslines. While many of Tuna’s songs are about sex, god, or death, this gives it all a lighter edge, a counterpoint. It’s subtle, but effective and seductive.

I don’t know if it was the set list, the musicianship, my renewed fanaticism, the joy of seeing a post-lockdown show, the intimacy of the Wilbur itself, feeling fortunate that these legends are still here and vital, that this was the first time in 16,437 days that I’ve seen Electric Hot Tuna sitting down, or maybe it was a Chanukah miracle? In any case, this show was, to reference the title of an old Jorma live album, magic.

According to some news Jorma recently relayed, Tuna is recording a new album, and a 1960 tape of Jorma captured by Jack will hopefully see the light of day sometime in 2022. Kaukonen’s two vinyl LPs with John Hurlbut, The River Flows Vol 1 and 2, have been released together as part of a 2-CD set, along with exclusive live versions of some of the material. And the day after the Wilbur show, I ordered the RSD peppermint vinyl edition of Jorma’s Christmas album from the Fur Peace Ranch, and you can too.

Jorma turns 81 on December 23, and an Electric Hot Tuna celebratory 80th (!) birthday gig is finally scheduled to take place at Carnegie Hall on April 22. And hopefully, if the Wilbur show will not be officially made available for purchase, the upcoming birthday show will.

As I yelled to Jorma at the Paradise at a Tuna show with Paul Kantner on December 16, 1987, “Happy birthday, Jorma!”

2021-11-28

The Wilbur, Boston, MA

How Long Blues *

Keep Your Lamps Trimmed And Burning *

Serpent Of Dreams

Day To Day Out The Window Blues

Take Out Some Insurance ^

Trouble In Mind ^

Sea Child

Watch The North Wind Rise

Bowlegged Woman, Knock Kneed Man