Jorma Kaukonen announced Live At The Bottom Line, a new album featuring his 2003 live performance at New York City’s The Bottom Line, out on June 2 via Omnivore Recordings. The Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna co-founder was touring at the time in support of his 2002 Grammy® Nominated album, Blue Country Heart. Guitarist Jorma Kaukonen is a renaissance man. As co-founder of Jefferson Airplane in the mid-’60s, he was a driving force through the sounds of the Summer of Love and beyond.
His side project, Hot Tuna – with Airplane bassist Jack Casady – transitioned from their initial acoustic-based repertoire and became an electric, live powerhouse. Kaukonen’s 1974 solo release, Quah, pushed his musical boundaries even further. Rolling Stone magazine named him one of their 100 Greatest Guitarists, and he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.In Kaukonen’s long and storied career, he has never stopped evolving, creating or recording. His 2002 Blue Country Heart album was nominated for a Best Traditional Folk Album Grammy®.
To celebrate that release, he embarked on a solo tour accompanied by Barry Mitterhoff on mandolin and Cindy Cashdollar on steel guitar. One stop the trio made was at New York’s legendary Bottom Line club in 2003. Now, two decades later, that performance is available as Jorma Kaukonen – Live At The Bottom Line.Featuring 16 tracks on 2 CDs and available digitally, Live At The Bottom Line contains songs from Blue Country Heart, Hot Tuna, Quah, Reverend Gary Davis, and more. Packaging contains new liner notes from drummer (The Mahavishnu Project, Nels Cline, Todd Rundgren), author, and The ProgCast host, Gregg Bendian.
If you weren’t lucky enough to be in New York with Jorma that night in 2003, you can join him there now on Live At The Bottom Line.