Acoustic Hot Tuna, Loudon Wainwright III, Play One Night at John Ascuaga’s Nugget

Acoustic Hot Tuna, Loudon Wainwright III, Play One Night at John Ascuaga’s Nugget

Sparks/Reno, Nev. – American blues and roots music with a flashback twist – Hot Tuna is still going strong some 40 years into their kaleidoscopic career. See them play the Celebrity Showroom, along with folk singer and songwriter Loudon Wainwright III, May 16, at John Ascuaga’s Nugget.
The name Hot Tuna invokes as many different moods and reactions as there are Hot Tuna fans. To some, Hot Tuna is a reminder of some wild and happy times. To others, that name will forever be linked to their own discovery of the power and depth of American blues and roots music. To newer fans, Hot Tuna is a tight, masterful group that is on the cutting edge of great music. All of those things are correct, and more. For almost four decades, Hot Tuna has played, toured, and recorded some of the best and most memorable acoustic and electric music ever. And Hot Tuna is still going strong.
The two kids from 1950’s Washington D.C. knew that they wanted to make music. Jorma Kaukonen, son of a State Department official, and Jack Casady, whose father was a dentist, discovered guitar when they were teenagers. They played, and they took in the vast panorama of music available in the nation’s capital, but found a special love of the blues, country, and jazz played in small clubs. Kaukonen went off to college, while Casady sat in with professional bands and combos before he was even old enough to drive, first playing lead guitar, then electric bass. In the mid-1960s Kaukonen was invited to play in a rock band that was forming in San Francisco; he knew just the guy to play bass and summoned his old friend. The striking and signature guitar and bass riffs in the now-legendary songs by the Jefferson Airplane were the result. The half-decade foray into rock music was for Casady and Kaukonen a detour, not a destination. They continued to play their acoustic blues on the side, often performing a mini-concert amid a Jefferson Airplane performance, sometimes finding a gig afterwards in some local club.
The duo did not go unnoticed. Soon there was a record contract and, not long afterwards, a tour. Thus began a career that would result in more than two-dozen albums, thousands of concerts around the world, and continued popularity. Hot Tuna has gone through changes, certainly. A variety of other instruments, from harmonica to fiddle to keyboards, have been part of the band over the years. The constant, the very definition of Hot Tuna, has always been Kaukonen and Casady. The two are not joined at the hip, though; through the years both Kaukonen and Casady have undertaken projects with other musicians and solo projects of their own. But Hot Tuna has never broken up, never ceased to exist, nor have the two boyhood pals ever wavered in one of the most enduring friendships in music. Almost from the beginning of the new millennium, Hot Tuna’s acoustic and electric concerts have featured the brilliant mandolin virtuoso Barry Mitterhoff. In the last few years, the band has included sharp young percussionist Erik Diaz in its electric sets. What has not changed is Hot Tuna’s commitment to the music and to increasing proficiency.
Hot Tuna, doing an acoustic show, and Loudon Wainwright III, plays one night, Saturday, May 16, in the Celebrity Showroom at 8 p.m. Tickets are just $35 and are available by calling (800) 648-1177 or (775) 356-3300 or by visiting janugget.com. Dinner and show packages are available. “Do the Nugget Tonight!”

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