Half century later, Hot Tuna’s Casady still hot for his vocation

By MIKE CHAIKEN EDITIONS EDITOR Fifty years for one career is a long time for any vocation. And to keep plugging along in that career into your seventh decade of life is also an incredible feat. But Jack Casady and Jorma Kaukonen have been cooking along as musicians since the 1950s when they started off as folk musicians—and they keep plugging away in probably what is their best known entity, Hot Tuna. Hot Tuna comes to the Ridgefield Playhouse in Connecticut on Dec. 4. Casady and Kaukonen – along with a slew of special guests— celebrated Kaukonen’s 75th birthday with a concert this past summer at the Beacon Theater in New York City. Casady himself is celebrating his 70th birthday. In a phone call from Arlington, Va. several months ago—where he had just finished the Lockn’ Festival, Casady was asked what his younger self might have said if someone told him that he’d still be making music into his 70s. Casady said he doubted his young self would have been surprised. When he was growing up, Casady said his musical heroes came from the worlds of folk, jazz, and classical music. “They’d play and play (no matter their age),” said […]