I saw Jorma Kaukonen and Barry Mitterhoff at a small theater on Lakeland College campus here in SE Wisconsin on Thursday evening, so I thought I would just offer a few comments on the concert.
The duo played for nearly two hours, peppering the song selection with many classic blues numbers from the Hot Tuna repertoire like How Long Blues, Know You Rider, Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning, and Hesitation Blues. They did a powerful rendition of Jorma's own Mann's Fate, Uncle Sam's Blues, and a nice arrangement of Blake's That Will Never Happen No More. Throw in a nice version of Come Back Baby, 99 Year Blues, River of Time (Jorma's own), and many others. Jorma's arrangements of these old tunes is always interesting and inventive -- he doesn't copy the original masters. Though he plays with metal fingerpicks, his style is a real hybrid of Piedmont picking and flatpicking, which often gives his blues tunes a bluegrass tinge.
Jorma has annew album out, Blue Country Heart, where he plays with a group of some great session musicians in Nashville. From this album, they played Blue Railroad Train, Just Because, Red River Blues, and What Are They Doing in Heaven Today. One of my favorites of the evening, though it's hard to choose as they were all great, was an old hokum tune by Thomas "Georgia Tom" Dorsey, Terrible Operation Blues, with Barry on ukelele. If truth be told, Barry Mitterhoff nearly stole the show -- he is a master on the mandolin, and was simply amazing. If you see this duo coming to your town, you'd be well served to check them out. A very entertaining evening.
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Mike
The duo played for nearly two hours, peppering the song selection with many classic blues numbers from the Hot Tuna repertoire like How Long Blues, Know You Rider, Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning, and Hesitation Blues. They did a powerful rendition of Jorma's own Mann's Fate, Uncle Sam's Blues, and a nice arrangement of Blake's That Will Never Happen No More. Throw in a nice version of Come Back Baby, 99 Year Blues, River of Time (Jorma's own), and many others. Jorma's arrangements of these old tunes is always interesting and inventive -- he doesn't copy the original masters. Though he plays with metal fingerpicks, his style is a real hybrid of Piedmont picking and flatpicking, which often gives his blues tunes a bluegrass tinge.
Jorma has an
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Mike