Hot Tuna Acoustic at Stuart’s Opera House, Nelsonville, Ohio
Live Concert Review – July 17th, 2026
by Bill Kurzenberger
For over fifty-five years Hot Tuna has made an indelible impression on fans of Americana, traditional blues and psychedelic rock, having formed during Jefferson Airplane’s dénouement as the Sixties concluded. Two weeks ago on Friday July 17th, Hot Tuna returned to the fold to perform the group’s first concert of 2026 at the historic Stuart’s Opera House in Nelsonville.
The two constant and essential personnel in Hot Tuna are and have always been the esteemed legends Jorma Kaukonen on guitar & vocals and Jack Casady on bass guitar. Kaukonen himself is a long-time Ohio resident from his college education at Antioch College in Yellow Springs to Fur Peace Ranch, the guitar school and concert venue formerly run by him, his wife Vanessa, and long-time collaborator John Hurlbut. Although Fur Peace Ranch closed in late 2024, they continue to produce homegrown Fur Peace Productions events at Stuart’s Opera House, including this Hot Tuna concert.
Flying from southern California to Ohio for the event were bassist extraordinaire Jack Casady, and special guest Ross Garren. The newest member of Tuna’s varying lineup, harmonicist Garren also performed with the group at times over the last year plus notably at their most recent concerts in December in Denver and San Francisco celebrating Jorma’s 85th birthday. This sold-out Hot Tuna concert at Stuart’s marked their first Ohio performance since precisely a year ago at this cornerstone venue and musical heartbeat of Nelsonville.
The trio commenced promptly around the scheduled 8PM showtime with “True Religion” from their acclaimed 1972 album Burgers. This gospel shuffle started the show on a reverent note, embellished by a sedated harmonica lead, Jorma’s subtle sliding chords and restrained proclamations of “hallelujah” concluding each verse. “Let Us Get Together Right Down Here” rightly livened up the room as plenty of feet started tapping along to its fast-paced two-step skiffle rock. This second song was accentuated by syncopated staccato notes and semitones by Cassady and Kaukonen.
“How Long Blues” and “Highway Song” followed as similar long-time fan favorites in Hot Tuna’s and Jorma’s solo repertoires. Casady’s creative bass lines were dancing as much as walking around Kaukonen’s guitar leads, preceded and followed by growling bayou harmonica leads on the century-old slow tempo blues “How Long.” On “Highway Song,” Jorma sang more emphatically to embellish the cadence of his classic ode to the road.
Hot Tuna 7-17-2026 Stuart’s Opera House by Julie K.
Confirmed in the official setlist on Jorma’s blog as “Mama Let Me Lay It On You,” on this night its arrangement and delivery were presented and sung indistinguishably from Bob Dylan’s “Baby Let Me Follow You Down,” which was famously featured and reprised during Dylan’s sit-ins with The Band at The Last Waltz in 1976. Today I learned that Dylan’s “Baby Let Me Follow You Down” was directly inspired by Blind Boy Fuller’s “Mama Let Me Lay It On You” recorded in 1935 and reciprocally, the former Dylan song perceivably inspired Hot Tuna’s arrangement of the latter performed on this evening.
The haunting “Death Don’t Have No Mercy” has long held significance in Tuna’s repertoire as a weighty reminder of our mortal impermanence. As is customary, “Death Don’t” was performed in an authentic manner recalling Reverend Gary Davis, the iconic bluesman revered by Kaukonen. His jovial original song “Letter to the North Star” followed with a bouncy chord arrangement recalling Irving Berlin. Especially on the shuffles and quicker numbers like “North Star,” Casady impressively held down the groove to eternity as a one-man rhythm section, as the evening’s lineup did not include frequent percussionist Justin Guip.
Jack Casady 7-17-2026 Stuart’s Opera House by Julie K.
Mid-set, Jorma paused to ask Jack if he was playing a new bass guitar for this opening night of their tour. With a wink and a smile, he repeated his query to prod Casady to speak on microphone, as is uncommon. “Why yes,” Jack replied, noting that it was a 30th anniversary edition of the bass guitar he debuted in 1996 (incidentally the year I first saw Hot Tuna perform during that summer’s Furthur Festival tour, encoring with Bob Weir and Bruce Hornsby). As impressive as the golden instrument’s acoustic/electric hybrid sound was the visual accompaniment of its glimmering shine reflecting off the stage lights from Casady’s seated position at center stage to the left wall of the opera house.
“Come Back Baby” returned to the delta blues, owing its existence to the early black musicians who collectively birthed the genre along the Mississippi River valley a century ago. This well-extended Walter Davis cover was reminiscent of a timeless impromptu back porch performance at the Fur Peace Ranch. The traditional bluegrass/folk song “I Know You Rider” came next and intentionally, Jorma and company varied from the well-known Grateful Dead renditions in form and verse, while maintaining its structure and up-tempo feel. “Trial By Fire” concluded the first set with Kaukonen’s sagacious storytelling and impressive finger-picking, to rousing applause and smiles for miles onstage and off.
Hot Tuna 7-17-2026 Stuart’s Opera House audience by Andy Blair, Hot Tuna group on Facebook
Following an intermission, the trio returned to the stage for “Hesitation Blues.” Among Hot Tuna’s best-known songs and a favorite of this author, it features a twisty, mystically simplistic progression gravitating between minor and major blues themes. Kaukonen’s acoustic rightfully took center stage on “Hesitation” and on the second set slightly moreso than in the first set, augmented by Garren’s harmonica trills. “Great Divide (Revisited)” followed as a pleasant, laid-back excursion from Jorma’s collaborations with his long-time Fur Peace manager and dear friend John Hurlbut, as he sang in Hurl’s cadence as well.
“Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning” followed as a substantial call-back to Hot Tuna’s early years and Jorma’s tutelage under Reverend Gary Davis. As musicians, we are teachers but are firstly scholars. Called “Jerry” Kaukonen at the time, Jorma himself was a guitar teacher in San Francisco in the late 60s concurrently with contemporary guitarist Jerry Garcia and bandmate Paul Kantner who taught banjo; and in the same era Jorma was a scholar of Rev. Davis who taught him this Great Depression-era Blind Willie Johnson song.
The reflective “Too Many Years” continued the second set trend of spotlighting Kaukonen as a poetic lyricist as he reminisced about past relationships. Indeed in 2026, as much time has passed in the twenty-eight years since it debuted on the self-referential 1998 album as had gone by at that point after the Airplane’s Icarian demise in 1970.
Hot Tuna 7-17-2026 Stuart’s Opera House by Bill K.
“Barbeque King” was deliciously infectious, with smiles and chuckles gravitating from onstage to throughout the room. All three players took turns to cook with their wares on this slow-strutting blues. Ross Garren again took a moment to shine on his various harps, switching to a long drawling ‘chord harmonica’ mid-song which fit the vibe and style perfectly.
Jack Casady let his fingers do the walking to open the exotic “Been So Long” from 2009’s River of Time, with a slight seaborne Mediterranean flair in the instrumental section. Garren’s harmonica effectively imitated a flute in the space between Jorma’s vocals, and Casady’s how-low-can-you-go bass notes shook like glorious thunder punctuating the song’s final seconds.
“You know that sun gonna shine on my back door someday,” Kaukonen optimistically reminded us on this cherished classic. Notably co-written by Jorma and Janis Joplin at his house in 1964 and recorded that day on the spot, it was released on The Legendary Typewriter Tape before subsequently appearing on his River of Time album. The trio’s live rendition was both timeless and flawless, and the collective audience’s only trouble was that the concert would soon be over. Jorma joked and half-teased that they used to play all night… and still could.
A frequent finale for Tuna, “Ice Age” concluded the show after the rapt crowd stood and applauded heartily for an encore. Showcasing the best of what Hot Tuna has to offer – Jorma’s intricate guitar picking, prognosticatory lyrics seeking personal freedom and growth, and grounded meandering bass played with gusto by the baddest rock bassist Casady.
“Well, they’re much too old to care about the future. They’re sewing up the past with shining sutures. It’s immortality they crave; their days are done so now they’re brave. Their lives will live in books for fools and slaves; we gotta get away.” – “Ice Age”
In the final moments following Jorma’s liberation declaration, his Type II and III slide barre chords intertwined and dueled with both Garren and especially Casady, whose fingers madly bounced up and down the fretboard to an impactful and climactic culmination. The attentive crowd respectfully seated throughout the show rose and roared in return, matching the high decibels of the trio’s final note.
Hot Tuna finale 7-17-2026 Stuart’s Opera House by Christopher Alan
Hot Tuna / Jorma Kaukonen group on Facebook
While this was merely the first show in Hot Tuna’s month-long tour taking them from last weekend’s historic Newport Folk Festival down the eastern seaboard, it was an extremely intimate and special night for the group in their long-time home in Athens County, Ohio. The historic opera house itself, built in 1879 and renovated following a fire in 1980, has a classic Western feel yet its concert room is more state-of-the-art for an optimal experience with perfectly clear sound production, with clear views of the stage and without a bad seat in the house even for attendees with general admission tickets.
But how did they sound? Fantastic! Every bit as professionally proficient as you might think, and then some. Throughout the night, guitar wizard Kaukonen’s solos on the fretboard were played impeccably and reservedly. As his fans have come to know and love and especially in recent decades, he is a showman, not a showboat. Graciously, he frequently handed off lead duties to Ross Garren, especially for moments once reserved for Papa John Creach, Michael Falzarano and other noteworthy players from past lineups. As Jorma most often nodded to Ross, his harp solos occurred twice as often as the guitar solos and most often bookended them. Resultantly the most mid-song applause happened after Garren’s leads, not Jorma’s, as he returned to sing the last verse of any given song.
Harmonica virtuoso Garren, the junior member of the group, is as much a master of his craft as Kaukonen and Casady are of theirs. Using a cylinder at times to project his harp into a second “green bullet”-style microphone, his proficient playing featured radiant single-note melodies performed with impressive control of volume and stage dynamics. The crystalline sound was mixed at the ideal volume level, with each instrument well heard and isolated. It was only at times during Jorma’s less frequent guitar leads that Garren’s smooth and supportive harmonica chords momentarily overshadowed the guitar picking when they were both playing in the higher registers. With the stationary audience seated and captivated throughout, you could hear a pin drop or a door close at quiet moments.
Jack Casady’s uncanny ability to solely hold down each song’s rhythm himself cannot be overstated, while doing so creatively and fluidly. As this performance commenced without drums nor percussion, Casady was the understated most valuable player foundationally. In truth, there were musical moments that could have benefitted from a basic percussion augmentation as well (such as established member Guip, or the Hurling Habaneros’ Louis Schocken in attendance). Conversely, the esteemed frontman is noted and known for continually adapting Hot Tuna’s live lineup and keeping a fresh outlook on songs, rather than resting on perennially repeating the same instrumental framework, or trying to reclaim the recent or fleeting past.
As most fans and blues & psychedelic rock aficionados are long familiar with Kaukonen’s deft fretboard work and the duo’s legendary status, their spot-on performances surprised few in attendance. Encouraged by the charismatic and dynamic duo Jorma & Jack and without stealing the show, Ross Garren matched their proficiency as the star of the three that dazzled and shone the brightest on this night.
Casady and Kaukonen’s chemistry is palpable, and the two were in particularly good spirits performing for the home crowd of familiar faces. As fondly recounted during a conversational interview with Jorma Kaukonen a few years ago, the two have now known and played music with each other for an unprecedented seven decades, as it was Jack’s older sibling Chick who originally turned on Jorma to Chicago blues upon meeting the brothers in 1956. Remaining consummate professionals while trading knowing looks, their Odd Couple dynamic was typically subtle yet mildly hilarious. As the trio hit the last note of each song with micro-second precision, Jack and Jorma were often locked in staring contests, both trying their hardest not to crack a smile until immediately after ending the last note simultaneously.
“Yikes!” as the expression goes with the group and their dedicated fans. Simply put, a priceless Hot Tuna performance by these genteel men Messiers Kaukonen, Casady and Garren. Six thumbs up, including four thumbs from OhioJams’ editors.
– Bill Kurzenberger
Hot Tuna’s website and upcoming tour dates
Jorma Kaukonen’s website and blog
https://jormakaukonen.com/blog/2026/putting-the-band-back-together-again/
Hot Tuna 1, 2026
With Jorma Kaukonen, Jack Casady and Ross Garren
Stuart’s Opera House
Nelsonville, Ohio
Friday, July 17, 2026
First Set:
True Religion
Let Us Get Together Right Down Here
How Long Blues
Highway Song
Mama Let Me Lay It On You
Death Don’t Have No Mercy
Letter To The North Star
Come Back Baby
I Know You Rider
Trial By Fire
Second Set:
Hesitation Blues
Great Divide Revisited
Keep Your Lamps Trimmed & Burning
Too Many Years
Barbeque King
Been So Long
Trouble In Mind
Encore: Ice Age
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