Still searching

Jack Casady is one of rock ‘n’ roll’s most definitive,
innovative, oft-imitated bass players. It was in San Francisco that he made his
initial mark as a founding member of Jefferson Airplane and later Hot Tuna. He
is a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, yet it has taken until 2003 for him
to record his first solo record.

            Dream Factor was definitely worth the
wait. But why so long?

            “That’s a
good question,” Casady says from his LA home. “I think mostly it’s difficult,
without being a singer, to get material out and to be recognized. And also, I
just sort of kept putting it off.”

            The album
Casady finally recorded employed a wish-list lineup. Jorma Kaukonen, Paul
Barrere, Jeff Pehrson, Ivan Neville, Warren Haynes, Matt Abts, Jim Brunberg,
Doyle Bramhall II, Fee Waybill, and Steve Gorman all piled into Casady’s home
studio with producer Greg Hampton to create a mid-tempo, soulful rock ‘n’ roll
record.

            Casady had
a picture in his head, but relied on the other artists to help bring it into
focus.

            “Sometimes
I had just a song title or an idea. For instance, with Jeff Pehrson and Jim
Brunberg, I did a session for about five days with those guys and I said ‘Listen,
I’ve got this song here, and this song here, and I’ve got an idea for a song
here. I’ve written some prose with it, can you see if you can use it.’
Everybody came about.”

            Though
focused, Casady and crew were open to surprises.

            “It was
really enjoyable to see something take off in a little different direction than
I thought,” he says. “That’s what my idea of producing is about. You gently
guide it down the stream, but you don’t want to have every paddle in the
water.”

            Casady’s
wisdom clearly comes from the vast chunk of rock ‘n’ roll history he was a part
of. Starting out playing r&b in Washington DC-area clubs in the early ’60s,
Casady soon found himself growing disillusioned with music.

            “In the
music I was playing at the time, you thought in terms of breaking into clubs
and playing music,” he says. “You played a lot of cover music. By playing other
people’s music, it actually kind of put me in a box. I was pretty lost
musically.”

            And
although Casady credits the British Invasion groups for breaking a mundane
chain where he felt he was “mostly going through the motions,” after a while he
still felt his career stagnating, his originality going unchallenged.

            So, upon
the urging of friend and band mate Jorma Kaukonen, Casady grabbed his bass and
headed west to San Francisco where artists, both pro and hopeful, were
converging on the scene.

            “A lot of
people were coming out from art school and folk music,” Casady says. “And they
hadn’t played in rock ‘n’ roll bands. So on one hand I came out there to what sounded
like a bit of chaos with a band where everybody came from different musical
directions. On the other hand, everybody was sticking to their guns, trying to
write their own material. That hadn’t been allowed in the circles I had
traveled in before that. I was a young man searching his instrument, searching
how to play it — still searching.”

            On a recent
drive up to a show in San Francisco, Casady popped one of the recently
re-released Jefferson Airplane discs into his dash.

            “I though
‘God, this stuff is so complicated.’ It’s unbelievable,” he says. “I don’t even
remember doing all that stuff.”

            There’s no
denying Casady’s impact on the world of rock ‘n’ roll. The innovation, tone,
and technique are still audible and credible today. He’s a legend, sure, but
Casady, in his humility and passion for music, is all about now.

Jack Casady, Box Set,
and Jim Lauderdale play Saturday, October 4, at The Montage Grille, 50
Chestnut Street, at 9 p.m. Tix: $16-$18. 232-8380

This article appears in Oct 1-7, 2003.