The Screaming Iguanas of Love are one-half of a double bill downtown Orlando's Club Spacefish on Wednesday.
It has been more than 10 years since Hot Tuna was last heard from on vinyl. It might have been even longer but for the ill-fated 1989 Jefferson Airplane reunion.
''The positive side affect was we (Hot Tuna) got this deal with
Epic,'' said guitarist Jorma Kaukonen, speaking by phone from his Woodstock, N.Y., home. Hot Tuna will perform at Orlando's Beacham Theatre Wednesday in its full-band Electric Hot Tuna configuration.
Kaukonen and bassist Jack Casady, friends since high school, formed Hot Tuna as an offshoot of Jefferson Airplane - with the first Tuna album released in 1970. In 1973, Kaukonen and Casady left the Airplane permanently for Hot Tuna - long before the Airplane turned into Jefferson Starship and began its slow descent.
''I occasionally meet people who think I was in Starship,'' Kaukonen said with a laugh. ''I say, 'No, no, you got it all wrong; you can't blame me for that.' ''
Hot Tuna put out albums through the '70s and even released two contractual-obligation albums after its breakup in 1978. There was an Electric Hot Tuna reunion tour in 1983, and three years later, Kaukonen and Casady began playing as an acoustic duo. They would have liked to record, Kaukonen said, ''but we didn't overexert ourselves for it.''
Kaukonen said that Hot Tuna finally got its deal through a kind of fluke. The Airplane didn't really have enough material on its 1989 album for a full show, so singer Grace Slick suggested Hot Tuna play part of a set. When Epic executives came to see Airplane at Radio City Music Hall, they also saw the crowd's reaction to Hot Tuna and decided to sign the group.
The Electric Hot Tuna lineup includes Kaukonen, Casady, drummer Harvey Sorgen and Michael Falzarano, the group's rhythm guitarist since 1983. When Tuna went into the studio, things flowed easily with Kaukonen producing himself for the first time. Many of the songs were done in one or two takes, and there was a laid-back, family atmosphere. It was a lot more satisfying than the recording of the Airplane reunion album two years ago, Kaukonen said.
''Paul (Kantner) and Grace were pretty convinced that they had a handle on the professional music world. One of Grace's memorable quotes was (that) I'd been out of the music business since '72 when I quit the Airplane. I kind of thought I'd been supporting myself in the music business - but whatever,'' Kaukonen said with a laugh.
''Their approach to recording was not the way we used to do it in the old days,'' Kaukonen said of the Airplane reunion LP. ''It was very much the modular, sequenced LA way of recording. It works for some people but not me. It just wasn't even fun. It was well done but not very passionate.''
On Hot Tuna's new Pair a Dice Found, there are songs by group members and tracks in the country-blues vein familiar to Hot Tuna fans. The group also recorded two tunes by Nashville songwriter Randall Bramblett, who wrote for Robbie Robertson's last album.
''They're a real radical departure for me,'' Kaukonen said, ''sort of urban-sophisticated. I didn't have anywhere near the range to sing them the way Randall does, so I wound up narrating part of it. The tunes wound up with the Big Bad John syndrome - where you talk part of the time.''
There's also a cover of P.F. Sloan's '60s hit ''Eve of Destruction.'' Kaukonen thought the tune was pretty silly when it first came out. But he and Gibby (Haynes), singer for the BH Surfers, were joking about covering the song one day at the offices of the talent agency they both use. Then when Hot Tuna was recording, things started heating up in the Middle East.
''It seemed like a timely song. In our version, you hear Rick Danko (of The Band) singing backup harmony, so it has an authentic '60s flavor,'' Kaukonen said somewhat dryly.
Kaukonen said the live Electric Hot Tuna show features songs from throughout its history.
''I picked out songs I can still relate to,'' Kaukonen said. ''My whole era of songwriting back in the '70s, I sort of refer to as the 'canyons of your mind' songwriting school, though, and I don't find it easy to relate to those bizarre, introspective songs anymore.''
World jazz. Trumpeter Longineu Parsons, a Jacksonville native, has played all over the world and with a wide variety of artists - from Cab Calloway to avant-avant-gardist Sun Ra. Parsons was based in Paris in the '70s and later lived in Guadaloupe for two years but returned to Jacksonville four years ago to raise his family.
Parsons now heads the River City Band, a large brass group, and also plays with the quintet he will bring to Beacham's Blue Note in downtown Orlando Thursday and next Friday.
Last week, when trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and pianist Marcus Roberts were in Jacksonville, they headed over to the club where Parsons was playing for a late-night jam session.
