From their days playing together as teenagers to their current acoustic and electric blues, probably no one has more consistently led American music for the last 50 years — yes! — than Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady, the founders and continuing core members of Hot Tuna. The pair began playing together while growing up in the Washington D.C. area, where Jack’s father was a dentist and Jorma’s father a State Department official. Along the way, Jorma became committed to the finger-picking guitar style exemplified by the Rev. Gary Davis. In the mid-1960s, Jorma was asked to audition to play guitar for a new band that was forming in San Francisco, and the rest became Jefferson Airplane history. But the pair remained loyal to the blues, jazz, bluegrass, and folk influences of the small clubs and larger venues they had learned from years before. This led to an album and a record contract, all before they decided to name their band Hot Tuna. With that album they launched a project that has continued for more than 35 years, always finding new and interesting turns in its path forward. In an era in which old bands reunite for one last tour, Hot Tuna can’t, because Hot Tuna never broke up. They've turned increasingly toward acoustic roots in recent years, but two things have never changed: Jorma and Jack still enjoy playing together as much as they did as kids in Washington D.C., and there are still many, many exciting miles yet to travel on the group's musical odyssey. Hot Tuna recently released "Steady as She Goes," their first new studio album since 1990.