Six Strings Cure Many Ills n infused seminal ck band , Jorma Kaukone s lead guitarist for the freewheeling 60s ro en, 68, has long stopped y to Love” with potent guitar licks. Kaukon elic hits like “White Rabbit” and “Somebod ess young psyched in his life with seeing him through his reckl Airplane. He credits the constant of music flying high with the ching. A in a rural Midwest life of parenting and tea and keeping him grounded is on the road adulthood d wife Vanessa adopted from China, he s not home with the two-year-old he an t tucked When Kaukonen i ot Tuna. At home, the guitar doesn’t ge rnations of his Airplane spinoff band H with acoustic and electric inca e Ranch, the music school the usician and his friends teach at Fur Peac away with the rest of his luggage; the m outheast farm. Kaukonens founded near their s s the connection between my brain s kept mind and fingers nimble. “It keep All that playing, Kaukonen is certain, ha I used to be, and I think I my hands moving. I’m not as flexible as nds alive,” Kaukonen says. “And it keeps and my ha hings seem to work pretty well.” arthritis, but as long as I keep moving t onen have some incipient than simple expression. But today Kauk ss an exercise in applying music theory In his youth, jamming was le s I learn about things that maybe with unusual chords and harmonies. “A keeps his mind sharp by experimenting because I wasn’t approaching that never would have crossed my mind ave learned when I was younger, things should h ry exciting.” tract point of view,” he says, “I find it ve music from an abs e. “When you’re holding helps make music as fulfilling as possibl The guitar, Kaukonen says, al besides t your body. Music, to me, is also physic the guitar you feel the vibrations agains rt of your breath.” llectual and emotional. It becomes a pa being inte onated so powerfully because the music of the tumultuous Sixties res The guitarist says d I went to some climate and the draft. “I got drafted, an of the era’s politically charged ot like that ple went. We all made choices. But it’s n lengths not to go,” he says. “A lot of peo ere you’re being asked to do something ou don’t have that kind of pressure wh today, so y sequences.” ant to do it, you have to face some con where, if you don’t w ose who have put distance between Kaukonen and th That personal history hasn’t instru- music’s healing qualities. With acoustic enlisted—a demographic he says needs e strolled the hallways of Walter Reed tow, Kaukonen and his band mates hav ments in the Fur Peace Ranch doles out ter to play for wounded veterans. And Army Medical Cen llen Shearburn, 27, ning from Iraq and Afghanistan, like Cu scholarships to soldiers retur ting while of 40 Marines who had seen heavy figh a former infantry platoon commander Iraq. deployed in Ramadi, in central u come d do these violent things, and when yo “You go away to these violent places an s. “There’s pieces of you that are left don’t really come home,” Shearburn say home, you lly. When you go to war, ally, psychologically, sometimes physica over there, emotion lf homesick r life to make it through. Finding yourse you have to forget part of you ther g that makes you a good son or good fa could put your life in jeopardy. Anythin aside in hostile conditions like that.” or good person—you have to put that om ear company, says he had been home fr urn, a sales rep for a tactical g one playing an Shearb se pieces of himself until he heard some year but had not regained many of tho nch. Iraq for more than a ummer at the Kaukonens’ Fur Peace Ra ’ “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” this s acoustic version of with my folks and we would listen er came back, when I would sit around “Some memories of when I was young A lot of memories of what . “Until that point I had forgotten that. tles’ White album,” Shearburn recounts ned up and hit me to The Bea ss that I had not felt in a long time, ope just a feeling of overwhelming happine I used to be like, and wn. It all just purged at once.” ry since I got home, and I just broke do at once. I hadn’t been able to c ce of music students and teachers. es song, Shearburn thanked the audien Later that day, before performing a blu I used to be,” he says. t I felt like I’ve gotten back some of who this is the first time in over a year tha wer of music.” “I told them . “That’s testament,” he says, “to the po and bad dreams have since disappeared urn says Many aftershocks n’t shared the same experiences,” Shearb aukonen. “I could tell that he and I have Shearburn connected with K by music.” hat it means to be repaired in some way of the guitarist, “but I think he knows w

46 ENERGY TIMES | October 2008