What began as an informal, early-’60s recording session in a friend’s basement is in 2025 the long-missing frontispiece to the musical diary of Jack Casady and Jorma Kaukonen 

Reno Road consists of 23 songs and 80 minutes of Kaukonen performing mostly familiar numbers while Casady rolled tape. This occurred at Casady’s house before the pair moved west and co-founded Jefferson Airplane and its offshoot, Hot Tuna. 

Rare is the early home recording that’s both fascinating for merely existing and high quality enough to stand on its own merits. Reno Road is one of them. 

Just discovered by Casady and painstakingly restored, the recordings are surprisingly high-fidelity as Kaukonen flirts with the sound and style of John Fahey as much as Ian Buchanan and the Rev. Gary Davis. And the songs … these are the songs that still populate Hot Tuna setlists with such titles as “Death Don’t Have No Mercy,” “Trouble in Mind, “True Religion,” “Candy Man,” “Whinin’ Boy Blues,” “Hesitation Blues,” “Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning” and others. 

“The seeds were planted here that have grown into the garden that has defined my life,” Kaukonen writes in the liners. “My repertoire has grown, but these songs have continued to evolve as part of my daily, ongoing collaboration with Jack.”

There’s slight degradation in “I Belong to the Band” and “That’ll Never Happen No More,” but the imperfections only confirm the specialness in this unlikely source tape. What listeners get is a pre-fame Kaukonen foreshadowing what would become his life’s work after a brief – highly successful – foray into psychedelia. 

More remarkable still is that Kaukonen’s fingerpicking is readily identifiable even at this early stage, despite the youthful voice sounding like another person entirely.