Artist: Jorma Kaukonen & Jack Casady
Title Of Album: Bear's Sonic Journals Before We Were Them
Year Of Release: 1969/2018
Label: Bear's Sonic Journals
Country: US
Genre: Blues, psych rock
Audio codec: FLAC | lossless

This live concert recording features recently discovered and previously unreleased music from Jefferson Airplane s fabled guitar and bass players before they became known as Hot Tuna. Jorma and Jack are joined by Joey Covington on drums, and this intense, hard-driving muscle trio creates a sonic landscape to rival Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. This is essential listening for fans of Hot Tuna and Jefferson Airplane, with more than 70 minutes of music, including versions of the classic blues songs Rock Me Baby and Come Back Baby, as well as the familiar Airplane tune Star Track. Additionally, the set list includes 4 fully-formed, rare songs that were named by Jorma and Jack for the first time for this release -- 49 years after they were played! Liner notes include contributions by both Jorma and Jack, as well as rare and previously unreleased vintage photographs. This is the third release of Bear s Sonic Journals from the Owsley Stanley Foundation, the award-winning archival series of pristine live recordings by the Grateful Dead s legendary, pioneering soundman.

Tracks:
1. Rock Me Baby (B.B. King) - 8:32
2. Turnaround - 10:30
3. Star Track (Jorma Kaukonen) - 7:45
4. Through The Golden Gate - 13:43
5. Come Back Baby (Walter Davis) - 10:28
6. Through The Grove - 11:08
7. Inspiration In The Hall Of Arrivals - 8:07

Personnel:
Jorma Kaukonen - Guitar, Vocals
Jack Casady - Bass
Joey Covington - Drums

From the archives of legendary sound engineer Augustus Owsley Stanley, a long-time trusted man of the Grateful Dead, 'Before We Were Them' follows the two live shows dedicated respectively to the Allman Brothers Band and Doc & Merle Watson and captures a performance held by Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady, guitarist and bassist of Jefferson Airplane, on June 28, 1969 at the Veterans Memorial Building in Santa Rosa, California.

The always impeccable audio quality of the recordings made by the legendary 'Bear', recovered from the original tapes and restored - remastered for the occasion, allows us to enjoy a concert previously unreleased and only recently resurfaced in which the two great musicians, who had not yet launched into the collateral project of Hot Tuna, are joined on stage by Jefferson Airplane drummer Joey Covington.

With him, Jorma and Jack form an impromptu power trio capable of competing in power and intensity with Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience, protagonists of over 70 minutes of exciting and muscular music in which blues classics such as 'Rock Me Baby' and 'Come Back Baby' and the Airplane's 'Star Track' are joined by four rarities titled for the occasion by Kaukonen and Casady ('Turnaround', 'Through The Golden Gate', 'Through The Grove', 'Inspiration In The Hall Of Arrivals') and which will make the mouths of even the completists and the most profound connoisseurs of the duo's repertoire water.

'It's not just the youthful energy that strikes me, when I listen to these songs again; 'It's the musical dialogue that Jack and I shared in those amazing moments,' Kaukonen commented about these recordings, while Casady recalls 'the unbridled fury' of those performances that 'every day, back then, represented a new adventure for our young hearts'. 'Before We Were Them' is therefore a small, very precious treasure chest of psychedelic blues exhumed and polished to a new shine, using state-of-the-art Plangent Processes technologies (which allowed to eliminate even the smallest distortions caused by recording and playback equipment) and the mastering experience of Jeffrey Norman, a long-time collaborator of Stanley himself and the Grateful Dead.