John Hurlbut

Guitarist John Hurlbut belatedly found a new audience for his music when he happened to start making music with one of his heroes. A fan of vintage psychedelic rock and acoustic roots music, the Ohio-based picker had been playing for decades when his visibility took off, thanks to his work with former Jefferson Airplane guitarist and Hot Tuna founder Jorma Kaukonen. Playing rhythm to Kaukonen's leads, Hurlbut's style is straightforward but expressive, charting clean melodic lines for Kaukonen to embellish, and his warm, slightly weather-beaten vocals give life to the rock and folk standards that dominate their performances. Hurlbut had been regularly performing live and in streaming performances with Kaukonen before they released their first album together, 2021's The River Flows. John Hurlbut was a music fan before he became a performer; he had a passion for the San Francisco psychedelic scene of the 1960s, and was especially keen on Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead, and claims he saw the latter perform 250 times. After taking up the guitar, he played in a pair of Ohio-based bands, the Swimmers and Cowboy Angels, as well as working with folk and bluegrass groups. When one of Hurlbut's guitar heroes, Jorma Kaukonen, moved to Pomeroy, Ohio, a small town in the southern part of the Buckeye State, he opened the Fur Peace Ranch, which included a performance venue, a restaurant, a museum of psychedelic poster art, and a learning center leading workshops for guitarists interested in improving their skills. Hurlbut landed a job as a manager at Fur Peace, coordinating events, booking performances, and giving guitar lessons. In time, Kaukonen invited Hurlbut to sit in with him, and in March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced Fur Peace to halt in-person performances, Kaukonen began a series of weekly webcasts he called "Quarantine Concerts," and Hurlbut became his frequent accompanist. The musicians were pleased with the intimate sound of the two-man acoustic shows, and they made arrangements to record an album in one of Fur Peace's performance spaces. The River Flows, which features eight acoustic numbers from Kaukonen and Hurlbut, was released in November 2020, and it was so popular that they soon recorded a sequel, The River Flows, Vol. 2, issued in July 2021.
© Mark Deming /TiVo