“Highway Song:” What can Jorma and Vanessa Kaukonen’s Fur Peace Ranch teach about community?
On July 14, I witnessed the end of an era.
Near tiny Pomeroy, Ohio, I experienced THE last Fur Peace Ranch acoustic concert by Hot Tuna—the duo of fingerstyle guitarist and vocalist Jorma Kaukonen, and creator of his own style of bass playing Jack Casady.
Photo by Gary Dion
In my thirty-three-year marriage to a man who has loved Jorma’s and Jack’s music since Jefferson Airplane, I’ve seen the two in the Twin Cities, MN; Portland, OR; the San Francisco Bay Area; and Florida. But this was my first trip to Fur Peace Ranch—combination guitar school, with restaurant and lodging; store/museum; and performance venue known as Fur Peace Station. For my brother who accompanied my husband and me, it was his first time seeing Hot Tuna.
When we came into the Station, we were directed to paper and markers and told to take a piece of paper and write our name, then put that on our seat to save our place. That way we could feel free to walk around, get something to eat, and explore the grounds before the show.
It was a blistering hot day, not made for standing too long in the sun. In fact, the short walk from the parking area—where we had been greeted and checked in by John Hurlbut, guitarist and partner with Vanessa Kaukonen in Fur Peace Productions—was too long for comfort. We wandered in and out of the store/museum, sat for a while at picnic tables sheltered from the sun, then opted for air conditioning.
As we waited for the show to start, my brother commented that he couldn’t imagine anywhere else this way of letting people hold their seats would work. I added that I could scarcely imagine anywhere else it would even be attempted.
Inside Fur Peace Station
Photo by Gary Dion
And then it was showtime!
Vanessa and John Hurlbut came out to get things going. I’ve seen John perform live before but had only seen Vanessa in the online quarantine concerts FPR live-streamed during COVID. In person, she was forthright and uninhibited, just as I recalled. Sharing the story of how she and Jorma had sold Fur Peace Ranch, and spicing her remarks with her views on this and that. In her green print sundress, her tattoos were on display. Though she is clearly not someone to be dismissed, that’s kind of what I did, in anticipation of the show starting.
Photo by Gary Dion
What does this have to do with freedom schools, what divides us, or the power of story?
If you’re familiar with my work—my novel, events, or new “Stories from Civil Rights History, Then and Now” blog—you know that I typically tackle one or more of those topics.
I believe in the power of story in all variety of media. And I’m partial to great musical storytellers, like Bonnie Raitt and Paul Simon. Intersperse those songs with stories about the song, as Leo Kottke and Chris Smither do so fantastically, and you’ve totally got me.
As my brother says, “It’s not all about the music, but how an artist gets to where he is. The story behind the art.”
Jorma was following suit at this concert. Early in the first set, as the applause for “Broken Highway” subsided, he recalled recording Burgers, Hot Tuna’s first studio album. It was November-December 1971, a time when so many of the well-known groups still crossed paths at Wally Heider Studios in San Francisco. In the men’s room, he ran into David Crosby.
Art Direction, Photography: Bruce Steinberg
As Jorma put it, having now become the vocalist for Hot Tuna, without the Airplane’s Grace Slick, Marty Balin, or Paul Kantner, he was “horrified” by the sound of his own voice. When he said as much and asked Crosby to sing on the track “Highway Song,” Crosby agreed. But he went on to urge Jorma to remember, “We’re not singers. We’re storytellers.”
I love that story and Crosby’s message. I felt a sense of comfort as I settled into the music and the charm of the Station—deciding early on this was the best of any Hot Tuna concert I’d seen and the best setting in which to see it. As Jack and Jorma played, I began to equate the place with the feeling and to wonder how to explain that and what it meant.
At intermission Vanessa reappeared. She caringly alerted the audience to an approaching storm, in case we had left our car windows open.
Soon after the second set began, so did the rain. It was one of those feisty summer thunderstorms that, notwithstanding her warning, seemed to spring almost from nowhere. The sky darkened, and tree branches whipped angrily back and forth outside the high windows. The power went out several times.
Anxiety provoking? No. I could not have been more comfortable.
Was that because Jack and Jorma kept right on playing, scarcely seeming to notice? Because the Generac kicked in faithfully each time? Or was there more to my feeling?
Despite my total enjoyment of the concert, my mind was busy in parallel. Thinking of things Vanessa had said—I guess I hadn’t really dismissed her after all! Savoring how relevant the concert felt for a story-lover. Intrigued by how comfortable I was. …
By the time the concert was over, I’d determined to contact Vanessa as soon as I got home, in hopes of learning more about the mystery of Fur Peace ranch. To my delight, she enthusiastically welcomed a conversation.
What was my conversation with Vanessa like?
We dove right into politics and hope. No surprises there. But what definitely surprised me was her near immediate revelation that she has been in recovery for a very long time. The topic came up repeatedly throughout our conversation. Enough that I began to worry we were straying too far from what I wanted to learn.
Since the concert, I’d read the passage below on the FPR website. The sentence I’ve highlighted stood out to me. I had felt that “sense of belonging” at the July 14 concert. By talking with Vanessa, I hoped to understand how the culture and power of Fur Peace Ranch developed and whether it might hold lessons for healing our divided America.
In 1989, we envisioned creating a place where students could come to learn guitar from Jorma. Little did we know how this idea would evolve. What started as a physical place has become a state of being—a mindset and a sense of belonging for everyone involved, including us.
Blessings and Respect,
Jorma and Vanessa Kaukonen
A State of Being
Used with permission, from: https://furpeaceranch.com/
I posed questions here and there. But Vanessa did most of the talking. I mostly listened, feeling like a trusted friend.
Later, through reflection on the conversation, I would realize this:
Vanessa’s stories—and her shared personal details—were important to my getting to know her. My role in the conversation was to receive those details gratefully and with an open mind. But they are less important to the story I want to tell here. What is important, indeed absolutely essential, is her journey to, and through, sobriety. Her being in recovery seems essential both to her own learning and my takeaways from talking with her.
How did Fur Peace Ranch come to be?
As Vanessa led me through the conceptualization and development of Fur Peace Ranch, I learned more about her; her intelligence, resilience, and humor.
Vanessa and Jorma, newly married in December 1988, were renting a place in Woodstock, in upstate New York, when Jorma was, quite literally, called to Ohio. Called by a friend who knew of some land for sale. 119 acres for $32,000! And called by the magic—what he inexplicably felt when he stepped onto the land. He bought it without talking to her, then said, “Let’s go to Ohio.”
What she replied was, “I am not going to OHIO!” What she thought, though, she told me now, laughing, was, “If nothing else, he got a deal, and I’ll flip this baby, and we’ll never speak of it again!”
She went, though, because she was not sober and had no spiritual base in her life. All she had was something Jorma was fond of saying: “More will be revealed.”
“There was nothing on the property,” she told me. “It was just this land with multiflora roses and swamp maples.”
L: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Famartin,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons, photo cropped
R: https://ohiodnr.gov/discover-and-learn/plants-trees/invasive-plants/multiflora-rose
How apt, I thought, when I discovered that the red maple is considered perhaps one of the most adaptable trees in eastern North America. Likewise, for the multiflora rose, an exotic invasive species that has been planted widely throughout the Midwest.
It would take a confluence of circumstances to realize Fur Peace Ranch as anything more than the joke the name initially was because it was “a fur piece” from anywhere. After getting sober, being nudged firmly by her sister Ginger, and listening to a 30-day Tony Robbins course on cassette, Vanessa “shook loose the fog.” A civil engineer by training, though she hadn’t worked as such in some time, she began to sketch and hire people to translate the vision to the physical, while quickly turning her attention to the touchstone of Fur Peace Ranch. What, besides Jorma “growing guitar players,” did this place have to become?
The answer: a community of magic. A place of friendship, inclusiveness, and joy. An experience that people could take home with them and replicate in their own lives.
Created in Canva from template by r_kristi studios
Vanessa is quick to reveal the difficulties they encountered and even quicker to credit the “becoming” to the students, teachers, staff, and other musicians who repeatedly performed at FPR. When COVID hit, concerts and guitar lessons went virtual, and everyone held on to the touchstone. The likes of singer and multi-instrumentalist Larry Campbell; Greenwich Village folksinger and Bob Dylan collaborator, the late Happy Traum; master guitarist, the late Pete Huttlinger; guitarist singer and songwriter Bill Kirchen; and Guy Davis, whose multi-genre musical blend addresses “the frustrations of social injustice” (http://guydavis.com/wp/bio/) signed on as virtual instructors.
But the staggering schism that occurred with the 2016 election shook Vanessa and Fur Peace Ranch much harder than COVID. Talk of politics seemed unavoidable, she told me. But “it created a rift in what we had tried to create, what the students wanted. So, we held on to the good of Fur Peace even harder. We wanted this—a place where we could let all that go.”
Is America divided?
Again, those of you who are familiar with my writing know that a common theme is recognizing and overcoming what divides us.
One in ten respondents to a 2022 Monmouth University poll chose “Divided” as the single word to describe the United States. (“What one word describes America right now?” by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large, March 17, 2022)
A 2024 commentary by Bruce Stokes, Associate Fellow, Chatham House, includes this: “The US is now more divided along ideological and political lines than at any time since the 1850s.” (“Could the United States be headed for a national divorce?” by Bruce Stokes, February 20, 2024)
Indeed. We saw visual evidence of this as we drove the highway between FPR and where we were staying. We passed a farmhouse festooned with bunting, its yard crammed with Biden-Harris signs, maybe twenty or more. And just a few miles away, a barn with a larger-than-life-sized image of Trump with the words “We won.”
Regardless of your political leaning—and whether or not you believe America is divided—you’ve likely experienced a contentious exchange with someone you know. And I have to believe that most of us would want to turn that around if we could. To be able to freely express ourselves in civil, constructive interactions. To make our worlds, regardless of how big or small they may be, better places.
That’s precisely why I hoped to learn from Vanessa what lessons the culture and power of Fur Peace Ranch might hold for healing our divided America.
Photo by Gary Dion
What can we each do to build magic communities?
Vanessa and I talked a lot about those divides, how prevalent they are in those places we each now call, or have called, home. How very much we want them to be healed. What each of us can do to build magic communities. How that in itself—having something we can do that matters—can be healing because it generates hope. And the transcendent power of absolute joy when we succeed.
Vanessa expressed her fervent belief that “what you put out to the universe, you get back.” She had hated Ohio when they first got there. But after getting sober and being drawn into the creation of Fur Peace Ranch, she understood that she had brought her misery with her.
She added, “One of the reasons I think the ranch is so successful is because of that love and forgiveness, and promise and hope and tolerance, and joy through music and conversation and good food.”
I imagine that “joy through music and conversation and good food” is virtually universal. Something most everyone experiences and understands. Even if they don’t have an abundance of good food. Even if it is a distant memory.
On the other hand, we seem to be in a time when love and forgiveness, and promise and hope and tolerance are scarcities. Grounding a community in those intrinsic feelings and behaviors is the bigger challenge if we are to heal our divides. First, we must ask ourselves how much we want to heal. That desire will fuel our commitment to change. Where possible, we can fortify ourselves with education. Then, we can take action to be what we are seeking.
From Pixabay by Gerd Altmann
What lessons does the FPR magic offer for healing our divided country?
I asked Vanessa how she thought she had managed to maintain both her personal forthrightness and the charm of the FPR culture without alienating people. She immediately set me straight. “Oh, I’ve alienated people.
“I do draw a line in the sand where righteousness is concerned. Not religious righteousness, but doing the right thing. Being kind.”
I wondered silently, “Given that there is a line in the sand, does there have to be?” The answer I lean towards is “Probably.” Otherwise, we would have no principles.
I further wondered, “Does that then prevent us from healing our divides? Is that because there was inadequate communication, insufficient respect? If so, does working towards good respectful communication enable healing divides, and can that be enough?”
For the time being, we had worked our way to the overarching question of the conversation. “What lessons do you think development of the FPR magic offers for healing our divided country?”
“I think it just has to start with an honest communication. We open it up for everybody to have the opportunity to speak their truth. That’s where tolerance comes from. If we were all teachable and opened our hearts to others…
“And this is tough. Because I already told you how I draw the line. In all my life I’ve never seen anything like what we have today.”
Again, I wondered silently, “Who gets to decide what’s honest and true?” This is a very similar challenge to who gets to decide what history is taught in our schools, what books are available in our libraries.
Thinking that we might reduce contention by teaching our kids civics and critical thinking, I asked Vanessa what she saw as the role for education. She spoke very positively about mindfulness training and its potential for reducing bullying. It seems, then, that we agreed as to the objective, if not the methods. Growing individuals who will thrive in and demand magic communities, much as Fur Peace Ranch set out to “grow guitar players” and became so much more.
As I write this, I wonder, “How many magic communities do we need to build to heal ourselves?” I imagine we can never have too many.
And so, we’re left with more questions. Questions with speculative answers. Questions without easy answers.
As I’ve said, I learned that Jorma is very fond of saying “more will be revealed.” I’m not aware of the phrase in his lyrics, but those words, or some variant thereof, run throughout his blog posts and pop up in his concert banter.
As a closure-oriented person, I initially found that phrase quite unsatisfying. But thanks to Vanessa’s willingness to welcome me into her space and so unreservedly share her story, I guess you could say I’m surrendering to the magic, the mystical marvel of the Fur Peace Ranch community.
I’m choosing to also trust that more will be revealed if those of us who feel ready to open our hearts in pursuit of community just go for it!
Once more, I turn to wondering. Perhaps, like Vanessa with Ohio, we’re looking at others as if they are the problem—”what you put out to the universe, you get back.”
Perhaps it’s time for us all to realize that judging and blaming others is not serving us well. To put in the work until we find ourselves “in recovery.” To remain vigilant every day so that, like Vanessa, we can one day say with pride and humility that we have been in recovery for a very long time.
And then, maybe the end of the era of Fur Peace Ranch can be the beginning of the era of countless magic communities, each drawing their inspiration from it!
P.S. I can’t resist adding that there’s even a connection between the very member-centered magic community of Fur Peace Ranch and another of my favorite topics—the freedom schools of 1964 Freedom Summer and today.
One of the five guiding principles the freedom school curriculum is intended to promote is being student-centered. “The curriculum should be linked to the student’s experience.” (Freedom School Curriculum: Mississippi Freedom Summer, 1964, Kathy Emery, Sylvia Braselmann, Linda Gold)
And I felt a very similar kind of comfort and belonging when I visited a modern-day freedom school in Meridian, Mississippi. See my previous post: “I Have a Dream:” What are Freedom Schools? to learn more.
P.P.S. When I am working on a piece of writing, I carry phrases and ideas around in my head all the time. Often, that can make something someone else is doing or saying seem to leap out at me. This week I’ve been watching the Democratic Convention. I had that kind of experience while listening to President and Michele Obama speak. I felt their words resonate with Vanessa’s and with the lessons I had gleaned from our conversation.
As if to answer my question, “Is America divided?” President Obama said, “Our politics have become so polarized these days that all of us, across the political spectrum, seem so quick to assume the worst in others unless they agree with us on every single issue.”
Mrs. Obama spoke of the “chance to vanquish the demons of fear, division, and hate that have consumed us.”
As if offering an answer about how much we want to heal our divides, President Obama said, “…the vast majority of us do not want to live in a country that’s bitter and divided. We want something better. We want to be better.”
And Mrs. Obama told us how. “Do something!” she entreated. It “is up to all of us to be the solution we seek…the antidote to all the darkness and division.”
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