The Land Of Heroes

His third album release of 1995, The Land Of Heroes was Jorma Kaukonen's first new solo studio album in a decade. In the meantime, he had been part of reunions of Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna, but The Land Of Heroes was in the tradition of Quah, Jorma, and Too Hot To Handle, mostly acoustic collections that combined new originals (vocal tunes and instrumentals) with remakes of older originals and covers of songs from the standard folk-blues repertoire. Kaukonen has largely shied away from doing solo work in his career, and even here he worked closely with Michael Falzarano, who co-produced, played guitar and mandolin, and had writing credits on three songs. The one new Kaukonen song with lyrics, "From The Land Of Heroes," was a moving tribute to his Finnish ancestors, making you wish that he would spend more time writing, even though it was nice to hear Airplane remakes like "Trial By Fire" and blues songs by the Reverend Gary Davis. The Falzarano material was pedestrian, however. ~ William Ruhlmann