Jorma Kaukonen didn't just write a song; he accidentally built a rite of passage for every fingerstyle guitarist who has ever picked up a Martin. If you’ve spent any time in the folk-rock or blues circles, you know that opening lick. It’s crisp. It’s crystalline. It basically sounds like a mountain stream if that stream were made of high-tensile steel strings and 1970s San Francisco grit.
Water Song isn't just a track on a record.
For the uninitiated, the song is the centerpiece of Hot Tuna’s 1972 masterpiece, Burgers. While the band was born out of the psychedelic chaos of Jefferson Airplane, Hot Tuna was where Jorma Kaukonen and bassist Jack Casady went to breathe. They traded the strobe lights and feedback of "White Rabbit" for the organic, earthy thrum of acoustic blues. And "Water Song" is the crown jewel of that transition. It’s an instrumental. No lyrics. No soaring Grace Slick vocals. Just a conversation between a guitar and a bass that has lasted over fifty years.
The Architecture of a Masterpiece
How do you describe the sound? It’s Open G tuning (D-G-D-G-B-D), but it’s more than just the technical setup. Jorma’s fingerpicking isn't just fast; it’s polyphonic. He’s playing the melody, the rhythm, and the counter-melody all at once.
Most people think of Hot Tuna as a "blues" band, but "Water Song" leans heavily into a sort of Americana-Baroque style. It’s got more in common with John Fahey or Leo Kottke than it does with Muddy Waters. The movement is fluid—hence the name—and it rolls forward with this unstoppable momentum.
Jack Casady’s bass work here is what really seals the deal. Honestly, most rock bassists would have just sat on the root notes and let the guitar shine. Not Jack. His bass lines in Water Song are melodic excursions. He weaves around Jorma’s picking, sometimes mirroring the riff, other times diving into these deep, resonant swells that provide the "water" with its depth. It’s a masterclass in interplay. You can tell these two had been playing together since they were teenagers in Washington D.C. long before the Summer of Love ever happened.
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Why Guitarists Obsess Over the Tabs
Go to any guitar forum—Ultimate Guitar, Acoustic Guitar Forum, Reddit—and you will find a thread about this song. It’s a "bucket list" tune. Learning it is basically the acoustic equivalent of a black belt.
The difficulty lies in the syncopation. Jorma uses his thumb to maintain a steady alternating bass line while his fingers dance across the high strings. If your thumb hitches for even a millisecond, the whole thing falls apart. It’s a physical endurance test. I've seen guys who can shred metal solos at 200 BPM struggle to get the "swing" of the "Water Song" intro. It requires a specific kind of relaxation. You can't muscle through it. You have to let it flow, which is easy to say but incredibly hard to do when your pinky is reaching for a difficult stretch on the fretboard.
Burgers was recorded at Wally Heider Studios in Los Angeles, and the production by Mike Lipskin captured something special. There’s a certain "air" around the instruments. You can hear the wood of the guitar. You can hear the callouses on the fingers. It’s an intimate recording that feels like you're sitting in a small wooden cabin while the world outside just stops.
The Legacy of the Burgers Era
By the time 1972 rolled around, the Airplane was fracturing. Jorma and Jack were leaning harder into their side project, and the transition from the self-titled first album (which was live) to Burgers (studio) showed a massive leap in composition.
"Water Song" isn't just a lucky take. It’s the result of Jorma’s obsession with Reverend Gary Davis and traditional fingerstyle techniques, filtered through a California lens. It’s interesting to note that while the song is purely acoustic, it has the "heaviness" of a rock song. It carries weight. It doesn't feel dainty or "folk-lite." It feels substantial.
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Many fans argue that this specific era of Hot Tuna represents the peak of the "San Francisco Sound" because it moved away from the gimmickry of early psychedelia and toward something timeless. You can play "Water Song" today in a coffee shop or a stadium, and it still commands the room. It doesn't sound dated. It doesn't sound like 1972. It just sounds like music in its purest form.
Common Misconceptions and Technical Hurdles
One thing people get wrong is the tuning. You'll see versions online in Standard tuning, and frankly, they sound like garbage. You need that Open G to get the resonant overtones. Without the sympathetic vibration of those open strings, the song loses its shimmering quality.
Another mistake? Speed.
Younger players often try to play it way too fast. They treat it like a race. If you listen to the original recording, Jorma takes his time. There’s a "lilt" to the rhythm. It’s not a metronome-perfect 4/4 beat; it breathes. Jack Casady once mentioned in an interview that their chemistry was about "the space between the notes." In "Water Song," those spaces are just as important as the notes themselves.
The Gear Behind the Sound
If you want to chase that tone, you’re looking at a Gibson J-50 or a Martin M-30. Jorma has used a variety of guitars over the years—including his signature Martin M-30 Jorma Kaukonen Custom Edition—but the core of the sound is a large-bodied acoustic with enough projection to handle the heavy bass response of the Open G tuning.
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And don't forget the fingerpicks. Jorma is a proponent of using plastic thumb picks and metal fingerpicks. This is what gives the song that sharp, percussive attack. Without the picks, the notes can sound a bit "mushy." You want that "clack" and "snap" that defines the early Hot Tuna records.
How to Actually Learn It
Don't start with the whole song. Seriously. You’ll quit in three days.
- Step 1: Master the alternating thumb bass. Just the thumb. Get it so you can do it while watching TV.
- Step 2: Isolate the first four bars. The "hook." This is where the magic is.
- Step 3: Pay attention to the slides. There are these little "slurs" in the melody that give it the vocal quality.
- Step 4: Listen to the Burgers version on repeat. Not a live version from 1995. The 1972 studio version. The phrasing is definitive there.
Jorma Kaukonen still teaches this song at his Fur Peace Ranch in Ohio. People fly from all over the world just to have the man himself show them where to put their fingers. That’s the level of impact we’re talking about. It’s a piece of American folklore at this point.
Actionable Insights for the Aspiring Listener or Player
If you're a fan of acoustic music and you haven't sat down with "Water Song" on a high-quality pair of headphones, you're missing out on one of the best-engineered acoustic tracks in history.
For the players: Stop trying to play it perfectly. Jorma’s own performances of the song have evolved over fifty years. He adds different flourishes now than he did in the seventies. The "soul" of the song is the movement. Focus on the flow of the "water," not the rigidity of the tab.
To truly appreciate the context, listen to the full Burgers album from start to finish. It’s an odyssey of blues, folk, and rock that centers around this one instrumental masterpiece. If you want to dive deeper, look up Jorma's breakdown of his influences—specifically the Piedmont blues style. It will change the way you hear every note of Water Song.