Black Kangaroo – the band – began recording what was intended to be their debut album.  However, members of the band slowly dropped out until ultimately it was only Peter left, so he ended up playing most of the instruments himself and released it as a solo record, titled Black Kangaroo instead. He said, “Those were the early days of power trios. Hendrix had blazed the way.  Cream had already appeared…that’s what I was playing.  It was a blend, because I also played the acoustic finger style pieces, so that completely confused people and contributed to my lack of commercial success”.

 

Commercial success or not, Black Kangaroo is a guitar player’s dream.  It’s chock full of blistering blues-rock leads, but balanced with softer acoustic moments, too. There are several highlights, but the two that I would point out are “Postcard”, which proves that aside from being a master of the fret board, this cat could also pen a tune.  And the finale is what would go on to become his signature tune, the beautiful instrumental acoustic piece “That’s a Good Question.”  When he played that one in the early days before the album was out, people would always say, “that’s a good song, what’s the title?”, to which he’d respond, “That’s a Good Question”.

 

After the album was released, he put together another version of the band and hit the road.  However, the album never got the promotion it deserved, and it sank unnoticed. “Grunt’s forte was not promotion”, Peter said.  “There was not co-ordinated live appearances coinciding with radio play or whatever.  It didn’t happen.  When I toured, I would be in places where there weren’t albums, or I wasn’t getting radio play, and nobody knew”.

 

Disheartened by the whole ordeal, he basically moved back into session work.  That’s him on Paul Kantner’s first solo album Blows Against the Empire, a vastly underrated one in the Airplane oeuvre (and also nominated for a Hugo Science Fiction Award).  He also worked with Link Wray and Terry Allen and later joined a version of Jefferson Starship.

 

After several years he decided to leave the music biz behind. He went back to school, earning a PhD in Psychology, a field in which he worked for many years.  Eventually, the lull of music brought him back and he set up a small recording studio in his home and began recording again.  He joked “that’s when I made albums in this house here, which also bombed, thank you very much.”

 

He’s released several solo albums that are available on his website peterkaukonen.com.

 

Peter’s career deserved more attention–that’s undeniable.  But during our interview I didn’t get the sense of any bitterness, more just a “that’s the business for ya” kind of mentality.  His razor-sharp humor had me laughing throughout the couple of hours we talked.  And in what became a cool moment, he treated me to a spontaneous performance, which proved the cat can still play (I included a snippet of that in the show).