From the perspective of his Ohio farm, the old days sometimes can seem like a million years ago for Jorma Kaukonen.

“In other respects,” the master guitarist reflects from his home near Athens, “because they were really important memories, to me they seem like yesterday.”

And what memories they are for this child of the ’60s, still in awe of and in love with music several decades down the road. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 with fellow members of the Jefferson Airplane, a band he named.

He and longtime friend and Airplane alumnus Jack Casady continue their long-running Airplane side project, Hot Tuna, their vehicle for folk, blues and rock stylings, taking their music throughout New England and the nation.

Kaukonen savors playing with other artists and particularly Casady. “Jack is my oldest friend. We have learned to read each other well over the years, and he always comes up with something new every night,” he said.

A Washington, D.C. native, the son of a state department official, Kaukonen helped take rock into its psychedelic era in the mid-’60s as the Airplane’s lead guitarist. His “Embryonic Journey,” said to be one of the first acoustic guitar instrumentals to appear on a major rock album, is on the Airplane’s second album, “Surrealistic Pillow.”

He also jammed with Jimi Hendrix, performed coffeehouse gigs and benefits with Janis Joplin and played with the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia. In 1970, while still with the band, he and Airplane bassist Jack Casady formed Hot Tuna.

To those experiencing Tuna for the first time, Kaukonen said to expect “a hearty helping of traditional style music done by seasoned players and some good time rock’n’roll as well.”

Tuna’s repertoire also includes American folk from the first few decades of the 20th Century. It is important to honor that era, he said, because the music is timeless. “It is always necessary to know where you come from.”

Hot Tuna is known for its interpretations of Reverend Gary Davis’ folk-blues, Robert Johnson’s Mississippi Delta blues, Jelly Roll Morton’s singular New Orleans jazz, Woody Guthrie’s Great Depression-era folk songs, Jefferson Airplane favorites and more.

Kaukonen wanted to do the music of the Reverend Gary Davis for a long time. Davis was a minister from the Raleigh-Durham area, home of the Piedmont blues style of picking the guitar.

“I’m kind of a Piedmont player. Gary Davis was blind and he never realized how complex what he was doing with the guitar was. He approached the guitar like a piano (in his fingering),” he said. “He was an incredibly sophisticated guitar player for any time. I saw the Reverend Gary Davis playing on the streets in New York. It was one of the thrills of my life.”

Whatever the repertoire, Kaukonen loves the unpredictability of the live experience. He is known in some circles as the leading practitioner and teacher of the fingerstyle guitar, and one of the most highly respected interpreters of American roots music, blues and Americana,

“Music pretty much means everything to me,” he explains, “in that everything about my life seems to revolve around it: the making of it, the listening to it, that’s the way I relate to the world.”

It’s still fun, Kaukonen assures. “I’m still thrilled when I hear a good playback as the first time I did it.”

He and his wife, Vanessa, created Fur Peace Ranch (www.furpeaceranch.com) in 1998, a guitar camp and workshop for children and adults on their land that features visiting instructors and includes classes on the business of music. It is located on 125 acres of fields, woods, hills and streams in the Appalachian foothills of Southeastern Ohio.

“I like to be able to give back something that has been given to me. My approach is to try to make it un-intimidating,” Kaukonen said. “We wanted to provide a great teaching and learning venue. It is a great place to learn in an atmosphere of fellowship and common goal,” he adds.

He is proud of his storied career accomplishments but prefers to think of himself as “a living in the moment kind of guy.”

He remains excited about the possibilities right now, he explains. “I find myself quite fulfilled and I am able to learn and play with joy,” he assures. “I would like to just keep on traveling in the direction I’m going. I just love playing the guitar, and sometimes it’s easier than talking.”

In another era, Kaukonen, Casady, Grace Slick, Marty Balin and Spencer Dryden spoke to society in a powerful way as the Jefferson Airplane.

Kaukonen, also a Grammy nominee, does not take the Hall of Fame induction lightly. “It actually means a lot to me,” he assures. “Jack called me and we talked about when he and I were in high school. Rock’n’roll was a major force in our life. We really wanted to be rock’n’roll musicians. Now we really are and now we are in the Hall of Fame.”

He looks back on the days in the Airplane with fondness. “They were a lot of fun and we made a lot of music,” he said. “We were one of the very first San Francisco bands to get recorded by a real label. We brought a free energy into what was a highly regimented music business. We were improvising, doing a lot of off- the-cuff blowing, and behaving like spoiled brats (he laughs) but in a creative kind of way.”

If his approach to guitar is seen by others as pioneering, Kaukonen said, “Some things I think I did first, but I think any guitarist in my position would have done them sooner or later.” “A lot of times things developed just because you are there and able to do it. The guitar kind of tells you what to do,” he adds.

He remembers Hendrix as one of the first guitar heroes. “He always struck me as a real nice guy,” Kaukonen said. “Here’s a guy out there and he basically is the whole deal.”

Another guitarist, Jerry Garcia, he recalls as “a real innovator.” “I think he was much more consumed by his music totally than I am by mine. I have other things I do in my life.”

Kaukonen feels he owes an artistic debt to Janis Joplin. “She was the greatest. I owe her a lot for a lot of reasons,” he said. “I met her the first time I moved to California. I knew all the Bessie Smith songs she did. Her voice was just so pure, just a pure blues spirit. In some ways she helped me get my start.”

Jorma Kaukonen knows he has had good fortune in his career. “I’ve been able to support myself basically playing guitar and doing what I want to do,” he explains. “I’m blindly optimistic. I always think things will get better. I think music in general is inextricably part of our life. It always amazed me that something so important on a primal level really attracted such scum on a business level. But they still can’t kill it off.”