Steve Kaufman
by Rebecca Frazier
Steve Kaufman has been influencing guitar players since the 1970’s, when he first set foot on stages of guitar competitions across the country. His ease and grace with his instrument are comfortable—almost humorous. It’s hard to imagine that a person as relaxed as Kaufman has spent so many years chomping the bit on the contest circuit and writing instruction manuals on airplanes. And while Steve Kaufman is known for his virtuosic flatpicking guitar styling and national championship honors, his music books and DVD’s, and his world-renowned acoustic camps, he seems to have accomplished all of this with a twinkle in his eye.
“I didn’t go to college,” Kaufman says, reminiscing about his childhood in New Jersey. “I was lucky to get out of high school. If my brother hadn’t gone and talked to my teachers, I would’ve failed high school. The day I graduated high school, my buddies dropped me off on Route 80 from New Jersey. I started hitchhiking to festivals.” All summer, Kaufman competed in guitar contests to support himself. “I would go to a contest, win the contest, they’d give me some jack so I could survive until the next weekend. I read ‘Bluegrass Unlimited,’ which told me where the next contest was; and I’d show up early. I was hitchhiking the whole time, and I was sleeping on the side of the road. I had a heavy backpack and my 1932 Martin with me. I’d see a spot that had a bluff on the highway; I’d have the ride take me down another quarter mile, and then I would walk back to that spot in the morning.”
Growing up with a single mother and two brothers, Kaufman lived in a musical household. His father had passed away, yet his mother was determined that her sons would have instruments and opportunities at home. She provided guitars, banjos, amps, and lessons. At age thirteen, Kaufman strummed Monkees and Beatles songs on his “plastic thirty-dollar guitar,” but lost interest until he overheard one of his brothers practicing along with a Flatt & Scruggs record with Doc Watson on guitar. “That’s when I heard what you could actually do with the guitar. I just loved Doc.” Steve’s obsession with bluegrass guitar began.
Becoming a guitar expert was literally all in a day’s work for Kaufman. During his high school years, he committed to a diligent practice routine. Every day after school, he practiced three hours per day. “And in the summer, I had eight hours a day,” he remembers. “Start at 9, break at 10:30, break for lunch. Get back to it half hour later, stop at 3:30 for a break, end at 5. It was great practice, but it was never boring, because it was segmented.” Kaufman set a timer for himself. He practiced one piece for ten minutes, and then he would move on. “When you have eight hours, you can have really solid segments,” he explains. Kaufman kept a notebook in which he would keep track of his repertoire, and over the years he drilled and perfected hundreds of tunes.
With this backlog of hours on his instrument, and his experience competing in guitar contests across the country, it seems natural that Kaufman was the first person to become a three-time winner of the National Guitar Championship in Winfield, Kansas. Kaufman worked out his contest arrangements on the guitar well ahead of time. “You need to drill and drill and drill and get it so you can do it in your sleep,” he explains. “I used to go to the gym and get the speed of the Life Cycle going to the speed I was going to be playing the song. Then I would run the song in my head from the beginning intro all the way to the end. If I couldn’t do that, then I wasn’t ready. That’s how strong the Winfield arrangements have to be.”
Backed by his Winfield credentials, Kaufman booked himself at workshops across the United States and Europe on the weekends. He would instruct on Friday and Saturday, and perform a concert Saturday night. On the airplane home on Sundays, Kaufman would write his guitar instruction books. During the week he would film his instructional series for VHS and DVD. Eventually, Kaufman’s wife, Donna, suggested that he create a flatpicking camp at Maryville College, located near their home. 1996 was the inaugural “Steve Kaufman Flatpicking Kamp,” and 180 guitar players arrived on campus. With this success, Kaufman continued developing the camps, now called “Acoustic Kamps,” into two separate weeks with all instruments for old time and bluegrass styles, plus songwriting and vocal instruction. Kaufman has also added an African safari guitar workshop to the mix. This year the group will travel to Botswana.
Kaufman’s legendary ‘Parking Lot Pickers’ instructional series has been a jumping-off point for many bluegrass guitarists and mandolinists, eager to learn the jam standards and improve their skills. Kaufman has released over 130 books and DVD’s. He says he wrote most of the books while he was traveling to and from workshops and gigs, and therefore he did not have an instrument in his hands as he wrote. “Just out of my head,” he remembers. “It’s always been the way I did it.” He also did not elaborately plan his instructional videos. He explains, “I would have a theme, I would have an outline, and we recorded them in real time. That’s why some of them are two hours long.”
Kaufman approaches his studio recordings with this in-the-moment attitude as well, viewing the process as a representation of his creativity on that particular day. “I just turn the mic on and go,” he remarks. While he might arrange the order of the soloists, for example, he prefers not to do more than that. “I tell people that I recorded with who aren’t satisfied with what they did, but they did OK—they did pretty good—I say, ‘That’s the way you did it today. That’s what it is.’”
Even though Kaufman says he doesn’t play guitar around the house anymore, he has recommendations for others to develop their guitar skills. “I’ve done my time. You know when people say ‘It’s a God given talent,’ I say, ‘No, I know how hard I worked early on.’” He tells musicians to plan their practice time and to cut it in half. “It doesn’t matter how much time it is, cut it in half. The first half is warm up. Play old stuff that you don’t have to think about much. Develop your motor skills. You have to have a timer running that’s going to go ding. You could work on chord progression, all your old songs. At the halfway point, you move on to the next section, which is new stuff. It can be sight reading, new songs, or transcribing. When the bell goes ding, you are done.”
With such a voluminous output and prolific career, Steve Kaufman could be cast as ambitious in his work ethic. Yet it’s possible that his unique combination of structure and relaxed confidence has elevated his output, as he didn’t allow himself time to over-think or doubt himself. He simply forged ahead with each new project, because he enjoys guitar in all its forms. His focus has evolved over the years, however. He says he’s competed in recent contests at Winfield, though he hasn’t placed first. “I don’t have that eye of the tiger,” he says. “I don’t have anything I’m proving to anybody. I get up there and have fun, more than anything else.”
Originally published in Americana Rhythm Music Magazine
