MARYVILLE, Tennessee - Doctors, lawyers, antique dealers and students are heading for the hills this summer to play at Steve Kaufman's Acoustic Camps.
Kaufman, the only three-time winner of the National Flatpicking Championships held in Winfield, Kansas, says his annual camp is the largest of its type on the planet. Hundreds of adults of all ages from Brazil to Australia have flown in to stay in college dorms, jam, and go to classes on how to make a living in music and other topics.
An Israeli mandolin orchestra has expressed interest in playing at the camp sometime.
"I market to the world and not locally," says Kaufman, a grinning picker.
His camp concerts, which are open to the public, this year include the first-chair mandolin player from a philharmonic orchestra in Italy.
Campers also play the banjo and guitar. In the planning stages are dobro, dulcimer, and fiddle camps.
So how did a nice Jewish boy from New York wind up a bluegrass musician in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains? Kaufman, 43, who has lost his Manhattan accent after 24 years in Tennessee, laughs at the question. "I had a nice Jewish brother playing banjo and he needed a nice Jewish boy to back him up." His brother brought home a Flatt and Scruggs record with tunes by the granddaddy of bluegrass, Doc Watson. Listening to it, Kaufman thought, "I can do that." So he started playing bluegrass at age 14, learning to make guitar melodies with a pick instead of his fingers.
Flatpicking quickly captured his heart. "It's a happy, upbeat, easy-for-anyone-to-play kind of music," says Kaufman, the son of a jazz pianist and a classical pianist. He studied piano and cello as a child, but followed his destiny as a folk-guitar player.
In his late teens Kaufman hitchhiked around the festival circuit and met a man in Virginia who asked him to do a gig in Tennessee. Kaufman came to perform at a mountain music celebration and has never left."The mountains give you a feeling of security. It's nice to have boundaries," he explains.
"I do feel very at home here," he adds. "We have some of the nicest people in the world here. They'd do anything for you." However, he remembers the first month he arrived, when the Ku Klux Klan was meeting in full hooded regalia and handing out cards.
Kaufman finds the easy access of the area attractive. He lives near the airport and travels every weekend to perform. "It could be Maine next week. It could be San Francisco the week after," he says. Recently it was Scotland for the Shetland Folk Festival.
A Reform Jew who says his busy schedule prevents him from getting to temple on the weekends, Kaufman sees religion as "what you are, what you feel, what you're taught, a heritage." His 50 books and videos include A Smoky Mountain Christmas for Guitar and Flatpickin' the Gospels. "My mother said 'oy,' " he recounts. "I said, 'Mom, it's going to sell.' In this business you fill the void. There weren't bluegrass gospel videos."
KAUFMAN apparently knows his market. He's a virtual industry - in addition to books, CDs and videos, Kaufman peddles all kinds of knickknacks in the camp store, from picks to lapel pins, coffee mugs to mandolin case covers, and fanny packs to fly swatters shaped like a guitar.
Musicians like to mill around picking up the instruments for sale. They crowded in as Kaufman and a guitar buddy jammed on the first day of camp.
A fast fiddle tune enlivened the atmosphere, and one man started singing along to a gospel number.
Kaufman, in blue jeans and tennis shoes but without his trademark country hat, was clearly enjoying himself.
After camp ends, he'll take a break from the road but not from work. He plans to start another book, produce CDs and videos, arrange next year's camps and vacation with his wife, Donna, and their seven-year-old, Mark, in Cocoa Beach, Florida.
What does the guy do for fun? Kaufman holds up a brochure for the Palace Theater, a Maryville landmark dating to 1868, which he and his wife bought two years ago and restored as a music venue, espresso bar, and vintage film house.
With Kaufman it's hard to say where the work ends and play begins. In both he follows a simple philosophy. "Whatever people end up doing, strive to be the best at it," he says. "It keeps you hungry all the time."
[Published in Jerusalem Post, July 24, 2000]