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But his quest for airplay isn’t a stepping stone toward stardom – not that he’d mind if things ended up that way. Rather, it’s about making music as an active, communal experience instead of the passive, individual process that technology has inspired.
“Music has been around longer than we’ve had the written word,” Kauffman explains. “For most of history, one of the only ways to pass stories down was from one person to the next. You’d have bards and minstrels traveling from town to town. It was a way for people to all get together.”
But times have changed, and aural communication has evolved as well. “People don’t rely on live music like they did even 25 years ago,” he continues. “Today, you can pop in a concert DVD with 5.1 surround sound on a plasma TV. There’s so many ways to get that endorphin rush. You don’t need anyone around.” And while comments like these can easily be construed as snobbish or jaded, for Kauffman, that’s simply not the case. Sure, he can rattle off the challenges for an up-and-coming performer today: ambivalent audiences; the artistically suffocating need to write easily labeled or marketable songs; the lack of independent record stores where new music can thrive.
But coming from Kauffman, they’re merely observations, not complaints. Instead, his passion for and perception of music transcends its environment.
“I work with music in general all the time,” he says. “I couldn’t necessarily be that happy doing anything else.” For him, the line of work is a calling, not a career: “Music isn’t a job you do for 30 years and count down the days until you can retire on the beach.”
As a professional music teacher, song- writer and performer, Kauffman furthers music in what he sees as the traditional sense. As a teacher, he passes down both the ability to play an instrument and the importance of performing with others. “There’s the intellectual pursuit behind learning an instrument, but you need to be able to play with others,” he says. “If you put two people who’ve been playing for years by themselves in a room together, musically they’ll fight like stray cats.”
With regular shows in Doylestown at Bobby Simone’s and the Waterwheel, Kaufmann is bringing his music – and his mentality – to the public square. Although his group is named The Dan Kauffman Band, the music is now a decidedly collaborative effort. Prior to the release of their debut CD “A Human Condition,” Kauffman wrote all the music and recorded most of the instruments himself as he and drummer Rob Schnell worked with a series of bass players.
But after the disc’s January 2008 release, Kauffman switched to bass and brought on guitarist Ben Geiss to round out the trio, creating what he says can be labeled as “folkish or adult contemporary” music. “Rob and I share credits for the songs we’ve been writing, and Ben puts his own spin on everything,” he says. “We all have different tastes in music, but we’re able to find a baseline for our songs. We all enjoy what we create. That’s the magic glue that keeps it all together.”
Go Online at: www.dankauffmanband.com