Josh Kaufman is one of those producers who seems to possess superpowers. Maybe it’s a singular capacity for deep listening. Maybe it’s that he’s also a fine musician. Or maybe, when it comes down to it, he’s just a seriously nice dude.
Kaufman lives in Kingston with his wife, Annie Nero (also a musician), and their three kids. He’s worked with an impressive array of artists including Bob Weir, The National, Amy Helm, and Taylor Swift. He also juggles being in several bands simultaneously, including Bonny Light Horseman with Eric D. Johnson and Anaïs Mitchell.
We met recently at his studio in Kingston, where our discussion about how musicians can work together offered a hopeful metaphoric roadmap for the future. What follows are excerpts from a longer conversation.
Adam Snyder: Bonny Light Horseman is kind of a Venn diagram of your overlapping talents because you’re both producer and band member. Is there a different set of challenges when you’re producing your own music because you’re so close to it?
Josh Kaufman: I almost have to trick myself a little bit. You ever watch The A-Team when you were younger? You know how B. A. Baracus was afraid to fly, but he also really loved milk. So they would put something weird in his milk to make him fall asleep so he’d fly? Then he would willingly go on these journeys with them.
I have to put me and our band in situations where we’re playing live without headphones so that it feels like we’re all just musicians in a room playing, we’re not hyper-focused on our own thing, so much as connecting with each other and playing together.
I just let the computer tape roll all day. I go back weeks, sometimes months later, and I listen to what it is. My feeling of what the music felt like versus what it sounds like can often be different. I’m constantly trying not to go past the emotion, because that’s the thing that’s trying to be conveyed with music. More than…
AS: A perfect take, or whatever…
JK: Yeah. Virtuosity is not really what I’m interested in listening to. I’m fascinated by it, and when I meet a virtuoso I’m like, wow, that’s beautiful in its own right. But really, when I’m listening to music, I just wanna be moved emotionally. I’m always taking the pulse of that.
AS: This is perhaps a dated question: Analog or digital, what’s your preference and why?
JK: I like them both. The ease of digital makes so much stuff happen. I have a limited skill set when it comes to engineering, I listen to the instrument and I put a mic in front of it, vocal same thing. I often work with really talented engineers who help out with that stuff, but when I do engineer on my own, it’s very basic.
I used to only work on tape, obviously. Annie and I were just in a session with Elvis Perkins and Nick Kinsey, Nick’s running 24-track two-inch tape, and it’s awesome. You listen to the playback a little differently, did you find that to be the case?
AS: Why is that?
JK: I think when you listen to something digitally you’re aware that you can manipulate it, change it, whereas when you’re listening back to tape you can only listen to that. If you wanna redo something it’s gonna affect everything else around it.
Part of my method, putting everybody in the room together, you start to track that way. When you listen to a playback where there’s all this bleed and stuff, it gives you a lot less options in terms of what you can change and how you can adjust it.
AS: So you get kind of the spirit of analog but the ease of digital when you record that way?
JK: I think so, it’s more about the ethos of the ensemble, if you’re aware that you are this vocal mic even though you’re the guitar, or you’re the bass mic even though you’re the drums, all of a sudden you’re all sort of holding hands together. There’s something just really generous and cool and, like, human about that, you sort of share that fear and that excitement, and I think it comes through.
AS: I guess the question becomes, not this technology or that technology, but how are you using it? Like, are you using it in kind of a clinical way, or are you using it with kind of a collective spirit or something.
JK: Right. Let’s meet face-to-face and, like, look at each other, and play these songs together. Which shouldn’t be a big deal.
AS: But it is because, just look, between the social media stuff, and the post-pandemic kind of social reality, a lot of people aren’t meeting face-to-face, so it is a big deal.
JK: It is a big deal, yeah.
AS: And it’s a way forward, perhaps, you know?
JK: I hope so.
AS: You’ve worked with a lot of great artists. You kind of put your work with Bob Weir toward the top of your resume.
JK: Bob and I wrote an album called Blue Mountain together with Josh Ritter. It was a life-changing experience. I grew up listening to Grateful Dead, and going to see them in high school with friends, and it shaped a lot of the way that I got interested in traditional music, folk music.
Like, I didn’t grow up learning shape note singing or frailing banjo with my family down in the Carolinas. So for me hearing “Jack-A-Roe” or even just names like “Casey Jones”, then learning, oh wait, that’s actually from this other blues song, the characters and folklore and all that stuff mixing around like Americana or whatever, before it was called that, obviously, that became fascinating and interesting and beautiful to me. It loomed really large in my imagination.
Around 2011 The National were doing this voter registration collaboration concert with Bob Weir. They asked me if I wanted to music direct because they knew that I was a Deadhead, and they were too from back when they were younger.
A little time went by and I get a phone call out of the blue, unknown number. I pick it up, and he’s like, “Hey, is this Josh? This is Bobby Weir.”
I was, like, this is actually happening? We get to talking and he’s, like, so cool, he’s even got a guitar in his lap, I can hear him while he’s on the phone with me, and he’s explaining songs to me.
So immediately I didn’t feel nervous, I felt like, this guy senses that I’m passionate about the same stuff he is, and he’s excited about entering this collaboration, even though it’s just for a gig, you know. Anyway, some time goes by, Bob and I stay in touch, and next thing I know we’re talking about making a record of cowboy songs.
AS: So cool. Let’s switch gears a minute and talk about where you’re at now. How did you come to live in Kingston and what do you like about it?
JK: We really love it here. Annie and I first became aware of Kingston in the mid/late nineties when we were living up here, going to SUNY New Paltz, recording with our old band above the Deep Listening Space on the Rondout. I think I was enchanted by the being on the water aspect of it.
We lived in Brooklyn for almost twenty years. The jump from living in that type of urban environment to Kingston didn’t feel like that big of a leap. It still feels very walkable, there’s midtown, uptown, downtown. There’s diversity among the people, and there’s just a ton of great music and art and good ideas. I think because we lived up here when we were younger, coming back feels like it’s always been a bit of a home for us. Still very much feel connected to it, it’s been great for the kids, the kids love it here.
AS: Well since you’re talking about kids, I was going to ask you what you love about being a dad…
JK: I love talking about that.
AS: And also, when it comes time to go on tour, how do you juggle that kind of thing?
JK: Ooof. When you arrived, I was just on the phone with our drummer, JT Bates, we were both kind of like, oh man, we’ve got this Australian tour coming up. I’m just gonna, like, close my eyes and jump because, these days especially, I get really anxious leaving the family.
We have twin boys, just turned four today, Benne and Gideon. I don’t wanna miss the stuff, you know? They were born during the pandemic so I was around all the time, and I became, like, physically attached to them in ways that I didn’t anticipate. I’m very, very close with my daughter who’s ten, Clarabelle, but when she was born I was touring so much or making records and traveling, I didn’t get that like physical connection with her, you know? But there’s this thing when they’re babies, so I’m very attached to my kids right now. It’s really hard to leave them.
I love the perspective that being a dad has given me, especially being an artist, you can be so fucking self-centered and so focused on everything, right? Like, what does my career look like to other people? And what does it say about who I am? Stuff like that, bullshit you really have no real control over, you know?
People like to pretend they do, by things they post online, but actually it’s just the work that actually speaks for it all. Being a dad focused me less on that stuff I don’t even have time to manage and/or deal with, it takes me out of myself and puts me in my family, where I’m a piece of the family, which I really like being.
Actually, it’s kinda similar to when I was talking about, like, tracking in a room with people, and you’re all kinda sharing the one sound? I like kinda being a part of a thing, like we share our family together, you know? I love that, and I wanna be around it. A lot.
To find out more about Josh Kaufman and listen to some of the projects he’s worked on, check out: joshkaufmanofficial.com/
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