David Kauffman

Biography

David Kauffman is an American singer-songwriter from New Jersey, known for his 1984 collaboration album with Eric Caboor, Songs From Suicide Bridge. Eric Caboor and David Kauffman were both musicians in the local coffee house folk rock scene when they met at the Basement coffee shop in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles in October 1981. Caboor had lived his entire life in Los Angeles, while Kauffman had moved there from New Jersey in October 1978 to pursue a songwriting career. The latter lived in an apartment on North Sycamore Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard, working a day job as a waiter at the nearby Hamburger Hamlet across the street from Mann's Chinese Theatre. Before moving, he had majored in music education at Indiana University in the mid-1970s. Caboor, meanwhile, lived at his childhood home in Burbank, where his father had built a tool shed in the backyard that also served as rehearsal space and a makeshift recording studio for Eric. Kauffman was impressed by Caboor's songwriting skills; the two later met outside of work, where they talked of joining forces as a duo. By late 1982, they began tossing around the idea of releasing a record with songs from their repertoire.

The album was recorded in Caboor's roughly 180-square-foot converted tool shed, which had a four-track recorder inside. The duo recorded 13 songs for the album but were forced to pare down the final selection to just 10 songs, owing to the length limitations of the LP format. The album was recorded on a tight budget, the majority of the expense going toward pressing the initial run of 500 LPs, which cost them $3,000 in personal savings. Kauffman reflected: "The thing that really saved us is that we weren't spending any money on a studio. That allowed us to do take after take after take and not have to sweat about how long it was taking".

Biography text from Last.fm, available under CC BY-SA.