Steven Katz: Diverse Musician

September 29, 2021

Steven Katz started playing music at a very young age. He started off his musical journey playing the cello in the first grade and dabbled in piano and ukulele. But then he saw the Beatles which changed his life as a musician. Steven started pursuing his goal to become a guitar player. Rock & Roll was his music of choice at the time, and the rest is history. During the 80s and early 90s, Steven played in bands until he moved to St. Croix in 1996, and quickly realized there wasn’t much of a market for full-size bands. He couldn’t make a decent living. He then decided to start playing solo doing live looping (playing music in the background while you play live-backing tracks of his own music) in his performances.

Currently, his guitar style is known as finger or percussive fingerstyle which is usually played on an acoustic guitar. Steven admired guitar players like Leo Kottke and John Fahey who have influenced his current music style.

At the same time, Steven started building guitars with a friend who also builds guitars. He realized building guitars can be challenging so for the past five years, he started building steel string guitars instead of nylon string guitars. His goal is to eventually take his guitar building to a higher level.

Steven has some new music out on pre-order this week. You can find out more about Steven and his work on stevenkatzmusic.com for products and information. For band camp, you can go to stevenkatz.bandcamp.com. His music is also available on all popular music platforms.