Some people can do amazing things with a guitar, and Vicki Genfan is one of them. Using her guitar and her bare hands, she coaxes sounds, rhythms, and tunes that have drawn listeners’ attention around the country.
Her style caught the ear of guitar idols like Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, and Elliot Easton of the Cars. They were among the judges who named Genfan winner of Guitar Magazine’s 2008 Guitar Superstar competition, an honor she earned out of thousands of applicants�”and one that’s usually reserved for electric guitar players.
Genfan was confident enough in her performance and styling that when she originally read the application, she saw the criteria and read the line “anyone can enter�”even acoustic guitarists,” so she jumped at the chance to sign up.
“I thought, ‘This is a contest I can really win,'” she said.
Even so, she was surprised and nervous to make it to the top 10. But after getting over her nervousness, she listened to and analyzed the other contestants. She knew she met all the criteria the judges were looking for, but she was up against competitors who were loud and electric and intimidating. Still, when she sized up the other players, she put herself in the third-place spot.
“When they announced third place, it wasn’t me, so I said, OK maybe second place,” she said. “When they announced second place and it wasn’t me, I thought, ‘OK I’m going home.'”
But she did win, a victory she said she owes mostly to her unique style of guitar playing.
She calls it a slap-tap technique, similar to a slap-bass technique. Using 29 alternate tunings, she slaps at the guitar strings to produce an endless combination of sounds. She can even simulate percussion by tapping her thumb on the body.
She complements the sound with soulful lyrics. Sometimes her inspiration is conscious, and sometimes it’s not.
“I can feel when I’m going to write new music, the way you feel when you know you’re going to get a phone call and then the phone rings,” she explained. “So I make it a point to make myself more available over those next few weeks or months.”
Other times, the inspiration comes from emotional events. For 26 years, Genfan wanted to write a song about her mother, who had passed away. Then, on April 30, 2007�”her mother’s birthday�”she woke up and felt moved to write the song.
Sometimes, it’s just pure envy that drives her to create. That’s how she was inspired to write the song that won her the Guitar Superstar title.
Genfan said before writing “Atomic Shuffle,” she had heard someone else perform a song that stirred her�”then prompted her to consider why she wasn’t the one up there performing it. After getting back to her room, she was inspired to write something great. “Atomic Shuffle” was
the result.
Writing and performing comes as second nature to Genfan, who’s been playing guitar since she was 5. Even when she was young, she liked to experiment with the
noises her favorite instrument could produce. She remembered during her teenage years that she “was tuning the guitar weird.”
“You can get these really angelic sounds,” she said.
Since those days of musical discovery, Genfan has wanted to make her living as a professional musician. But it wasn’t until five or six years ago that she decided to devote everything to that pursuit.
“It took a lot to be brave enough to say, ‘Let me try this,'” she explained. “I think it was kind of a do-or-die thing.”
Genfan likened her decision to leave the safety of her odd jobs to jumping off a cliff.
“It was just a matter of, if I don’t give it my best, I’m going to regret it if I don’t try it,” she said.
Since taking the plunge, Genfan has played to audiences all over the world�”and she’s sometimes surprised at who her music touches. While she was playing at a trade show, a 21-year-old man came up to her and said, “You know, your music should be a model for my generation.”
“I was thrilled that somebody that young was relating to what I was doing,” she said.
What most thrilled her, however, was breaking out of the singer/songwriter/acoustic genre and reaching a wider audience.
So far, she’s been on track to reach that audience. Genfan, who lives near New York City, has been counted among the world’s greatest guitarists and musicians at such events as the International Montreal Jazz Festival, Germany’s Open Strings Guitar Festival, Italy’s Soave Guitar Festival, and performances across the United States and abroad. In 2005, she was one of the featured artists on La Guitara, the first compilation CD featuring female guitarists from around the globe, released by Vanguard Records.
Not surprisingly, she hopes to keep building on that success.
“I would really love to reach a wider audience,” she said. “I just want to get a bigger slice of the public to hear my music.”
Arts Editor Shelly Cone hopes to build a bigger music collection. Send her some of your faves at scone@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jan 8-15, 2009.