Local guitarist displays talent for world music

In between the crashes of thunder, guitarist Steve Sobiech tried to decide whether to play or be electrocuted Saturday night. Finally nature calmed down, and Sobiech began to play. Let me say it now, he knows how to work wonders out of his instruments. It wasn't anything flashy that caught my attention. Rather, it was Sobiech's soft touch -- his ability to gently coax the subtle tones from his guitar -- that intrigued me. It was almost like there was acoustic sound coming from his electric guitar, and that's certainly a sound I can get used to.\nThe Encore Café is clearly the perfect atmosphere for Sobiech's style of instrumentation. Officially classified as being a "world guitarist," his Brazilian tones have what I would deem a real blues feel. It's easily a style that will catch a listener's attention, or maybe I'm just a sucker for clean and crisp guitar instrumentals. But under the dim lights of my corner booth, what I heard is an artist who is well versed in the subtleties of his performance.\nAs the evening progressed, his instruments changed, and he covered a range of sounds and textures with electric and acoustic guitars and an instrument known as a Chapman Stick (a 12-stringed instrument, six of which are bass strings, the other six are similar to guitar's strings). Sobiech showed the real versatility of both instruments and the music he was playing. Covering a range of well known and more obscure tunes from around the South American landscape, Sobiech made it well worth my while to stick around the full two hours of his performance. And though few others were there to hear it, I felt I connected with the feeling of his music, something that makes it easy to appreciate.\nSobiech is a regular weekend performer at the Encore Café, located at 316 W. 6th St. I highly recommend his music to anyone with an ear for good world music.