Guitar-playing wizard of Oz is smokin'

When Joe Robinson was growing up, he didn't have much to do other than practise at becoming a guitar legend. Tonight, Nelson people can find out how he got on. He talks to Naomi Arnold.

He's no average Joe. Eighteen and already with a legend's nickname; that's the mark of a true child prodigy. Smokin' Joe Robinson, the world's new guitar hero, will arrive in Nelson today to play tonight at the Nelson School of Music.

The Australian virtuoso was driving down the highway to Sydney with his parents and siblings when I spoke to him. They're on the way here to watch him play.

"They're all really looking forward to it," he says, and you can hear the smile in his voice. Pleasant, articulate and sincere, the main impression you get from Joe Robinson is that he's loving this whole crazy ride.

His performances are so jaw-dropping that at first you don't even notice the tune. His fingers pluck impossibly layered sounds, like several instruments played at once. He plays with a grin on his face. Watching him you can feel a definite sense of the joy he gets from mastering his instrument, a showman's love of the flourish. It impressed the industry bigwigs in Nashville.

"I went door-knocking and asked `Can I play for you?' and they all said no, but I was so persistent that I eventually got some meetings and after three weeks in Nashville I'd met the top people in the industry."

He was offered deals – album, management – and now counts guitar legends Tommy Emmanuel, Brad Paisley, Steve Vai, Brent Mason, Duane Eddy, John Jorgenson, Steve Cropper and Dweezil Zappa as fans.

Appearing as a floppy-haired 16 year old on the second series of Australia's Got Talent in 2008, Joe wowed the Australian public, who sent him through to the final and ensured he beat the judges' choice, Nana "Spoons" Perry, a spoon-playing, farming grandmother from Western Australia. The win brought Joe A$250,000 (NZ$310,000) and, after saying on air that the first thing he would buy his mother was a new vacuum cleaner, a step into the strange world of endorsement deals. "Now she has three," he says. He bought "a few" new guitars with his winnings instead.

The teenager from Temagog, New South Wales, says his hometown was dead boring and his success comes from having nothing to do but play the guitar, which he first picked up when he was 10.

"In my town it's like a 45-minute drive to get to a shopping centre or a fuel station. It's in the middle of nowhere. On the weekends I didn't go to parties, I just played music. I was earning money since I was about 11 so there was never an incentive to do anything else."

Within a year of starting he had exhausted his teacher and started teaching himself from the internet, getting up at 4am to practise before school. He'd sleep on the bus for an hour, practise guitar again at breaks and then again for another three to four hours after school. Eventually, his parents let him quit school to focus on his music.

But although he has a lifetime of playing ahead of him, Smokin' Joe Robinson doesn't want to be moulded into anything he's not comfortable with.

"When it becomes a matter of performing, not for the sake of making music, that's the situation I don't want to be in. A lot of Australia's Got Talent people were there to become stars and wanted to make their mark and become successful but all I wanted to do is play music so I feel different to these people.

"I don't want to be Britney Spears and play the same rubbish. I just want to keep learning new things and different styles and becoming a musician."

• Joe Robinson plays at the Nelson School of Music tonight, as part of the Woollaston Jazz and Blues Festival. The festival continues until Saturday. See nelsonjazzfest.co.nz for more information.

- © Fairfax NZ News