Tommy Emmanuel looks like a solo artist and plays like a band. 

This much was clear from the jump of Emmanuel’s concert at New Albany, Ohio’s, McCoy Center for the Arts, when he walked on to the smoke-shrouded stage without introduction, sat under a a blanket of pulsating red and orange lights and – his left leg and head in constant motion with the music he made – reeled off three lively tracks from the recently released Living in the Light. 

Promotion out of the way, Emmanuel, turned to the fraternity of guitarists, first dedicating his version of Chet Atkins’ “To ‘B’ or Not to ‘B’” to KISS’ Ace Frehley, whose death was announced just before showtime. 

In addition to Frehley and Atkins, Emmanuel acknowledged influences like Jerry Reed, Merle Travis, B.B. King and Eric Clapton. 

“I ripped off everybody and now I sound like me,” Emmanuel said. “It just took a long time.” 

But no one sounds like Emmanuel, who is to the acoustic guitar as Stevie Ray Vaughan was to the electric.

Later, he’d nod to Reed on “Struttin’” and transcribe “The Entertainer” for six strings as he slowly accelerated the repeated melody from a relaxed to a rapid tempo. 

Though he occasionally sings, as on Travis’ “Nine Pound Hammer,” Emmanuel is essentially an instrumentalist playing instrumental music. And his tone paintings, accentuated with lights from across the spectrum, left the audience transfixed. Concertgoers gasped at Emmanuel’s harmonics. They laughed heartily when he coaxed melody with his chording hand while waving his picking hand at the front row. And jaws went slack when Emmanuel yelled, “Take it boys,” and turned around to a phantom band playing the bass, drums, rhythm and lead parts all emanating from Emmanuel’s two hands. 

Playing with lightning speed and relaxed ease, Emmanuel used the entirety of the three guitars he played across the evening, which spanned sets of 50 and 55 minutes. 

There was flatpicking. There was fingerpicking. He chorded over and under the neck. Emmanuel beat and scratched his guitars’ bodies with his hands and a drummer’s brush and used a mic in the body cavity and a pickup in the saddle to mimic the sound of digital samples on “Mombasa,” one of his signature numbers. Its bombast contrasted beautifully with the gentle shimmering of “Angelina,” another, albeit antithetical, signature. 

The homestretch consisted of Emmanuel’s seated, tender arrangement of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” and his standing, rambunctious “Beatles Medley,” which he introduced by asking if there were any Rolling Stones fans in the house. Despite their differences, both instrumental interpretations showcased Emmanuel’s one-man-band abilities and demonstrated why music lovers go to see Emmanuel perform because he needs to be seen as much as heard to be believed.

And even then, it seems your eyes and ears are deceiving you. 

For there is nothing—and there never has been anything—like a Tommy Emmanuel concert.