Guitarist Steve Selinsky has been pursuing the craft of guitar playing for most of his life.  He's known for the use of a wide variety of styles into his soloing and songwriting, high energy guitar work, and his ability to fit into an array of musical contexts.  He has played and worked on projects with other artists as diverse as Marty Magehee (4Him), Matthew Ward (2nd Chapter of Acts/Solo Artist), Kirby Velarde, Biff Gore (finalist on “The Voice”), Darren Rahn (Grammy Award nominated saxophonist/producer/mixing engineer), and Marvin Craft (Dotsero).

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Born in 1964 in Laramie, Wyoming, he’s the firstborn of four kids. His father was in the Air Force, and re-located the family to Aurora, Colorado in 1974. One of the earliest memories of his childhood was that there was “always music in the house”, as his parents had quite a collection of records. "I would listen intently to everything on these recordings, being totally fascinated by the whole "idea" of music..."

 

Originally gravitating towards the drum kit, he became enamored with the guitar at the age of 10, and began teaching himself to play. He was in several bands as a teenager, which fostered his current passion for lead guitar. 

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He’s been an avid concert goer since his teens. "The experience of "live" music left me really inspired to become a part of that world...”.  While most of his peers were listening to mainstream music, he found himself drawn to more fringe artists, and to Progressive Rock in particular.  “I was totally fixated on groups like Yes, Rush, and Genesis- the complexity of the arrangements, lyrics, and musicianship was just deeply compelling to me…”.

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He was introduced to Pat Metheny’s music in his late twenties.

”I actually hated it at first…But the more I listened, my appreciation for it grew…I now own almost everything that Pat has put out, and have seen him play live several times...He’s become my favorite overall guitarist…”.  Steve also cites Alex Lifeson (Rush), Steve Howe (Yes), Jamie West-Oram (The Fixx), Allan Holdsworth, Ian Crichton (SAGA), and Eric Johnson as major influences to his playing style. 

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In 2005, Steve's interest in instrumental music led him into a band whose leader studied Jazz, and who wrote all the arrangements for the group. He spent five years there as the lead guitarist. “It was a high cliff to navigate...I had never played what some of my musician friends jokingly refer to as the “12-dollar chords”, nor had I ever soloed in this way…it was an education for sure…”.

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He left the jazz group in 2008 to start his own group under the moniker, “The Steve Selinsky Band”. He quickly discovered that he had acquired a real skill for writing instrumental music, and it also gave him an opportunity to grow as a band leader. The group lasted for about three years, with several other musicians contributing to it.

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In 2011, Steve switched gears again to explore the world of solo work, using instrumental music as the template to highlight his guitar playing skills. He not only writes his own music for this, but creates instrumental covers of a wide variety of artists from the 60s through the 2000s.

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This current season has also focused his abilities in the creation of his own signature backing tracks, which feature Steve playing most of the instruments heard on the track.  “I was trying to stay away from tracks downloaded from a website, as I wanted them to have a more "organic" feel in a live setting…One of the greatest compliments I receive is when someone says they thought a “band” was actually playing, and I often joke that, "I’m a solo act that “sounds” like a full band…".  He also includes some vocals, and the use of a looper guitar pedal to add more variety to his sets.  

  

He was able to play over 350 dates in Colorado with this approach before he and his wife Liana relocated to Texas in 2020.  

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Steve has also had opportunities for session work. He played lead guitar on the closing credits tune to the Pure Flix film, “Escape” (starring C.Thomas Howell and John Rhys-Davies), and had opportunities to submit original instrumental projects for possible inclusion to the soundtracks for the films, “Jobs” (starring Ashton Kutcher), “The Bronx Bull” (sequel to,“Raging Bull”), and the TV series, “Project Runway" (all through SongRunner Entertainment).

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He has also written over 40 pieces of original instrumental music, leading to the creation of  2 CD projects- the “full-band arrangement" EP, “Fire in the Hole”, and “Sketches”, which features solo acoustic guitar (including a cover of Bach’s, “Suite 1- Prelude”). 

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Steve’s currently continuing to play live around Texas, and is working on the completion of his next studio recording, due out sometime in 2024.