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“I guess I’ve played every place on Marco at least once,” Ray Nesbit muses, reviewing his musical career. “I got my start on Marco Island at Rookies’ happy hour.”

Still playing on Marco, Nesbit now appears Friday and Sundays at the Snook Inn. Rather than becoming tired, like an old hat, he continually re-invents himself and never performs the same show twice. Don’t try to anticipate what he’s going to do on any given night; he hasn’t figured it out himself. In fact, Nesbit plays a lot like the way great chef’s cook; never uses a recipe.

With one foot madly working the looper, he creates a multidimensional backdrop for the vocals of David Gray’s “Babylon.” A few moments later, he succumbs to a child’s request to hear America’s “Sister Golden Hair.”

Later he plays the Dave Matthew Band’s “Crush” and an old Men at Work tune, “Down Under.” He plays the songs but does not imitate; his presentation is always customized.

The crowd at the Snook varies, he says, and Nesbit plays to whoever is there. From families to partiers, the Snook clientele changes from season to summer and from dinner hour to nighttime. “Sometimes I’m just wallpaper; sometimes ‘Ray the Entertainer’ comes out,” he explains.

Nesbit got his start by training on the guitar as a child, but he seems to have picked up his best tricks from life. He traveled around the eastern U.S. as a youth with a music instructor who taught Nesbit about music theory, as well as giving him a healthy dose of philosophy and politics.

“When I find talented people I extract as much information as I can,” he explains, taking advantage of any learning

opportunity.

A highlight of his career was performing a fundraising show with AC/DC. “Yeah, I got to be Malcolm Young for one night,” he remembers.

Although some songs are recognizable when Nesbit plays, others have been so thoroughly customized that he has created an entirely new creature. To accomplish this, he continually does interesting and original things with his guitar and arrangements.

Using a slow, deep and dangerous-sounding baseline for several bars, he led up to the lyrics, and then broke into Anita Ward’s disco hit, “Ring My Bell.” But it doesn’t sound anything like hers; instead it is smoldering and ominous.

Suddenly the baseline becomes “Another Brick in the Wall,” by Pink Floyd, highlighting Nesbit’s temperament and talent. Finally, the song seamlessly becomes a sultry version of the Bee Gees “Staying Alive.” You hear him make those transitions, but still wonder how he does it.

Nesbit gets a lot out of his guitar too. He plays rhythm and trills and uses the front of his guitar as a drum, stroking it with the brushes or thumping it like a bongo. This oftentimes sets ups loops to the next song and makes original sounds.

With the loop, he completes the frame of a song, and makes any song sound any way he chooses. He can even make a silly disco song sound dark and daring, which is no easy feat.

Nesbit delivers a viable version of “Dueling Banjos” with just his guitar and a dry bar towel, a trick he discovered by accident while cleaning his instrument.

His fingers become a blur over the strings. But you’d never guess what comes next when he pivots and plays a few bars of the “Should’a gone to FreeCredit.com” commercial.

He keeps the audience on their listening toes and mixes it with some self-depreciating humor.

What does he like to play? “Anything I’m not burned out on. I change from night to night,” he explains, in case it wasn’t already apparent.

With a voice that’s throaty and robust, there is no doubt of his talent. Sounding somewhere between Michael MacDonald, formerly of the Doobie Brothers, and Jason Wade of Lifehouse, Nesbit’s vocal quality is easy on the ears. He particularly enjoys the unpredictable, saying “I like improvising and creating on the fly.”

In addition to the remarkable things he does with his guitar, he claims, “I play keyboard, bass and I’m a wanna be drummer.”

Wannabe? “Anytime you get a chance to beat animal skins with a stick — well, it can’t get any more Neanderthal than that,” he quips.

Nesbit does technical work for corporate events, works as an audio engineer, plays as a session musician and vocalist, owns his own recording studio and assists other artist to record their work. “I’m always the guy who’s recording other people’s CDs,” he says with a wry smile. Similarly to what he does with his guitar and equipment, he also gets a lot out of his time. “I don’t get complacent,” he admits.

For a hobby, he trains a rescued dog who is learning the K-9 Good Citizen course. “It takes a lot of attention,” he says, but the goal is to train the dog to become a Hospice pet therapist.

He has recently linked up with a band called Phoenix Block, an energetic group that uses lots of electronic experimentation. Next summer, Nesbit plans to tour parts of Europe with a Middle-Eastern band called Emir and the Frozen Camels.

Finally, Nesbit loves meeting people and the best time to do that is after 8 p.m.

Go See Ray...

Snook Inn

Friday and Sunday nights

6 to 10 p.m.

394-3313