Fingerpicking good: Cave Creek musician shines at festival

Fingerpicking good: Cave Creek musician shines at festival

by LeeAnn Sharpe

CAVE CREEK – Forty years of playing the guitar has taken Cave Creek resident Greg Sabena, 51, to a good many music competitions and put him in league with some incredibly talented musicians.

Sabena admits he was once considered the type who “doesn’t play well with others,” but he played solo well enough recently to score a 2nd place award at the Wickenburg Bluegrass Festival. He qualified to win in the specialty instrument category because Sabena fingerpicks the strings rather than using a pick to play his guitar.

“When they don’t have a separate category for fingerpick guitar, you get grouped in specialty instruments,” Sabena says. “I play 6‑ and 12‑string guitar instrumental, totally self‑taught.”

Several thousand bluegrass music lovers attended the festival held Nov. 10‑11, which Sabena won in 2001.



Established 27 years ago, the festival featured the Four Corners championship contests this year for fiddle, flatpick guitar, banjo, mandolin and specialty instruments. The festival places autoharps, dulcimers, accordions, fingerpick guitars, harmonicas, the dobro, or any such folk instrument in the specialty category.

Contestants have three minutes to strum their stuff and hope to impress three “blind judges” who listen through headphones. The competition is done in this manner so the judges will not be influenced by the performers’ appearance.

“I’ve been heavily influenced by all of the masters of the 20th century and play most every style–a cross of classical, folk, jazz and bluegrass,” Sabena says of his style.

“The selection of music depends on the venue. Wickenburg is more a country and bluegrass event, where at the Nationals in Winfield, Kansas, I might play something more complicated.”

Sabena says, “I’ve done studio work for years. I’m not in a band. My kindergarten teachers said ‘doesn’t play well with others,’ so I’ve stayed solo.”

Although he performs most often in California, Sabena has played at the Scottsdale Center for the Arts and occasionally at the Cave Creek Coffee Company.

Reluctant to toot his own horn, Sabena didn’t offer his credentials. But an Internet search reveals a discography of his recordings, including a duet with National Champion Todd Halwell playing “Last Steam Engine Train”.

Guitar makers, also known as luthiers, boast that Sabena plays their instruments and include Lance McCollum of Dream Guitars in Colfax, Calif., and famed luthier Bozo Podunavac in Florida, endorsements that obviously influence guitarists aspiring to attain his level of virtuosity.

His concerts take him all over the Southwest and California for many music festivals and engagements. “Nothing in particular is on the schedule right now,” he says. “But I’m sure there will be more on the horizon.”

In a world electrified and amplified into a cacophony of sound, it’s refreshing to listen to the raw simple notes of fingerpicked guitar.

These days Sarena works at Blue Sage Art Gallery at el Pedregal in Carefree between gigs.

“I supplement the hundreds of dollars I make playing guitar every year by working here,” Sabena says, laughing.