Smokin' Joe Robinson @ Infinity Music Hall & Bistro

If you're a fan of Tommy Emmanuel then you're gonna love Smokin' Joe! Blazing acoustic guitar is the best way to describe this winner of the Australian version of American Idol.

Joe Robinson plays guitar like Ali boxed, like Einstein knew theoretical physics and like Hitchcock made movies.

If the chipper twenty-year-old from backwoods Temagog, New South Wales, Australia were two or three times his age, his sheer six-string ability and compositional insight, which have already earned Robinson a world-wide following, would be no less astonishing. That fact is underscored by his winning TV’s Australia’s Got Talent in 2008, and the Australian National Songwriting Competition at the tender age of 13.

Robinson truly found his calling at age 13 after meeting the Emmanuel brothers, Phil and Tommy, widely considered Australia’s two finest guitarists. He was particularly struck by Tommy’s dazzling acoustic finger picking technique and turned to the acoustic guitar as his primary instrument.

“When I saw Tommy, I immediately thought, ‘I’ve got to be that good!’ ” Tommy was also taken with Joe’s blossoming talent and became his mentor.

A few years later — after Robinson had already won his first Australian National Songwriting Competition — Emmanuel introduced him to American audiences, taking him on a tour of the States that included an important stay in Nashville, Tennessee, where Robinson currently lives. On that trek he met Frank Rogers, a top Nashville producer who’s made smash records with Brad Paisley, Darius Rucker and many others.

“I played one song for him and he said, ‘I want to produce your album,’ ” Robinson recounts. “He was an award-winning producer, so I was quite surprised.”

It was the beginning of a musical partnership that continues on Let Me Introduce You and began with Robinson’s second album, 2009’s dazzling all-solo-acoustic Time Jumpin’, the sequel to his 2007 made-in-Australia debut Birdseed.

In 2008 Robinson went home at the invitation of the producers of Australia’s Got Talent, handily winning the competition. “That was a pretty unbelievable experience,” he says. “It was a lot of fun and a huge amount of people got to see me play, which allowed me to begin touring on my own as a headliner.”

Recently Robinson’s been traveling the world with his own trio featuring a drummer and bassist headlining tours across Europe, Japan, North American and Australia, displaying his virtuosity on acoustic and electric guitar and honing many of the songs on stage that appear on Let Me Introduce You.

“My goal was to keep my musical DNA as a thread through the whole album while evolving my electric guitar playing, songwriting and singing,” Robinson says. “I think that along the way I created a new style for myself, with room for me to continue to grow as an artist. The truth is, music is something you do because you can’t stand not doing it. Like Frank Zappa and Miles Davis, I’m interested in continuously reinventing myself and seeking new directions.