Owen Costello is an outstanding acoustic guitarist, and singer/song-writer, performing intricate, mesmerizing finger picking, soulful solos, and a smooth vocal style delivering uplifting, healing lyrics, but the show doesn’t stop there. Owen is also multi-instrumental loop artist who, having spent years honing his style into something that is both eclectic, and unique, builds a vast sonic landscape from scratch with his Boss RC-505 loop station. In the same show, you are likely to experience both live looping, and dazzling acoustic guitar playing. If you’re looking for a high-vibe breath of fresh musical air, look no further. Owen’s your guy.

Hailing from Connecticut, but residing in Hawaii since shortly before COVID, Owen has been conjuring up a beautiful, funky, bluesy style all his own that leaves audiences hooked on watching the fingers fly as he blazes effortlessly through complex picking patterns, providing the illusion of multiple guitars/instruments played at once. Eyes and ears can’t help but stay glued to the stage when he then lays guitar, bass, beatbox percussion, trumpets, French horns, piano, and auxiliary percussion (the last four being MIDI instruments played with a small keyboard) into the loop station then not only sings and plays soul-piercing solos and added improvisational lines, but also chops up the music he just made using effects on the loop station giving his music an EDM element as well.

Owen’s guitar playing style can best be described as sonic masonry. He isn’t formally or full trained in any specific genre beyond some lessons to help with the songs he had to learn in Jazz Band in high school where he was the 2nd guitarist. Sports occupied much of his youth but the desire to create and share original music has been a dream since early childhood. Instead of go home and practice his songs for Jazz Band, Owen spent more time trying to learn the solos from legends like Angus Young, Jimi Hendrix, Eddie Van Halen, and Stevie Ray Vaughan. He would mainly try to learn the songs he liked, but he was especially hooked by the guitar. He loved all kinds of music though too, spending hours listening to - and also trying to learn - songs by Jack Johnson, the Beatles, and Cake. As an adult, now living in Hawaii, he got a taste for Hawaiian slack key guitar and the music of Ledward Ka’apana which inspired several songs. Other big influences on Owen’s finger picking style are James Taylor, Peter Mulvey, and Chris Smither. The inspiration to learn how to do use a loop station as his band came from watching Keller Williams, and Mike Love, among others, be able to rock a whole show by themselves AND play with a live band. If a band is not available, he wanted to be able to book shows, and play for hours without burning out. Also, he’ll admit his ADD brain loves all the different ways to bring music to life :D

Only recently (1-2 years) has Owen started learning fingerstyle with the immense help of Tobias Rauscher's Fingerstyle Academy, an comprehensive online course that teaches people how to play this very difficult style of music. He has been fascinated by the playing of Mike Dawes, Trace Bundy, Andy McKee, Calum Graham, and of course, Tobias Rauscher. To make his own practice exercises to apply the new techniques learned from Rauscher, he takes his old songs and works in percussive hits, harmonics, tapping (if/when appropriate) and slaps to provide more texture from just the one guitar. He has used what he has learned to not only improve his fingerpicking technique, but also provides his own rhythm section like in the acoustic version of songs like “You Are Loved,” “In My Own Time,” and “the Pakalolo Song,” Even if looping and fingerstyle aren’t your thing, audiences from Honolulu to NYC would agree that Owen’s performance is one-of-a-kind and will leave a lasting impression.