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Steamboat Springs — Before he was the Acoustic Warrior, John Sotter was just a guy with a guitar, a harmonica and no desire to stay still.

Attributing most of his songwriting and guitar-playing traits to years of moving from beach to beach, playing to whoever would listen, Sotter passes through Routt County every once in a while to visit family and play at Hahn's Peak Cafe, one of his favorite venues.

After his show there Saturday, Sotter doesn't have anything on his schedule until early May, when he'll open for Blind Melon.

Sotter spoke with 4 Points about his time on the move, breaking free from responsibility and why he's at his best when he's by himself.

4 POINTS: How do you go about preparing a three-hour set of music?

JOHN SOTTER: I don't.

I'm a big Grateful Dead fan. I believe they never wrote out a set list, so I don't either. I just play what I want to play when I want to play it.

Perhaps I'm lazy and that's why I don't sit down and write out a set list beforehand. But I think it's more that, when I first started playing in bars, I played a lot of gigs in places like Mexico and Costa Rica with a couple of friends. We didn't have a P.A. with us - we just had a guitar and bongo drums and whatnot.

Just playing with acoustic guitars, it was always a challenge to get the people in the bar to quiet down so we could be heard. So, you'd do a louder tune to play over them, and sometimes when the level of the bar came down you'd do a softer tune. That habit kind of stuck with me.

4 POINTS: How did traveling to places such as Mexico and Costa Rica influence how you work as a musician now?

JS: It was a major influence on my musicianship. I kind of fooled around with the guitar in college, that's when I started learning how to play. And when I graduated, that's when I started doing a lot of traveling.

I started becoming a songwriter and started becoming a somewhat proficient musician while in foreign countries. So, the experiences I had in foreign countries and the people I met in foreign countries really shaped my songwriting and my music. Because you know, at the time, I was spending more time out of the country than in the country, for about eight years, and that's when I was becoming a songwriter.

For those eight years, I wasn't really listening to the radio, so I wasn't really trying to imitate what was hot at the time. I was just writing what I wanted to write.

4 POINTS: What made you decide to pick up and travel?

JS: I always joke around that I was just frightened of entering the real world, and there's definitely some truth to that.

But I don't know, I graduated college in four years and it kind of happened pretty quickly. I always had been somewhat artistic growing up, but I never really found the way in which I really wanted to pursue art. And when I picked up the guitar : I realized that was the way I wanted to express myself.

I had never taken any lessons in college or anything, so I realized I just needed to sit down and take a great deal of time to learn the instrument.

I figured being a part of this society, we always get roped into working 40 hours a week whether we want to or not, to pay for all the little things you think you need.

So, I decided to just sit on beaches around the world : sit around and play guitar all day and eat and jump in the ocean, and that's how I spent my day. I mainly spent my time traveling where I could find quiet, beautiful places where I could just sit and play my guitar.

4 POINTS: How did you end up with the name "The Acoustic Warrior?"

JS: (Groans) That's a tough question. The answer is - stall, stall, stall.

You know, I guess it has to do with the fact that I played with various musicians for many years, and I was in a few bands, and I found that musicians are even flakier than your normal person.

I ended up having like a two-piece and a three-piece band that I got a bunch of gigs with, and the other people in my band would call at the very last second and say, 'Oh this happened and I can't show up.'

Eventually, I realized it was silly to get together and practice with these people if these guys weren't going to show up. So, I ended up going back to what I originally did.

So, I consider myself a bit of a warrior because for the past several years, I've played strictly by myself, and I play the acoustic guitar. So somehow that makes me an acoustic warrior.

4 POINTS: So you prefer to play alone?

JS: I come from Southern California, and a lot of musicians there will play solo when they go to play coffee shops or small venues, and whenever they get a big gig they'll throw together a band, because they feel like they need a band behind them.

But the way I learned to play music was just sitting by myself, around a bonfire on a beach. So, when I realized that musicians are just horrible people to rely on, I decided I can just go out and do it by myself.

If it entertains people around a bonfire, it can entertain people at a bar.