It’s easy to pigeonhole musicians and fans alike into narrow genres. There’s the punk scene, the metal heads, fans gaga for singer-songwriters, the compartmentalized list goes on. So when you hear a predominantly instrumental band described as having influences ranging from folk to African rhythms to pop, naturally some curiosity—and even a bit of intimidation—is piqued. That’s where Delicate Steve comes in.

Led by talented guitarist Steve Marion, the band is something like Dustin Wong’s post-Ponytail era solo work with the addition of a full backing band. Combine the image of tasty guitar licks with a repertoire for energetic live performances and you might just come close to a description of Delicate Steve.

Lucky for us, the band is headed to Great Scott this Saturday with Boston-based Couples Counseling, project of Berklee student Virginia de las Pozas. Before their Allston performance, we got to speak with Steve about their current tour, what he’s working on with Paul Simon, and why their album releases always come with an interesting twist.

Allston Pudding: You’re on quite the extensive tour right now. How’s it going?

Steve Marion: It’s really fun. We’re California right now and we’re going up to Santa Barbara tonight. We just did Brooklyn and then LA, and last night we did somewhere right outside of LA. So yeah, the tour is going great!

AP: What’s been your favorite city to visit so far?

SM: Well, we’ve been kind of on the road on and off for a couple of months. I gotta say the Brooklyn show was really, really fun. Even though we’re from New York and New Jersey, that show was awesome. Then we hopped on a plane and the next morning we were in LA, so this whole experience has been pretty fun and exhausting. The crowds have been great. Last night we played a college show and things got crazy.

AP: So you’re coming to Boston soon. Is there anything you’re excited to do while you’re here?

SM: I forget where we’re coming from the day before, but that normally puts a damper on what we can do when we get into town. So probably just grab some food and we have a lot of friends in town. Boston crowds are normally really fun for us, so I think it’s going to be a fun show. We’re gonna rock.

AP: That’s what I like to hear! You guys are really known for your live performances. What should first time Delicate Steve concertgoers expect from your show at Great Scott?

SM: A high-energy performance. That’s what we enjoy doing. We concentrate on putting on a high-energy performance for the crowd. Blow ‘em away.

AP: I see that Boston is the second to last date on your tour. You must be pretty excited to take a break after that.

SM: No, we’re always kind of doing stuff. It doesn’t really feel like I’m going to go home and vacation. We’re always playing shows and everyone has a lot of musical projects going on, so I don’t think it feels like we’re excited to be at the end of anything. It feels like we’re always kind of in it.

AP: What other projects are your members in?

SM: Our drummer Jeremy plays in a couple of bands. He has another instrumental band. Well, there are vocals now. It’s called Star Rover and Jeremy is actually from Newton, MA.

AP: That’s awesome! So it’s a hometown show for him.

SM: Yeah, totally! And then Christian and I have a group called Saint Rich. It’s a hard rockin’ group. We put a record out on Merge Records in 2013. We were working hard on that group last year. And, you know, we’re all busy. We’ll go home and get back into it with other musical projects.

So it’s hard to convey the feeling, but it doesn’t feel for me at least like it’s the end of touring for a while or anything like that. It feels like we’re always doing something.

AP: You haven’t released a full-length outside of the live album in a few years. Is anything in the works for 2015?

SM: There’s a lot in parts right now. Yeah, we want to make sure that whatever it comes down has excitement behind it and is something that I want to share with a bunch of people.

AP: When do you expect something to come out?

SM: I don’t have an expectation of when it’s going to happen. Like I said, we’re always working on music. There’s been a lot of stuff that we’ve been working on over the past couple of years. I’m excited for new stuff to come out.

AP: I saw that you’ve been working with Paul Simon recently. What can we expect from that?

SM: I’m playing slide guitar on a track on his new record, so we were working on that together.

AP: Speaking of albums, you guys have always released your albums in really interesting ways, from the fake bio surrounding Wondervisions to the play buttons you used to promote Positive Force. What inspired that approach to releasing music?

SM: Just being different and to make people pay attention. I think there’s so much music out there that you have to do something to get people’s attention. Otherwise, you’re just another one of the hundreds of releases each year. I don’t know, it’s important to be special.

AP: Where did those ideas come from?

SM: Just brainstorming sessions, you could say.

AP: So when I was prepping for this interview, I was roaming your Wikipedia page. I noticed that just in the first couple of sentences they listed five different genres for Delicate Steve that ranged from things like African rhythms to folk music. Where would you say all of those different dynamic sounds come from?

SM: I don’t know. I feel like I don’t think about what it sounds like. Maybe you could define a lot from people that grew up with iPods and that generation absorbing different types of music. Maybe that’s been the case for all generations of music, where people just absorb a bunch of different influences. I think when I’m excited about something, I maybe want to learn how to play it or internalize it because I’ve heard it so much that it’s saved somewhere in the back of my head. It comes out when you’re working on a song and then maybe you can draw from that one random folk song you heard or that African guitar part. It wasn’t really a conscious choice to combine all of those things.

AP: That makes sense. What would you say that you’re listening to right now? What’s on your tour soundtrack?

SM: I really like the Alabama Shakes record that just came out. It was produced by Blake Mills. It feels very inspired. I think that they started to draw from a lot of different influences to make it something that isn’t just southern rock. It feels like they broke some new ground interpersonally within the confines of their own band, which is  very exciting to me—when an artist or a band breaks new ground within their own palette of sound. That’s what I think happened with this record and it’s exciting to listen to that, to listen to somebody do that.

AP: I’m sure that you’ve discovered a lot of great bands while you’ve been on tour, too. Have you played with anyone that’s been inspiring to you musically?

SM: Yeah. We saw a lot of great bands when we were in Boise for the Treefort Festival that happened in March. We saw a lot of friends in NY, as well, and SXSW.

There was one band that blew our minds. They were from Japan and were called Mothercoat. It was at this random festival in Fort Worth and it was just music that we hadn’t heard anything like before. From the first note, when there’s something that comes around that sounds different enough that you can’t compare it to two other things, that’s really exciting. So that was really fun to just be on the same bill as that band. It was really fun to hear those guys because it didn’t sound like just rock like you normally hear bands drawing from.

AP: I’m sure that you also have an interesting take on things having gotten started in New Jersey, just outside of New York City. Would you say that’s also had an impact on your music?

SM: I think the scene that I grew up in, to me, it was just my friends and I who all went to different schools. We were all kind of the remains of people that stayed around town when everyone went to college. So my local scene was just stuff that my friends and I made and were a part of. I don’t think it was really connected to New York City because we never focused on playing shows there.

I was in a band before I started to connect with the New Jersey scene, so it was always difficult to play shows in New York. Half the time we’d have to get our parents to drive us in because we weren’t old enough to play a club, and half the time we didn’t know anyone in town. So the whole experience felt like the sad parts of playing a show, whereas, to play in New Jersey we were just with our friends and it grew to be part of this larger thing. It was really fun because it seemed like all friends watching the show and performing. So, yeah, that was really inspiring. Just a group of friends that I still have from New Jersey making music together.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

Don’t forget to get your tickets to the show here.