Joe Satriani and Steve Vai have toured together, played together, and been lifelong friends. However, it has only been in the past couple of years that they finally formed their first band together.
SatchVai — featuring the two guitar legends along with guitarist Pete Thorn, bassist Marco Mendoza, and drummer Kenny Aronoff — are currently in the midst of their debut North American trek, which began in April in Seattle.
Animals as Leaders are opening the dates, which find the pair starting the night with a preview of three songs from their upcoming album, including “Dancing,” the latest single. As Vai tells UCR, they’ve been having a lot of fun working on the album, but as fans will hear, they’re not going to debut their new bossa nova sound.
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What to Expect From the SatchVai Album
“Primarily, if Joe and Steve get together to make a record, it’s going to be a celebration of rock guitar,” Vai says. “You know, there’s gonna be guitar. We didn’t sit down and say, ‘Okay, we’re gonna do something completely different. Nobody’s gonna even recognize it, like something David Bowie would do, or just a complete left turn.’
“We’re not those kinds of animals, you know. But I feel that we raised each other’s bar a bit,” Vai continues. “Joe would send me an email. I’d see the email and say, ‘Okay, here we go.’ He’d say, ‘Well, okay, I put this solo down. What do you think?’ I’d listen and think, ‘My God, what am I going to do?’ Because it’s so great and so interesting.”
Watch Joe Satriani and Steve Vai’s ‘Dancing’ Video
Satriani was having a similar experience on the other end, as he shared during a separate conversation with UCR.
“Every song that Steve would send me, the first thing I would say was something like, ‘Oh, that’s really cool.’ And then I go, ‘How am I going to play any of that?’ He figures out a way to present me with stuff that I haven’t played before,” the guitarist explains. “Sometimes I’ll figure out a way of coming in sideways. But I think as we played on each other’s songs or as we would contribute to the slow building of a song together over time, challenging each other was key to making the album really fun to listen to from top to bottom.”
Satriani continues: “There was a song that turned out really great called ‘Bronco Freight Train. And it started with these two or three parts that Steve had sent that didn’t really define themselves other than here’s an amazing Steve Vai intro and here’s an amazing Steve Vai riff, and then here’s this really cool little breakdown.”
That was enough for Satriani. “He said, ‘I don’t know if it’s a song, and maybe we shouldn’t do it.’ And I’m like, ‘No, no, no. This is classic Steve Vai. We’re definitely doing it; just give me a couple of days.’ So I wound up writing… I kind of took his riff and simplified it a bit and then I wrote a verse and a chorus,” he details. “And then I expanded the breakdown, which I thought was just such a beautiful solo section. I crossed my fingers and sent it back to him. I said, ‘What do you think?’ And he’s like, ‘Oh, that’s great — but what’s the melody going to be?'”
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In Vai’s opinion, the push-pull and challenging nature of the material he and Satriani have been sending each other is going to deliver some of the best music that fans have heard from either artist to date.
“This is the fuel for going deeper because the last thing I’m going to do is something like he did,” Vai points out. “That’s not what people want. That’s not what I want. You want to be pushed into your own creative potential more and more. Most of the time, the most effective way [to accomplish that] is to work with people who are monsters. And Joe’s a monster; you know? It helped me push myself into even more Vai-isms. So it’s a great record. I think fans are going to really hear that intertwining guitar elixir kind of thing along with camaraderie and melodies. So I’m very excited about it.”
How Working With Vai Informs Satriani’s Own Material
As Satriani and Vai have been working on the upcoming SatchVai album, Satriani has also been considering a follow-up to his most recent solo album from 2022 titled The Elephants of Mars.
“I think in many ways, Steve and I are similar in that when we’re working on one thing it inspires us to imagine something completely opposite,” Satriani says. “Steve’s talked a lot about [how] he’s been working on an acoustic vocal album for a while; that’s the complete opposite of everything that he’s been putting out in the last couple of years.
“And I certainly have entertained the idea of trying to strip down my production ideas quite a bit. I think I was starting to go down that road with Shapeshifting and What Happens Next, ” Satriani shares. “But during a period of the pandemic where many people were working remotely [that] sort of lended itself towards not being recorded live in a room because people couldn’t be together as much as we wanted.
“So people started layering a lot more because they were working remotely. They’d be by themselves in the studio saying ‘Okay keyboards, organs strings synthesizers tambourine acoustic banjo.’ So I started to think [differently]. The Elephants of Mars , I had such an intense time making that record,” he explains. “I thought next time I go out; I think I want to do something really stripped down — maybe a power trio or something like that.”
But come 2024,Satriani also found himself on the road with Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony as part of the Van Halen-centric Best of All Worlds Tour.
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“The work with Sammy and Mike sort of intervened; then this work with Steve kind of intervened,” says the guitarist. “So now I’m not really sure where I’d go next. But I have many songs written that could go in either direction where there’s much production or very little production. Honestly, I’m not sure where I’m leaning yet.”
Listen to Joe Satriani and Steve Vai’s ‘The Sea of Emotion, Pt. 1’
When Will the SatchVai Album Come Out?
Three songs off the forthcoming SatchVai album have been released so far including the Glenn Hughes collaboration “I Wanna Play My Guitar.” A release date for this 10-song project will be announced in the future but both guitarists are excited by everything that’s happened so far.
“We didn’t plan on forming a band but we kind of knew it’s probably inevitable,” says Vai. “But when it happened it happened very organically smoothly transparently and beautifully. So that’s a great move forward; plan only to do what feels right when the time feels right.
“It’s hard to talk about future plans; I [can] tell you thoughts ideas goals and stuff but we have no idea what’s going to happen,” he continues. “But in making this music yeah we had many songs; I think we had like 18 tracks most were completed pretty much some were just demos we each made.”
Picking winners was simple for Vai; it was just intuition.”One thing Joe and I just without discussion stuck by was when we both agreed on something then it was right,” he explains. “If one of us had a feeling about it then there was no question; I’d never try talking him into liking a song or making demands or something; you work together when you both go ‘Aha that done’ that’s [when you know].”
The forthcoming album is testament to these guitar virtuosos’ irreplicable chemistry.”We could have had a 17-song record; will they be reworked in future who knows but making songs with Joe Satriani is always pleasurable,” enthuses Vai.”It’s fun creative; it’s something that I’m not sure if it’s possible with anyone else because our connection similarity likes these kinds of things; we thought wouldn’t it be nice if we continued this in future? But we both know it has to happen organically.”
The SatchVai tour continues through end May.
Watch Joe Satriani and Steve Vai’s ‘I Wanna Play My Guitar’ Featuring Glenn Hughes
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Gallery Credit: Nick DeRiso
