For Steve Vai, 2026 is the year the planets lined up for him. Why you ask?
It’s because he and lifelong friend and fellow guitar virtuoso Joe Satriani were finally able to make the duo’s longtime dream of forming the SatchVai Band, an outfit of which both guitarists are members and will be playing with at the Beacon Theatre on May 28.
While the Carle Place natives have a relationship dating back to their teen years and have subsequently toured together, either with their own individual groups on the same bill or as part of G3, a tour organized by Satriani featuring him alongside two other guitarists, they’ve never been members of the same band. That is, until now, when both of their schedules allowed them to first start exploring the idea seriously in 2024.
Since then, they’ve taken the SatchVai Band to Europe last year, and are now readying to hit North America as well as release a studio album of new material dubbed “The Sea of Emotion” later in 2026. For Vai, it was a long time coming.
“It all started back in 1972 when I started taking lessons from Joe when I was 12,” Val recalled. “I’ve had such a blessed career. I’ve had the last 46 years of touring with such great artists—Frank Zappa, [David Lee] Roth, Whitesnake—playing in so many projects. And I’ve toured a lot with Joe doing various G3 things. I have Beat. It’s really been nice. The vast majority of it has been my solo career touring. Joe and I havealways been joined at the hip. Besides being friends and comrades, we’ve always enjoyed playing together. But we’ve always been sort of also very focused on our solo career and music. It just took priority.”
He added, “Joe and I instinctually felt that somehow it was going to happen in its right time. It just seemed so perfect that at this point it started to happen. All of the practical signs were pointing to it. We had just each finished a huge solo tour. I was out for 19 months for Inviolate and he was out there hitting it for “Elephants of Mars.”
The sky opened up and then all these gigs started happening. When we knew we were going to tour together, even with two bands, it led into our deciding to create one band that we’re both in and we release a whole record. There was just a very natural progression to it.”
Rounding out the SatchVai Band touring outfit are drummer Kenny Aronoff (John Fogerty, John Mellecamp), bassist Marco Mendoza and guitarist Pete Thorn. Those coming out to the shows can expect plenty of precision, passion and sonic expertise.
Best of all will be the kind of unpredictability that comes with the territory of two guitarists who have so thoroughly mastered their instruments and craft.
“If you’re fans of our music, it’s quite diverse in the optics in a sense,” Vai said. “Now, we’re playing material that’s newly written and very integrated for two guitar players. We come out and do some of that. Then I play a couple of my songs and then Joe comes and joins me for something. Then he does a couple of songs and then I join him. It’s that kind of thing. The cool thing is that we reimagined a few of our classics. Joe has ‘Always With You, Always With Me.’ I have ‘For the Love of God.’ We both play on eac other’s songs. It’s really quite nice because with something like ‘Always,’ Joe’s beautiful, tender ballad, that melody is made of gold, so you don’t want to mess it up or put in toomuch stuff. So, I wrote little complimentary riffs in there. As a listener who has seen him play that song a lot, it’s a nice surprise.”
Source: LI Press
