Tour delayed, but Steve Vai, guitar god & innovator, still eager to rock you

Editor's note: Steve Vai announced Tuesday that due to an injury, he has postponed his planned tour of North America until the Fall. The first U.S. leg of dates will now begin Sept. 28 in El Cajon, and visit The Palace Theatre in Greensburg on Nov. 7. All ticket and VIP purchases will be honored for the rescheduled date. Here is an interview with Vai that The Times conducted several weeks earlier.

Steve Vai believes he created a new guitar technique during the pandemic.

Well, the Long Island rocker already had come as close as anyone to mastering the electric guitar, so why not?

Vai will showcase his prodigious six-string skills on a tour recently rescheduled due to an injury from late-winter to autumn. His original March 6 date at The Palace in Greensburg now will take place Nov. 7.

Approximately one year ago, Vai underwent shoulder surgery to repair an injury. That procedure was successful, enabling him to record the upcoming studio album "Inviolate." In preparing for the tour, it became clear that a new injury emerged that requires another surgery prohibiting the tour to be staged as announced.

Vai said, “I’m gutted that we have to move this tour, but I also know it’s in the best interests for us and the fans that we do.”

While Vai's right wing was still in a sling, he wrote an instrumental song "Knappsack" inspired by the doctor who treated him. Vai posted a YouTube video where he plays the song with just his left hand, achieving majestic, hard-rock notes only reachable by a guitar god. It would make a cool TikTok challenge: One-handed guitar shredding.

“I started to see some clips of young kids pulling it off, too," Vai said. "It's really fascinating.”

Hear "Knappsack" and other guitar-slaying songs like "Teeth of The Hydra" on Vai's new studio album, "Inviolate," to be released Jan. 28 digitally and on CD.

A new album brings a tour, Vai's first since the pandemic, so he's eager to hit the road.

"I've been touring for 41 years and in the beginning, it was a real challenge, but now I look so forward to it because on so many levels I enjoy it," he said. "I like seeing the diversity of culture. On tour, I'll often pull out my bike or go jogging and love to go down these little urban streets and see how people live. It's always different, whether you're in Siberia, Shanghai or Pittsburgh. It's a great way to see the world.

"And another thing is I love this band," Vai said. "We've been together now nearly 20 years; Phil Bynoe (bass), Jeremy Colson (drums) and Dave Weiner on guitar. It's like having your brothers with you. There's a lot of laughs and a lot of freedoms on tour. It's different than being home when you're interrupted by a lot of things.

"But probably the biggest highlight is actually getting on stage. I really feel that's what I'm built for; that's what's in my DNA," he said. "I love all the elements in my immediate environment like hearing the band and that intimate conversation we're having through an expression of notes, and then the interaction with the audience. I deliberately set out to inject my notes into their hearts and psyches. When I am on stage, you are engaged seeing this quirky but brilliant guitar player entertaining you."

With a fan base that dates to his days as the early 1980s "stunt guitarist" for Frank Zappa, and strings master for the David Lee Roth Band, Vai says "I'm a service provider."

If only our internet, phone and cable providers were as worthy of our cheers.

After a few years' break from the road, and grateful for the opportunity to do what he loves again, Vai isn't as nervous as normal pre-tour.

"It's interesting because in the past, when I was on tour it always came with a lot of pressure," he said. "Picking out merchandise and getting the songs together and learning them all and always the psychological pressure of worrying 'Am I going to deliver?... Am I going to be good enough?' "

Remember: Vai's the guy Guitar Player magazine once ranked as the No. 10 greatest guitarist ever.

"I realized through the pandemic what a tour machine I am," he said.

Fans can brush up now on a few setlist certainties now, like "Little Pretty" already released on YouTube.

"That song is so obtuse compared to what radio plays. The way it speaks, it's not for radio, but for people to experience a different mind-space evoked by a melody from a different kind of dimension," Vai said.

Also available now on video is "Candle Power,” the song where he thinks he stumbled upon an entirely new guitar technique called “joint shifting.” The core concept there, he explains, is to enact simultaneous multiple string bends in opposite directions, which “requires bending only the top joint of the finger independently from any other finger.

"I'd never seen anyone do it, though I'm sure they did," Vai said, tossing in the name of folk-country guitarist Jerry Donahue as a possibility.

Vai said this technique of fingertip bending might be scratching the surface of something new, "but it will take younger fingers with more time" to master.

Vai's new album includes another surprise, "Greenish Blues," one of the closest things he's ever done to a traditional blues song, until it spirals off into his standard hard-rock pyrotechnics.

"The way I'm playing that is so very natural, though it's the chord changes underneath it that seems alien to Vai," he said.

"Greenish Blue" materialized out of one of his concert soundchecks. As usual, his band started the soundcheck without him before Vai strolled onto the stage, grabbed his tuned-up guitar and starting improvising.

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"We record it as we jam for a half hour or maybe an hour," Vai said. "I've been doing this for as long as I've been touring. I've got thousands of hours of recordings. Some of it is crap, but some is like 'Whoa, what is that?" And some of those moments I spiff up and release as new songs. From the last tour, that was the case with 'Greenish Blues.' I mean, there it was.

"I was surprised by what I played. Eighty percent of that was taken from the soundcheck. I am getting some questions about it. 'Why are you doing something so bluesy?' I am not a blues player. The only thing Stevie Ray Vaughan and I have in common is a first name. But I absolutely adore what he does. With the blues, I never felt good enough to emulate it effectively, and in a way I forged my own style because of that. Though the blues scale was the first I learned. Instinctively, I realized it's a culture, the blues. I visit it occasionally for a sandwich."

He sank his teeth into being the guitarist, alongside bass guitar ace Billy Sheehan, for David Lee Roth's post-Van Halen mid-to-late '80s band.

"That was a great period because I got to write songs with David Lee Roth that were very guitar-heavy," Vai said.

Vai co-wrote Roth's Top-10 hit "Yankee Rose," and credits producer Ted Templeman for inspiring the opening, squawking riffs where Vai makes his guitar almost literally talk.

"Ted Templeman said 'You need something that blasts.' "

At age 18, Vai's prowess at reading music earned him a job as a transcriptionist for legendary composer and rock band leader Zappa. Five years later, Zappa added Vai to his tour band as a guitarist who got the spotlight for complex solos.

"Frank knew what he wanted and he knew what he could deliver," hei said. "He also offered a forum where you could express something you did extraordinarily. He was always looking for something in music that could be extraordinary. With me, I had a weird ability to play very difficult lines on the guitar and he loved that and gave me a forum to do it.

"Frank, more than anyone I've ever known, was constantly in a creative mood. And most of the time, he was tilting his head back and laughing at one of his own ideas."

Zappa might have smiled at Vai's brand-new guitar, custom-built by Hoshino and based on a steampunk motif. A beast of an instrument, it's got three necks encompassing seven- and 12-string guitars; a four-string bass and harp strings.

"It's delicate and heavy," Vai said, adding he hadn't figured out the logistics for how to bring it out on stage. "We're talking unknown territory here."

He's got a few more weeks to scheme for a tour that's shaped up to be a crowd-pleaser.

"C'mon down to see a great bunch of guys loving what they do, entertaining."

Scott Tady is the local Entertainment Reporter for The Beaver County Times and Ellwood City Ledger. He's easy to reach at stady@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @scotttady.

This article originally appeared on Beaver County Times: Rock 'n' roll guitar ace Steve Vai hits the road in September