VINNIE MOORE is now most known for his three records six-stringin’ the mighty UFO – the third, The Visitor, drops in later this month. But back in the day, Vinnie was that rare JOE SATRIANI-like phenom, an instrumental guitarist that could sell records. Now nearly a decade since his last kick at this, he’s back with To The Core, a varied, warm, refreshingly non-histrionic album tastefully appointed and primed just in time for Moore to hit the road… with his main gig, UFO.

“Yes, but I have some solo shows,” notes Moore. “I’m doing Italy, six shows in July, and we’re going to set some other things up to come in-between – we’ll probably doing some gigs.”

As regards To The Core however… “I just wanted to express what I’m all about,” continues Vinnie. “And I wanted to be interesting with this record. I didn’t want to limit it musically in any way. And when I did this I didn’t have a record label. I’d made the whole record, recorded it, wrote it, with no guidance from a label on the final product. And I think that was important to me because it made me feel like I had total freedom to do anything I wanted. And you know, I didn’t really have a plan, other than to be adventurous and just go with the flow and let all the different influences come out.”

Wanting to downplay his shred pedigree, Vinnie figures a key tips ‘n’ tricks to his sound is sort of no deliberate emphasis in one area at all. “Hmm, maybe just the fact that there are so many elements from different styles of music. I’m basically a rock guy, but there’s a lot of blues stuff. There are a lot of influences from bebop and jazz. There is a lot of funky stuff. And you know, I think a lot of guys who are doing guitar instrumental stuff, a lot of times they are shredders, and they are into this neo-classical vein of music. And I’ve touched on that, but I just don’t want to be limited musically by any particular genre or style. I get excited when I do something new that I haven’t done before, like the song ‘Soul Caravan’, which almost has an R&B;, hip-hop vibe to it. And when I wrote that, I was excited about it because it wasn’t something that I’d done before. And the same with ‘Transcendence’, which has all the exotic and Arabian/Indian sounding percussion? When I can get lost in something new… I mean, that really excites me.”

To The Core’s cozy warmth of tone can also be heard on each of the three studio albums Moore has crafted with UFO. “I think a lot of the tone comes from the hands,” says Moore. “It also comes from your ears, from the way you dial things in. And I think I definitely have my signature tone, and I don’t think about it too much, whether I’m playing with UFO or solo stuff. I just kind of get a guitar tone that I’m happy with, that sounds good to me, and I just go for it - I just play.”

And who are these guys on the album with you? Are they old friends?

“John Deservio played bass, and he’s been playing with BLACK LABEL SOCIETY for ZAKK WYLDE, and he’s an old friend, and played on my Meltdown tour, in like ’91, ‘92; he was my bassist. I’d never recorded with him, and I thought it was a timely time to have him on one of my records, and he’s the right guy stylistically. And Van Romaine on drums, I’ve never been in a band with, but I’ve jammed a lot with him. He used to play with STEVE MORSE’s solo band, and I would always go up and jam with Steve when Steve was in town, so I played with them a lot, for NAMM show functions, that type of thing, and he just totally amazed me. Not only how good he was, but also that he had a great feel, and he could play a range stylistically. And I think with this record, it really called for that. I needed a guy who was not only a great drummer, but a guy who had a great feel and could do many things, and he could do that, and funk out, and swing, and be heavy. And not every drummer can do all these different things. Some guys are heavy metal drummers who specialize in a certain area, but if you gave them a funk tune to play on, they couldn’t play to save their ass. So I really needed a guy who could do a lot of different things. And Tim Lehner was just a friend of mine who was great at keyboard sounds, and he did the keyboards for me.”

“I think this one has more of an earthy vibe on some of the tunes,” adds Moore, asked for a comment on new UFO record. “Down-home, Mississippi blues type of stuff. I don’t know... I think it’s a good record. It’s kind of hard for me to describe it, because I’m so close to it. But I think it’s probably among the best things we’ve done. If not the best record, it’s right up there.”

In closing, if you want to get close to Moore’s guitar magic in a technical sense, best way is the gear circuit… “Well, I have the new signature model Dean guitar that they’ve made, that’s now available. Vinman 2000 it’s called, and that’s something I worked closely with them on. And it’s a model that is exactly like the one I play. It’s kind of cool, because they had a signature model in the past, and I would go out and play them in the music stores, and the model they were selling was totally different from the one I had, made in the custom shop. And this time around I wanted to make sure that didn’t happen. I’m actually going out and doing clinics, and I’m playing guitars right off the shelf at the music store, not even bringing my personal guitars, because they feel exactly the same, and that’s totally awesome.”

See www.vinniemoore.com for more.