Joe Satriani and Steve Vai recently spoke with host Eddie Trunk on SiriusXM’s Trunk Nation.
During the interview, they exclusively debuted a brand-new single ahead of its release on Monday. They also talk about what it’s like playing together, when the new record will arrive and more.
SiriusXM’s Trunk Nation, hosted by Eddie Trunk, airs daily at 3 PM ET on SiriusXM’s Faction Talk.
Joe Satriani & Steve Vai on Their New Single “Dancing”
Eddie Trunk: “Let’s talk specifically about this song we’re going to premiere here in a little, called ‘Dancing.’ Steve, this came from your brain, the initial idea here?”
Steve Vai: “Well, you know, I have a quirky sensibility sometimes. Yeah, sometimes. All the time. And I heard this song many, many years ago, and I carried it around, and I always kind of envisioned a guitar ensemble or something doing it. And I brought it up when we were exchanging ideas, and Joe, you know, liked it, the idea, or he trusted it. And it’s very different than what you might expect. It’s not the conventional kind of straight-ahead rock-and-roll song. As a matter of fact, to some degree, we needed, you know, because as you’re going, you listen to see what’s needed. We needed a straight-ahead, really melodic, beautiful rock song. And Joe wrote this song called ‘Mayhem,’ and it’s great. It checks all of those boxes, but when it came time to sequence the releases, we had ‘Dancing,’ and we had ‘Mayhem,’ and Joe and I were just like, I don’t know, you know, we weren’t quite sure.
“So there are people in the industry that we work with that they do it all day long. You know, they know radio. They know they have a lot of experience with releasing stuff, and they just felt that because we had ‘Sea Of Emotion’ and ‘I Want To Play My Guitar,’ which would sort of, you know, sort of straight-ahead, that it might be interesting to go with something a little quirky. And so they chose this one, and we’re all over it. You know, one of the things that runs through these three songs that brings some semblance of connectivity is the videos, and the video producer and director, which is Zz Satriani, Joe’s son. And he has a particular touch, a particular approach, a particular youthful sense of humor, and it worked so good on the first video, and the second video was with Glenn, was put together with a lot of, you know, integrity, the right shots. And for ‘Dancing,’ it’s, you know, we get the return of Zz’s tongue-in-cheek kind of approach, and it works. You know, it keeps things light and funny and upbeat. And the song, it just, well, you’ll hear it, and you’ll decide.”
Joe Satriani & Steve Vai on When The Record Will Arrive
Eddie Trunk: “Joe, when’s this record going to come out? The full album. We know we’re getting, people are going to hear, but when’s it coming out? Hurry up on that sequence, Joe! Get those cards going. Come on!”
Joe Satriani: “Let me check my calendar. Well, you know, sorry to say. Yeah, we missed the December deadline, the January deadline, and the February deadline. So, you know, we have good excuses. So, we’re just making sure everything sounds right, you know. And I think the hardest thing for us has been leaving songs off because we could have probably worked on the album for another year and said, “Oh, have you heard this? Why don’t we work on this song and this song and that song?” I probably, you know, I waved a red flag early on because I notoriously, I like to work on a project for a number of months and then I like to finish it and move on. You know, that’s just the way I am. I just like to keep moving into new spaces.
“We had to come to that reality that eventually the album needs to be finished and submitted. And your music has been really great waiting for us to finish this. So, I’m guessing that in two weeks this thing will be mastered. We’ve seen Todd Gallopo at Meat and Potatoes finished the artwork pretty much. We’ve got photos from Jen and Larry. We’ve done all the work. We’re working on the credits, every time we’re not doing an interview and the sequence. So it’s really close. And I’m going to say, you know, that maybe, we submit everything by the mid, the first week of March, maybe the end. And so I don’t know how long it takes them to turn it around these days. Eddie Trunk: You could see it by the summer, early summer. It sounds like probably late spring, maybe.”
Steve Vai: “Maybe before that.”
Joe Satriani: “Yeah. I mean that’s why we wanted to do another song, you know, and release a single and get a video out there to, you know, help us announce the tour and to have another new song to play because, you know, you want the songs to be familiar if you’re going to play them on stage.”
Joe Satriani & Steve Vai on Playing Together
Eddie Trunk: “I mean, you guys have, of course, done G3 together and everything, but for people that don’t know, with SatchVai, you’re both out there together the whole time, right?”
Steve Vai: “Yeah, not the entire time, but I’d say the majority of it for sure. We come out and we play, it’s a good spattering of you know, different types of songs. We come out and we play together and then I think, I kick it off with a couple of songs, my songs. Then Joe comes out, plays on with me, and then Joe takes a couple of songs, and then it’s that kind of tag team approach, and it’s worked so well. But the majority of the time, we’re on the stage together and we’re doing things that we haven’t done in the past, even besides the new music, with some of our classic tracks by creating parts for each other’s songs and it’s fantastic.
“You know, it’s like, ‘Always With You, Always With Me’ is one of my favorite Joe songs and the melody is already sacred, you know, you don’t mess with that. So, it was a great opportunity to kind of add some support lines, you know, and same thing with ‘For The Love Of God.’ So, and then there’s the those moments that are like, it’s kind of like it seems like Joe and I go into our cave and we and we sit and we stand and we just communicate musically in a very communicative way, you know, because we’ve trained ourselves ever since we were teenagers to listen and respond. You know, we used to do that a lot, and now we get to do it on stage, and that’s one of my favorite parts. It goes really deep. Yeah. Yeah, very cool.”
Eddie Trunk: “Joe, what about for you? Was there stuff in Steve’s catalog that you were looking forward to kind of working on with him in, in this live context?”
Joe Satriani: “I wanted to do you know, two Hydras. I thought six-neck. But the roadies objected. There was just like too many strings to change every night. So but you know, quite honestly, I’m always, you know, looking for the most straight-ahead rock song to collaborate on. I enjoy that the most. And as you know, from, you know, being on tour with us with it, with Sammy Hagar, you know, the straight-ahead rockers are, you know, they’re really close to my heart. And so I’m always bringing those up, like how, how can we expand upon those and, you know, get the audience up on their feet?
“And it really does work, even if we’re doing something like Steve mentioned, ‘For The Love Of God,’ which is a really beautiful song. And it’s a frightening tour de force for Steve. I mean, he’s just playing like crazy for the whole song. And the hardest thing for me is to remember to stop listening and to play my part. And sometimes I’ll be sitting there just playing rhythm and I think, ‘Am I supposed to play here?’ Because I don’t want to cover anything up that Steve’s doing. But that’s part of the process is that we’re expanding on each other’s material and with certain songs. And it’s really special. It’s unique. It’s made this tour and this album completely fresh and new.”
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