Joe Satriani

It doesn’t take much get the two to want to play together, of course. They still have warm memories of those guitar lessons -- or what Vai calls “glorified jam sessions” -- when they were youths.

“I’d go over to Joe’s house for hours,” Vai remembered, “and we’d sit in his back yard with two electric guitars, no amplifiers, and we’d sit back-to-back and just play. That was an incredible training. When you do something like that, you develop a listening atmosphere, so to speak. For me that’s one of the highlights of being a musician, sharing that space with somebody else.”

Five decades on, of course, the relationship is no longer teacher-pupil, but rather peers whose shared virtuosity has made both men heroes in the guitar community.

“I’m glad we waited for (SatchVai) in a way,” Satriani said. “Now we’re remarkably older, and we’ve had this benefit of a crazy roller coaster of success. So there was such a relaxed attitude towards, ‘What are we gonna write?’ and ‘What kind of album are we gonna do?’ We simply never talked about it; we started sending each other [ideas] we thought might be cool.”

Read the full article at 🔗 in bio or https://www.cleveland.com/entertainment/2026/05/veteran-guitar-heroes-turn-near-lifelong-connection-into-new-band.html

Catch the SatchVai Band live on tour - dates and tix at satchvaiband.com