STEVE VAI AT SOUND CHECK

By Joe Matera

It’s just gone 6.00pm and Steve Vai meets me in the lobby of an inner city motel prior to heading out for his sound check at Melbourne's Palace. Vai only arrived in Melbourne a few short hours earlier and though he’s on a hectic schedule, and with only a few moments of sleep grabbed in between, he still oozes with enthusiasm and energy.

Vai spends a tremendous amount of time on the road. He’s just finished two months solid touring the world as part of the G3 bill. This Australian visit sees Vai, and his backing band that includes Billy Sheehan on bass and Tony MacAlpine on guitar and keyboards respectively, playing theatres and club shows around the country to many guitar enthusiasts, fans and musicians alike. Vai is definitely a musician’s musician. First up I ask him, with so much touring does he ever find that time on the road is limited in regards to practicing and keeping his chops up?

"I don’t practice when on tour but I do warm up before each show for an hour or two" he explains. "There’s a whole different set of rules when you’re on stage, like in regards to the way you put the energy behind your fingers and everything. And though the fingers do get stronger, I still have to be careful because the calluses hurt if I play too much. And sometimes they do hurt too much. Because we’ve just started the tour, I’m not in my element just yet, because it takes a while. Like it would take another few weeks on tour before I’m actually at my peak."

And what about those well documented 10-hour workouts he’s been known to do?

"I do put aside the time to focus on improving or playing" he begins. "But you know as the years go by, you develop different techniques to explore your own potential more and more, so that’s what I utilise. I don’t do the same thing as I used to, like I don’t do exercises and scales anymore. That was more in the early days. If I want to master a particular riff or approach or a weird technique now, then I make an exercise out of it and I do it. And that’s really an important thing to think about especially if you’re a young musician. Besides just learning a new riff, you can break it down into pieces and make little exercises out of it. And so when you go play it, it will come out naturally."

Vai hits the stage for his sound check. First up he grabs a triple neck Ibanez and runs through some scaler runs whilst checking the sounds emitting from the venues PA system. Happy with what he hears, he downs the triple neck and grabs several Ibanez JEMs standing in a rack beside the stage. He begins to play several musical examples before leading the band through a rendition of Juice. An hour later, the sound check is over and we’re now sitting in the comfy but small confines of his dressing room at The Palace. I begin to ask him how he manages to keep a balanced perspective on his music after all these years?

"My balance is to just sit and play, that’s what I like to do the most" he affirms. "My energy as far as being a musician, is dispersed in a lot of areas. I write the music, produce it - which in itself is a daunting task - engineer it and mix it myself. And sometimes I even master it. In all of that, and if you listen to my records, there is some dense stuff occasionally, there is a lot of time spent on other things besides playing the guitar. If I only focused on playing the guitar in my whole career, I would be much better than I am. I do enjoy all the other elements of being a musician besides just playing the guitar. So to really balance that, I pick up an acoustic guitar and just sing. I just play some Tom Waits songs or some acoustic songs that I’ve learned or even some Joe Jackson songs."

To this day, Vai continues to harbour enormous respect for his former employer Frank Zappa. After all, Zappa was the guy who introduced the then nineteen year old Vai (Zappa often called Vai "his little Italian virtuoso") to the guitar playing community at large, helping to mould him into the legendary guitarist and artist he has become.

"Frank made his music in the face of all sorts of adversity" remembers Vai fondly. "And when you’re an artist like Frank there are always obstacles. I guess when you’re any artist really there are obstacles. But when you’re trying to carve new ground and investigate different things that are outside of the circle, you really have to have courage. I saw Frank do exactly what he wanted and that had a big influence on me. He didn’t compromise at all with his music and that had a profound effect on me."

With a his own label Favoured Nations, Vai has also seen the need to become business savvy. I asked Vai if he found a conflict in trying to be an artist whilst at the same time making business decisions that at times can infringe on those artistic liberties.

"There are compensations you have to make" he admits. "Like there are budgets you have to work within… I’d love to put together a performance light show with the works, but I just can’t afford to do it. Like I’m not playing in an arena, I’m just playing in a club or theatre, so I’m not that kind of artist. So yes there is a compensation made there. But you just have to work within the parameters you have and do your best".

With my time finally up, Vai and I exchange goodbyes with Vai adding "enjoy the show tonight". And that night Vai delivered an awesome sounding show that lasted over two hours. And he showed that the passion and warfare that is Steve Vai, is still very much evident.