Satch-Vai US Tour 2024

Joe Satriani and Steve Vai join forces for their return to the Stiefel Theatre!

“The Satch/Vai Tour is happening! I’m so looking forward to sharing the stage with Steve again. Every time we play together it takes me back to when we were teenagers, eating and breathing music every second of the day, pushing, challenging and helping each other to be the best we could be. I guess we’ve never stopped!” - Joe

“Touring with Joe is always a pleasure and an honor. He is my favorite guitarist to jam with, and now we have another opportunity to take it to the stage. I feel as though we are both at the top of our game and that the show will be a powerful celebration of the coolest instrument in the world, the electric guitar!” -Steve

Joe Satriani

Joe Satriani is the world’s most commercially successful solo guitar performer, with six gold and platinum discs to his credit (including one more gold award for the debut album by his band Chickenfoot), and sales in excess of 10 million copies. Satriani's 19th studio album, The Elephants of Mars, crackles with an exciting new energy, briskly traveling through stylistic roads that feel freshly updated, viewed through new eyes. Forced time away from the road due to the pandemic, allowed for time to deliver an album length journey that never dulls.

Since September 18, 1970 (the day his idol Jimi Hendrix passed away), Satriani has dedicated himself to the artistry of the instrument. While still a teenager in his hometown of Westbury, New York, he taught guitar to another budding six-string hopeful, Steve Vai. A few years later, Satriani moved to San Francisco and played guitar in a popular new wave band, The Squares, and briefly joined The Greg Kihn Band before the release of "Not Of This Earth".

Satriani’s reputation was already growing in guitar circles – along with Vai, some of his other students were Metallica’s Kirk Hammett and Testament’s Alex Skolnick – but in 1987, he broke through to the masses with his second studio full-length, "Surfing With The Alien", a massive seller (it hit No. 29 on the Billboard 200) that included the radio hits “Satch Boogie” and the title track. The success of that album caught the attention of Mick Jagger, who asked Satriani to be his lead guitarist on his first-ever solo tour, in 1988.

As a live performer, Satriani has toured the world with each new release (his last concert tour for 2013’s "Unstoppable Momentum" saw the guitarist touch down in 32 countries). In 1993, he joined Deep Purple as a temporary replacement for Ritchie Blackmore during a Japanese tour. In 1996, Satriani founded the multi-guitarist traveling experience called G3, which has seen him share stages with Vai, Eric Johnson, Yngwie Malmsteen, Robert Fripp, among others. And starting in 2009, Satriani traversed the globe again as a member of Chickenfoot. The all-star band (which also includes singer Sammy Hagar, former Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony and Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith) has issued two albums, their debut and 2011’s follow-up, "Chickenfoot III".

Satriani’s solo discography includes a host of classics, including 1989’s "Flying In A Blue Dream", "The Extremist" from 1992, "Is There Love In Space?" (2004) and 2010’s "Black Swans And Wormhole Wizards". His 15 Grammy nominations have been for songs such as “Always With Me, Always With You,” “The Crush Of Love,” and “Summer Song,” as well as full albums like "Surfing With The Alien", "The Extremist" and "Super Colossal".

Steve Vai

A virtuoso guitarist, visionary composer, and consummate producer who sculpts musical sound with infinite creativity and technical mastery, Steve Vai has awed fans of all genres with his exceptional guitar skills and musicianship for decades. At age 12, he started taking guitar lessons from Joe Satriani. At 18, he began his professional music career transcribing for, and then playing with, the legendary Frank Zappa. More than three decades, over 15 million in album sales, and three GRAMMY Awards later, Vai has proven himself, in his own right, to be one of music’s true originals.

Vai’s work has been recognized with a long list of awards and honors, including over 15 from Guitar Player magazine alone. His career accomplishments have earned him honorary doctorates from Berklee College of Music and Musicians Institute. The 2016 Long Island Music Hall of Fame inductee was voted the 10th “Greatest Guitarist” by Guitar World magazine and consistently lands among the best in various lists of the top guitarists of all time.

In 2012, the TEC Foundation honored him with the prestigious Les Paul Award, created in 1991 to salute those who have set the highest standard of excellence in the creative application of technology. Past winners of the Les Paul Award include Paul McCartney, Neil Young, Herbie Hancock, Steely Dan, and Bob Clearmountain. In bestowing it on Vai, TEC noted, “Steve Vai’s sheer breathtaking facility on the guitar is acclaimed in the rock world and beyond…Vai has dedicated his talents to creatively advance the language of music. While many artists fit easily into a single category, Steve Vai remains unclassifiable. He is a musical alchemist of the highest order.”

Vai has toured the world as a solo artist, as a member of G3, and with Frank Zappa, David Lee Roth (just after Roth left Van Halen), Alcatrazz, and Whitesnake—at the peak of its popularity. Vai’s full discography encompasses more than 60 albums, including many with Zappa, others from stints with Roth and Whitesnake, as well as live releases, collaborations, compilations, and orchestral works.