Joe Satriani and Steve Vai Shred Through Austin: Exclusive Photos

Joe Satriani and Steve Vai’s present Satch / Vai Tour is technically a pairing of instructor and pupil — however throughout their Friday efficiency at Austin’s ACL Dwell, each guitarists displayed such a jaw-dropping mastery of their instrument that the excellence felt irrelevant.

You possibly can see UCR’s unique photographs from the efficiency under.

Vai famous throughout his opening efficiency that he had been ready for this tour for 52 years. The 63-year-old virtuoso started taking guitar classes from Satriani when he was barely a young person, and his personal genius rapidly emerged — so rapidly, in actual fact, that Satriani later joked throughout the duo’s show-closing jam that he taught Vai all flawed as an act of self-preservation.

READ MORE: Joe Satriani and Steve Vai Have ‘Loopy Concepts’ for Upcoming Album: Interview

Not that Satriani had something to fret about. For one, he and Vai occupy completely totally different lanes on the shred-guitar freeway. Vai’s music is extra esoteric and progressive, and he carried out with an alien-like fluidity and style befitting of an artist with an EP named Alien Love Secrets and techniques. Satriani, in the meantime, hews nearer to meat-and-potatoes arduous rock, favoring a extra natural, old-school aesthetic. (In that regard, he is discovered a wonderful musical sparring companion in touring drummer Kenny Aronoff.) However he can nonetheless ship lightning-fast legato runs and skyscraping whammy-bar squeals with the very best of ’em. Satriani was the image of cool onstage in Austin, his searing fretwork and consummate showmanship making this author much more excited for his upcoming tour with Sammy Hagar.

Each guitar heroes closed out the evening by performing their new collaborative single, “The Sea of Emotion, Pt. 1,” and buying and selling solos on prolonged jams of “You Actually Acquired Me” and “Enter Sandman.” (Each covers had distinctive significance for Satriani, as he integrated a part of Eddie Van Halen’s solo on the previous and paid tribute to a different former pupil, Kirk Hammett, on the latter.) Three hours of guitar histrionics is not for the faint of coronary heart, however for the shred-heads in attendance, it was a thrill to bask within the talent of two masters at work.