Beller Vai Tour Blog

So I’m sitting here on the Vai tour bus as we cruise from Vancouver, BC to Minneapolis, the longest drive of the tour. We’re somewhere in Montana. Scarface is playing on the satellite TV. The bus refrigerator and cupboards are filled with enough food and drink to choke a decent-sized Vai aftershow party. Anne Calhoun and Zack Wiesinger are transfixed by Tony Montana, who just survived a chainsaw. Blogmaster Mikey Mesker is sorting through multitudes of show pictures, taking extra care to ensure none of the shots of my double-chin make it to the public at large (love him for that). Dave Weiner is in the back lounge, doing some kind of business on his cell phone. Jeremy is in his bunk, probably watching his own DVD player. And I’m blogging for the first time this tour, and the first time on the official Vai U.S. tour blog.

But I’ve been blogging for a while. In one form or another, I’ve been online and writing since 1995. (For anyone curious, click here or here to see what I mean.) I’ve always looked at it as a chance to give something back to those who support whatever I’m up to in music. And while I’m especially grateful for the position I find myself in now, as Steve’s bassist, I always try and remember that if it weren’t for the thousands upon thousands of people out there reading this site, buying the records, and coming to the shows, then as cool as it is to play with Steve and the rest of the band, we couldn’t tour like we do, in a really nice bus rolling up to some of the country’s coolest locales and venues. The amount of genuine interest in what we’re doing on this tour is astounding and humbling to me, and I just wanted to start by showing a little gratitude for that.

Now that I’ve gotten that out, allow me to don the voice of a little kid in a candy store and figuratively jump up and down in front of the lollipop stand and shout This is so cool! This is so cool! This is so cool! a bunch of times, even though I realize that it’s the very opposite of cool to do so.

I like making lists, so here’s my list of The Ten Coolest Things About Touring the U.S. with Steve Vai. In no particular order:

10) Playing loud. Musicians out there – have you ever fantasized about playing on a stage so big that you really need to have a gigantic rig just to make it work? Well, I have, and I can tell you that there’s something viscerally satisfying about standing between Jeremy’s drums and Steve’s guitar rig and realizing that what would be considered insanely loud in most other situations is actually what’s required for the gig. Then you get to think about the gear necessary for such an occasion (as in, 1500 watts of power and sixteen 10” speakers), and that’s when things get really fun. Steve really gets that. His rig is loud and sounds beautiful, and part of its beauty is simply the sheer power of it all.

9) Great venues. For my money, the best shows I’ve ever seen have been the large club/small theater-type venues, places with a 750 to 2,000-seat capacity. I saw Metallica in 1986 on the Master of Puppets tour at that level, as well as Nine Inch Nails on The Downward Spiral tour, Radiohead on the OK Computer tour, Rage Against The Machine on the Evil Empire tour, etc. etc. Something about being bigger than a small club and smaller than a stadium seems just right. And that’s what we’re doing on this tour. At places like The Fillmore in San Francisco and the Moore in Seattle, you can just feel the good vibes way before the show begins. Hell, we just played The Wiltern in Los Angeles – that’s where I saw Rage and Radiohead and Phish and Soundgarden. I was walking around on the stage before the show just thinking to myself, omigod.

8) Jeremy Colson. Of course I love playing with everyone in the band – Alex, Annie and Dave are all amazing musicians, and then there’s that other guy – but bassists and drummers have a special relationship. Jeremy and I have done enough shows by now to really get where each other is coming from, and it’s hard for me to imagine doing this gig with anyone else. He gets Steve and his music at a very deep level, he hits hard for 150 minutes every night, and he’s led by example onstage in showing me what it’s really all about to be in a rock band. He really gives his entire being to the show, moment by moment, which is no small feat. And he’s constantly looking for ways to make the show better, tighter, more powerful, and more enjoyable for the fans. I’m really looking forward to doing more stuff with him in the future.

7) Meeting Devin Townsend. Not to sound all big-time or anything, but few folks reduce me to the status of “fanboy” in their presence. But when Devin showed up backstage after the Vancouver show, I just didn’t know what to say or do. I don’t even have all of his work. I have Terria, plus three Strapping Young Lad albums: Heavy As A Really Heavy Thing, The New Black, and Alien, which is the record for me, one of my favorites of all time. I listened to Alien about four times a week for a year; it was my workout album. There’s a moment on that record (the lead-up to the opening of “Zen” for those who are curious) that moves me in a way no other music ever has, and that’s what I eventually got up the nerve to tell him. He couldn’t have been nicer. In my view, the guy’s a genius.

6) Aftershow Receptions and The Fans. True confession: During Vai shows, I can usually only see the first three rows of fans. I’m often looking out and past them, but ultimately I just see darkness, so I focus on the folks I can see to gauge audience reaction. Almost without exception, the looks on the faces I see are that of stunned, amazed joy. Being a very small part of the band that creates that reaction is humbling enough, but not as humbling as actually talking to some of the fans at what we call the “aftershow” reception. The things they – you – have said to me are so generous that it would sully the sentiments to even repeat them. I try to get out from backstage early enough after the show to meet folks who don’t have aftershow passes, but it’s not always possible due to a variety of factors. Either way, I cannot begin to express how grateful I am to those who’ve shared their thoughts with me about the show. The greater Steve Vai community has been so warm and welcoming that sometimes I don’t even know what to say. One thing I can say is that it really makes a difference to musicians – and this one in particular – when the audience is paying close and careful attention to what we do. It’s a rare honor in this business and I don’t take it for grated.

5) Learning To Love Rocking Out. I do a bass solo in this show, and I can assure it’s like nothing else I’ve ever done in the past. It’s far more aggressive in tone, note choice, and most importantly, attitude. That’s because Steve had a direct hand in helping to shape it. The direction and steering he’s given me on the solo and other aspects of the show have been invaluable, and will far outlast this tour. At first the idea of projecting a presence beyond my little area of the stage seemed almost alien to me. Now it’s a part of how I play this gig. I owe that directly to Steve, and it’s been an unexpected gift.

4) The Crew & Steve’s Behind-The-Scenes Team. I’ve done plenty of tours with no crew, no tech, and no management support, and some of them have been great anyway. It only makes this one sweeter that we have such a great team behind us making our jobs easier than theirs. Vince Dennis, who techs for me, Dave, Alex, and Annie, and who also runs the sampler, is just fantastic (he’s also the bassist for Ice-T’s Body Count!). Add in two more stage techs, two sound engineers, a lighting director, a merch manager, a tour manager, an art director/photographer (yes, that’s our Mikey), a management office staff of three, an accountant, and two bus drivers, and you start to get an idea of what it takes to bring you this show night after night. And they’re all so damned cool even though they’re working twice as hard as we are – they’re laughing, joking, and generally making sure we don’t take ourselves too seriously.

3) Jeff Buckley’s “Hallelujah”. In the dressing room of the Phoenix venue (yes, the one where the power went out midway through the show), Steve was listening to music on his computer. The song “Mojo Pin” from Jeff Buckley’s album Grace suddenly filled the room, and I stopped in my tracks. That album, I told Steve, was one of my favorites of all time, if my not flat-out favorite, period. He felt a reverence about it as well, and we sat for a few minutes talking about what a genius Jeff was. Then we listened to his version of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” together, both of us in awestruck silence. That night (or maybe the next night), when the show was over, as we took the second bow, the strains of “Hallelujah” filled the room; Steve had chosen it as the post-show music for the house. I love that.

2) Playing For Friends and Family. I’m 36 years old now, and I have close friends I’ve known for 10 years, some since Berklee College Of Music…and then there’s my family, who’ve been there all along. They supported me when things weren’t so great, and even when I wasn’t so great to them. Being able to have them as guests at an event like this is as close to a dream come true as I’ve ever experienced. It’s funny – in the past, I used to get really wound up over what it was I wanted to accomplish for myself, and being in this band was near the top of that list. But now that I’m here, I find that the most fulfilling moments don’t occur onstage…they happen after the show, when I meet friends and family, and share moments that don’t even require words. We pretty much just look at each other and say “Wow, did you just see that?” with stupid smiles on our faces. Better still was in Anaheim, where I had my 13-year-old cousin (and huge Vai fan) as a guest to the show, and I could just get that it was a life-altering experience for him. That’s a unique gift to be able to give someone, one that will outlast whatever I happen to do from this point on. For me, that’s really what this is all about.

1) Improvising With Steve. This is a show that requires lots of planning. We’ve got six musicians, two sound men, a lighting guy, and three techs running around, and everyone is working very hard to remain consistent from night to night so we can put on the best show possible for a group of fans who, for the most part, haven’t seen the show yet. But there are moments – the solo at the end of “Building The Church”, the solo in “Die To Live”, parts of “The Murder”, the middle of “Angel Food”, the solo in “Answers” – when anything can happen, and where opportunities for true musical improvisation arise. In those moments, there have been occasions where everything has disappeared – the crowd, the stage, the lights, etc. – and I’m just in a listening space with Steve and Jeremy, reacting to their ideas, trying to provide something in return that makes the musical whole greater than just the sum of its parts. To be in that position, listening to Steve Vai and supporting him reaching for something new, often requires that I reach for something new as well. It’s a magic kind of nothing-space from which spontaneous creation arises, a rare thing that I treasure every time we make it there.

Thanks to Mikey for providing the space to share these thoughts…to Steve for trusting me with his music…and to you for reading along (if you made it this far, that is). Hope to see you soon.

BB