Joe Satriani has been busy doing his "Evening With Joe Satriani" dates during the month of October before heading to South America in late November and early December to do G3 with Steve Vai and Robert Fripp. The "Evening With Joe Satriani" tour will open back up December 26 in San Francisco, CA and will run through the first of January. Mere hours before the first show, in Atlanta, Joe took about 30 minutes to talk with Christian Music Guide Kim Jones about the tour, the new gear and life in general in the world of Joe Satriani.

Hey Joe, how are you?
I'm fine. How are you doing?

I'm good. I have to ask ... you know when we talked during the G3 tour, you had the Sponge Bob boxers. Is it a different cartoon character for this tour or are you sticking with Bob?
(laughs) I think I've got a strange combination. One thing I did was to not put the focus on boxer shorts on this tour. You know, every tour I pick something. Sometimes it's something unrelated to music, like it was on the G3 tour. Other times it's something very equipment wise, or maybe it's something I'm eating. You know? I pick something unusual. It's funny you should ask that question. It's very insightful of you because I haven't picked the thing yet. (laughs)

You haven't? You've got so much you could go on music-wise on this tour. You've got your new signature gear through Peavey and Ibanez. You've got your son playing with you on "Bamboo" on the CD. Or the whole negative imaging thing you used for the album cover....
Yeah, I've got some choices out there. That's for sure.

You do. And with you kicking of the tour in Atlanta, in my home state, you could put a southern spin on the whole tour!
Yeah, that would be cool.

When you're here in Atlanta you usually play at the Tabernacle, but this time you're at the Roxy.
Yeah, I don't think I've ever played at the Roxy before. I don't mind it, as opposed to the Tabernacle. We've played there enough and it might be kind of nice to do something different.

A little something new...
Yeah, yeah.

So what's been going on in the life of Joe? Everytime I blink you're on tour.
Yeah (laughs) that's kind of been the force. I guess back in the spring, doing the radio shows and morning TV shows with the release of the album and the amp kept me busy. I even made it to places like Moscow and Bangkok on the tour and then coming back, I suppose we started our tour in Europe, which is unusual. We started with the G3 tour and sort of broke in the new material that way. We did a tour with Deep Purple and Thin Lizzy through August and September. That was a lot of fun. Very different for us to be on tour with two vocal oriented rock and roll bands, you know? It had a really cool effect. You're right though. I think I've been on tour constantly but I suppose the strangest thing about being on tour without my family on this particular leg is definitely ... it has a different vibe to it. So I've got a lot of time on my hands. I hope I won't get into any trouble. (laughs)

Uh-huh. Staying out of trouble is a good thing. (laughs) You know, I've listened to "Is There Love In Space" and there are some awesome cuts on there. I was really surprised to hear you singing on a couple of them.
I never know when I'm going to sing on a record. We record usually two or three vocal songs for each album and we just wait for that very last day. Then we just all sit around and listen to it all and pick the ones that we like, the ones that we think make sense. We had a good collection. We had myself and the guys from the band; our A & R guy from Epic Records, the engineer, the assistant engineer and the guy that mixed the record as well, and my manager. We all just sat around in different places in the studio building, The Plant in Sausalito, and after about four or five hours, we all got together and said "OK, what do you think?". Those two vocal songs sort of wound up on everybody's list. It's still slightly embarrassing to sing in public, but I thought, "oh, this will be fun". I've gotten to really like singing "I Like The Rain". That's been my ... out of the two songs, that's the one I like to sing the most.

Are you going to actually have the Harley on stage for that one tonight?
I wish! I'd love to do it. I know that my tech, Mike, who played the Harley, would love to do it. He doesn't get to bring his bike out on tour very often. But it's a bit of a problem, plus the fumes ... bringing the Harley out on stage ... it wouldn't be the best place.