MEDIA
VAI'S GUITAR ENCYCLOPEDIA, IN PICTURES: My dear friend and longtime collaborator Michael Mesker (Art Director for "Scenes From The Flood" and *many* Aristocrats albums) has outdone himself here with an intensely detailed and completely beautiful book/encyclopedia of Steve Vai's guitars, called "Wire And Wood". All the details are below. Absolutely worth checking out!
THE SPIRIT OF RUSANDA: If you saw The Aristocrats on tour this summer, you heard me talk about Rusanda Panfili’s beautiful guest appearance on our new album. Well, here she is, in her own heartfelt words. ![]()
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Rusanda and Guthrie are on tour with Hans Zimmer in the USA right now. Don’t miss it!![]()
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Rusanda Panfili Official![]()
Guthrie Govan (Official)![]()
Hans Zimmer Live
21-YEAR KENEALLY/BELLER TIME CAPSULE: It’s Bandcamp Friday, and not just any Bandcamp Friday. My dear friend Mike Keneally has just today released “Freaks In A Mellow Mood” (LINK IN COMMENTS), a compilation of acoustic duo performances that Mike and I performed in November 2003 as part of our series of clinics for Taylor Guitars. I just listened to the whole album and, having not heard any of this stuff for 20 years, I’m just swooning over all of the little things we did together to make Mike’s ultra-esoteric compositions work in the duo format. ![]()
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This was just after Mike’s acoustic album “Wooden Smoke” was released, and the rock band catalog releases preceding that were 2000’s “Dancing” and 1997’s “Sluggo!”, on top of the early classics “hat” and “Boil That Dust Speck”. But all sorts of weird little gems are on this thing - “Aye Aye Monster” from Keneally’s project The Mistakes (with Henry Kaiser, Andy West and Prairie Prince); “Love Theme From Vulture Fun”, a bizarre bit of fun that previously only appeared on the **VHS** “Soap Scum Remover”; “Bober” and “Physics” from the as-yet-unreleased 2004 album “DOG”; a Beatles cover of “And Your Bird Can Sing” and more. ![]()
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It also stands out as a singular moment in the already-amazing but apparently ever-increasing chemistry between Keneally and myself. The existing song arrangements themselves were already dense by nature, and required some serious boiling-down to work in the duo format. Hearing what we were able to do with them - in many cases rework, enhance, and even re-invent - fills my heart with joy. ![]()
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And somehow he got me to sing high harmony background vocals, actually in tune! Miracles never cease. 😉![]()
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Late 2003 was a weird and difficult time for me, and not just because I had a misguided hairstyle. I had just released my first solo album “View” literally two weeks before this particular Taylor Guitars clinic tour happened. But all while I was finishing that, the bass amp company I worked for, SWR, was sold to Fender, and I was right in the middle of managing the merger and acquisition and integration for both companies. I wasn’t playing that much, and when I was it felt rushed and squeezed into a very intense work schedule. The financial security was nice but there was a slow boil going on inside me that eventually exploded two years later when I quit Fender and started over as a freelance musician. But from 2002-2005, these moments of musical joy were not nearly as frequent in my life as they are now. I owe Mike Keneally a debt of gratitude for many things, but specifically in this case for keeping the flame of my musical spirit alive during an uncertain time for my own artistry as a musician. ![]()
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Also, let’s say a requiem for the Taylor AB-4 Acoustic/Electric Bass that I used for all of these performances. It was one of the 6 fallen soldiers that never came home late in 2016, victims of the whole Bonnie & Clyde theft episode. I’m pretty sure this will be the last release upon which that instrument appears, so it’s a fitting sendoff. Hopefully it will come home someday. ![]()
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Anyway, go buy this album!
WELL AND TRULY DUCKED: Thank you Los Angeles for a great closing show, and thank you North America for an incredible run of shows on the DUCK tour. We saw so many friends we’ve known for a while, and a ton of new folks as well. Touring is still the single best way for us to get out and spread the “Aristocratic Gospel”, as it were. And as proud as we our of our new anatine-themed album, we know that the living breathing heart of this band is the three of us playing live, onstage, where anything can happen in front of a live audience crazy enough to come out and witness the spectacle of the whole thing for themselves. That’s you, and we can’t do it without you. ![]()
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Thanks so much to our lean and mean management team, our North American booking agency, our incredibly hard working crew…and once again, to YOU, the fans who have stuck with us all these years, as well as the new ones we just met, who supported us so generously on this tour. Thank you again and again. ![]()
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Stay tuned for announcement about the next legs of the DUCK tour - coming soon!![]()
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Cheers to all,![]()
The Aristocrats
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