Steve Vai’s Inviolate Tour shreds, transcends The Uptown

November 22, 2022

Drew Windish,

Steve Vai at The Uptown. // Photo by Drew Windish

On Nov. 20, Steve Vai held a magisterial display of guitar mastery at the Uptown Theater. Accompanied by guitarist/keyboard player Dave Weiner, bassist Phillip Bynoe, and drummer Jeremy Colson, Vai delivered his promises of ethereal rifts and demonic multi-faceted guitars after postponing the Inviolate tour earlier this year.

The concert featured a majority of some righteous hits from his 10th studio album Inviolate, with classics like “Tender Surrender” and his improvisational guitar licks to boot.

Catching a musical hero entering their 45th year of touring would be a delight on its own, but Vai is achieving classical virtuoso-tier showmanship, wherein the show itself no longer matters. Which is good, because the visualizations accompanying the show were designed to… be present at best.

No, the only purpose for packing the room this evening was to observe Vai mastering his instrument on such a level that it transcends to the bewildering. Attempting to explain certain songs—bluesy, metal with infinite dive bombs—gives way to compositions that leave traditional songwriting so far behind it’s difficult to describe the experience beyond “Wow, that’s impressive!”

The show featured appearances by Vai’s Mad Max-inspired, three-necked Ibanez beast The Hydra, It’s good that he has a weapon with much more than 20 strings, because when he tossed on a normal six-string guitar for a track, it often felt like he was almost pulling a prank. For someone who could easily have become bored by his lane, Vai’s work seems more vital now—to the audience and to himself—in an age and a genre looking for artisans to maintain as gods.

Setlist: