By Martin Popoff
After Billy Sheehan's stint with G3 (Steve Vai, John Petrucci and Joe Satriani) is over, all of the above projects will see some attention. However, Sheehan also mentions more touring with Vai. "We're going to do a tour in the fall of Europe which will be really cool, a longer show too I think, like a two-hour show."
"It's actually been a very focused tour," notes Sheehan on his first G3 experience ("other than my Mac G3"). "Were just all trying to play our best. It's been a great experience. Joe Satriani just plays spectacularly every night and I've never really spent a lot of time listening to him like I should have in the past. At the end of the night there's a jam and I get up, me and Stu Hamm on bass, and John Petrucci, Steve Vai and Joe, and then whatever guest we call up. So we were in Texas, and when the tour started out, we would rehearse all the songs we were going to play, just get an idea of what we were going to do. And Joe started messing around with 'La Grange' by ZZ Top and I thought he was just kidding around. I didn't think he was going to do it. So I got up to the microphone and sing my Billy Gibbons imitation. And he says 'that's it, you're singing it.' So we were in Houston and Billy Gibbons shows up so we asked him if he would come up and jam and he said 'yeah, but you sing it and then I'll come up halfway through.' So we get to the breakdown in the middle of the song and Billy Gibbons walks out and the place goes nuts. So I have the interesting distinctions of having song 'Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love' with Eddie Van Halen and then this. Eric Johnson also came out and in LA Steve Lukather and Paul Gilbert came out and then in Detroit, Neil Schon came out. And tonight we've got a couple of calls out for some Canadian guys so we'll see who shows up (ed. Kim Mitchell came out but never played. Trivia note: Billy Sheehan was briefly a member of Kim's band, Max Webster.)."
BILLY SHEEHAN - America's Mad Bassist... Everywhere! Page 5