Steve Vai is coming to Macon in October. Here’s how you can get tickets

Legendary guitarist Steve Vai is coming to Macon this October to support his latest album, “Inviolate.” Vai and his band perform at the Hargray Capitol Theatre Oct. 15.

The stop at Macon’s smaller but historic venue comes amid a tour filled with larger shows, including a show at Variety Playhouse in Atlanta the day prior.

“Psychologically, you can consider a venue and how it might change certain things,” Vai said. “When you go to these towns and you’re playing small theaters, smaller venues, they have more of a personality because it becomes the atmosphere while you’re performing.”

Vai previously played in Macon at the Capitol Theater in 2016, and was scheduled to play there again in February before his tour was postponed due to shoulder surgery. Vai will play a combination of songs from his classic albums along with new material from Inviolate, which was released in January.

“You’ll come to a show and you’ll see a band and a guy standing in front of everybody playing a melodious screaming guitar with beautiful melodies,” Vai said of what to expect from his show. “You’re getting a unique flavor of a sort of celebration of the electric rock guitar.”

Vai’s new album sees him focus on musical phrasing, he says, in a way where every single note is meticulous and poetic.

“It’s always the melody that seems to have the biggest response in me, you know, when I’m playing something melodic. Even the shreddy stuff always feels like it needs to sort of sound like a statement,” Vai said. “There’s a lot of phrasing in the human voice so I try to apply that to melodic phrases, because they speak clear.”

Vai said some of the new songs, including “Little Pretty” and “Zeus in Chains,” are some of the most exciting ones of the setlist.

“My favorite songs to perform at the beginning of a tour may not necessarily be the new ones, you know, but eventually once I start owning them, they just become something I so forward to,” Vai said. “I’ll look down at my setlist and I’ll see that the next song is “Little Pretty” from the new record, and I just get excited even just knowing I’m gonna be playing that song next.”

You can find tickets to the show at the Hargray Capitol Theater’s website. Tickets are between $35 and $1,535.

This story was originally published September 16, 2022 at 5:00 AM.