Joe Satriani announces massive 2022 North American tour

Featuring a whopping 44 shows in total, the trek – dubbed the Earth tour – will take Satriani across the continent from late September through mid-November.

Joe Satriani has announced an extensive 2022 North American tour in support of his forthcoming album, The Elephants of Mars.

Featuring a whopping 44 shows in total, the trek – dubbed the Earth tour – will take Satriani across the continent from late September through mid-November, starting with a September 21 show at the Fox Performing Arts Center in Riverside, California and ending with a November 19 gig at the Majestic Theatre in Dallas, Texas.

Satch will be backed by a touring band comprised of Kenny Aronoff on drums, Bryan Beller on bass guitar and Rai Thistlethwayte on keyboards.

We're guessing that set lists for the shows will include a healthy number of Elephants of Mars cuts, but it'll be interesting to see, in particular, if Satriani plays Shockwave Supernova.

In a recent interview with Guitarist, the guitarist cited the song – the title track of his 2015 album – as the one in his sizable catalog that has proven to be the most difficult to perform live. 

“When you have a phrase, you have to investigate how many different ways you can play it," Satriani said. "When we put out Shockwave Supernova, I entered into a really bad phase of tension with the little finger of my fretting hand. It was because of that title song. 

"When I was writing it, I figured out all the different places to play it and came up with one version that sounded unique – but my hand didn’t want to do it live. It started to really hurt. 

"That tour, I had to rewrite so many fingerings. I’d sit down before a show and figure out, like, which notes had to be legato or could I pick three of them instead? When I got off tour, my chiropractor discovered I was just tight and solved my issue in a week. Once in a while, you write something you probably shouldn’t have written.