Steve Vai is “off-grid until 2029” — but wouldn’t rule out making an exception for Billy Sheehan’s David Lee Roth demo project

Steve Vai is open to revisiting unreleased David Lee Roth material with Billy Sheehan, despite a packed schedule of touring and recording commitments stretching into 2029.

Speaking with Thinking About Guitar about The Sea of Emotion, his newly released SatchVai collaboration with longtime friend Joe Satriani, Vai discussed whether he would be interested in contributing some guitar parts to Sheehan’s new recordings of material from the Eat ’Em and Smile era.

“Well, you know, in an organic situation where it works out, yeah,” he said. “But I’m off-grid until 2029.”

Asked whether he was serious, Vai confirmed that he was preparing to head out on tour with BEAT, followed by a “huge orchestral project” requiring “14-hour undisturbed days for five months to compose”. After that, he explained, he would begin “another extraordinary project that I can’t talk about yet”.

“I have a tendency to say yes, and when I start doing that, many things get compromised because I can’t give them the attention they deserve,” he said. “That’s not uncommon with people. With Billy, it might be a different story. So, I don’t know.”

Sheehan discussed the songs in a PoisonedRockTV interview, reported in August 2026. The bassist explained that he had been working with Korn drummer and former Roth bandmate Ray Luzier, alongside other musicians, on four or five songs considered for Eat ’Em and Smile but never recorded for the finished album. He also discussed recording fresh versions of songs that did make the original release, describing the project as “a little tribute to Dave”.

Vai had previously discussed the unused songs in a 2012 interview with Justin Tedaldi for Examiner.com, reproduced by Van Halen News Desk. Asked about unreleased Roth recordings, including a version of Kim Mitchell’s “Kids in Action”, he recalled that around half a dozen tracks, possibly more, had been demoed without making an album.

Elaborating on the quality of the demos to Thinking About Guitar, Vai explained that they were intended to give Roth an idea of how the songs might work.

“Back then, demos, they had, you know, different levels of completion and quality,” he said. “But those demos we were doing were really just to outline the song and see if Dave was interested in it. There’s a bunch that didn’t make it, obviously.”

Vai suggested that recording the songs again would avoid some of the problems with releasing the original tapes. As well as potential rights complications, some of the material still needed work.

“The quality is not there, and the song structure probably needs help.”

Vai and Sheehan played together in Roth’s first full band following his departure from Van Halen. Alongside drummer Gregg Bissonette, they appeared on 1986’s Eat ’Em and Smile and its 1988 follow-up, Skyscraper. Sheehan left in 1988, while Vai remained until 1989 before joining Whitesnake. The pair worked together again when Sheehan joined Vai’s touring band in the early 2000s.

An attempted reunion of Roth’s Eat ’Em and Smile band was called off at the last minute in 2015. On 25 November, Vai, Sheehan and Bissonette were scheduled to perform at Ultimate Jam Night at Lucky Strike Live in Hollywood, with Steel Panther’s Ralph Saenz handling vocals. Roth himself arrived as a surprise guest, but the fire marshal shut the event down because of overcrowding before the reunion set could begin.