Jazz guitarist Mike Stern is already well known for stirring bebop, blues, rock, and funk guitar into his melting pot of so-called “bop rock.” But on his new album, Big Neighborhood, Stern invites some new and rather unexpected friends to join his musical block party.

The door to Mike Stern’s New York City apartment is slightly ajar. It seems that after buzzing us into the building, he went right back into his practice room to get in one last lick for his morning session. When he finally emerges, we are warmly greeted and invited in. Stern’s Yamaha signature model is on his bed still plugged into a Roland JC-120. On the floor are CDs, half-speed cassette players, and a three-foot high stack of handwritten transcriptions he has compiled over the years, including insane solos by the likes of John Coltrane, McCoy Tyner, and Michael Brecker, with whom Stern toured extensively. In fact, Brecker’s final CD, Pilgrimage, recorded before his untimely death in January 2007, is perched atop Stern’s windowsill. On his wall, which functions as a giant Rolodex, are the hand-scribbled names and numbers of virtually every major player you can think of. Although the odds are good that we won’t be calling Herbie Hancock for a gig anytime soon, it does offer a slightly voyeuristic thrill.

Several names on that wall also appear on Stern’s latest release, Big Neighborhood. The album features a stellar cast of musicians including jam-band gods Medeski Martin & Wood, rising star Esperanza Spalding, Richard Bona, Randy Brecker, and in an interesting twist, two of rock guitar’s biggest icons: Steve Vai and Eric Johnson. The album is mad eclectic. On the surface you might think that putting hyper-virtuosic shred fests, soulful jazz funk, African-inspired World music, and burning bebop on a single album would be a surefire recipe for disaster. But Big Neighborhood delivers on all counts and merits consideration for this year’s best guitar album. After showing us some downright scary non-tertial triad tricks he learned from noted jazz pianist and instructor Charlie Banacos, Stern was more than eager to talk about his new neighbors.

Tell us about your new record.

The record is called Big Neighborhood because it has a lot of different people and a lot of different flavors. A few years back, I did a record called Play with Bill Frisell and John Scofield, and that was really cool, but we came from the same world. This record is different. I wanted to play with some people that I really dig but who were coming from a different place musically. For example, I got Steve Vai and Eric Johnson to play on it, and it was cool to put myself in this context.

Who else is on the album?

Medeski Martin & Wood are on the album, and I hadn’t played with them before this. Esperanza Spalding is on three tunes; she sings on two and plays bass on the bebop tune. Terri Lynne Carrington (drummer) plays with her on it. Richard Bona (bassist) is also on this record. I play with him a lot, and he plays and sings his ass off. Dave Weckl (drums) plays on the stuff with Steve Vai. Randy Brecker (trumpet) is also on the album. I’m going on the road with him and bassist Chris Minh Doky, and drummer Cindy Blackman from Lenny Kravitz’s band. They all also play on this record.

Coming mostly from the jazz world, Steve Vai is a surprising guest. How did you decide to get him involved?

Vai is an incredible overall musician. I had heard him before on a couple of things, one of which was the movie Crossroads, where he played some incredible Bach stuff with a pick and it was very fluent. So first I thought, “Wow!” and then I saw that he had written a lot of the music. He’s a very interesting writer in ways that a lot of people don’t know. He writes a lot for strings and orchestra. It was all really well done and so it was always in the back of my mind that I’d like to record with him at some point.

The trading sections between you and Vai recall the final guitar duel from Crossroads.

Yeah. He came so prepared and really knew the stuff. Basically it was all done live, including the trading sections. Steve later overdubbed something using a Fender sitar guitar. He sent little fixes here and there but left like 90 percent of the live stuff.

I like to do everything live. I’m not one of those guys that wants to fly it in. I want to do it live or forget it, you know? Because for me you just miss something otherwise. I want the magic that happens live.

Can you tell us about the sessions with Vai and Eric Johnson?

I went out to Austin to play with Eric and took my band with me. Eric had been sick, so he didn’t really get a chance to look at the music that much, but luckily we got in a little rehearsal the night before at his place. He’s got a studio at his house but it was under construction, so we went to Church Studios the next day. We did those two cuts and then we flew out to Los Angeles the next day to record with Steve.

We had only a half-hour to rehearse with Vai because the plane was late and we got caught in traffic. Vai’s studio, coincidentally, was also under construction, so we went out to (drummer) Dave Weckl’s place and rehearsed there with Vai. Even though we barely had any time, it worked out great because he had really practiced the stuff.

Were the tunes already written or did you write them specifically for the players you had lined up?

I wrote all the tunes and thought about what would match my style and their styles best, and I think it came out really good because of that. When I was putting this record together I either had a tune that I was close to finishing and it just seemed like, “Well that would be great for this guy,” or I had a tune that was done already, or I wrote something fresh for the artist.

What is it like leading a session with such big-name artists?

I learned a lot from Miles Davis when I played with him. I remember when we were doing this tune “Fat Time”—he used to call me “Fat Time” and he named the tune after me because he liked my solo and also because I used to be heavy—we were listening to some flamenco guitar on the radio with a Spanish section in the middle, something like A to B%. And Miles said, “You hear that flamenco guitar? I want you to play like that.” I said, “You want me to bring an acoustic guitar?” But basically Miles was just giving me a hint as to what kind of approach he wanted.

Did you give them any direction about how you wanted them to play the tunes?

They both basically said, “I’ll try whatever you want.” They heard the tunes and had a vibe right away. The first tune, “Big Neighborhood,” is kind of Hendrix-like, so Vai got the vibe right away and just did his thing.

No one really got “Moroccan Roll” at first. I sent the guys a quick, cheapo demo and they thought the song was supposed to be kind of funky. I said, “It has be more World music, more like [Pakistani vocalist] Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn.” And Vai said, “I almost played with him,” and then he got the idea, and Weckl got the idea. Then I said, “At the end of this tune we want to be aggressive and take it right to Guantanamo, if that’s the right vibe.” And they got the right vibe on it, right away.

Are you still using your famous stereo setup?

Yeah. I usually run a Yamaha G-100 combo with two 12" Electro-Voice speakers on the left side and a Pearce G-1 head through a Hartke cabinet with four 12" JBL speakers on the right. The amps are set in stereo using a Yamaha SPX-90. For the sessions with Vai and Johnson I used Fender Blackface Twin Reverb reissues. I’ve been renting them when I’m on the road and they sound great.

The last track, “Hope You Don’t Mind,” is a blues in C. You feature a blues on virtually every one of your records. What attracts you to that style?

“Hope You Don’t Mind” has a Monkish (pianist Thelonius Monk) quality, and Randy Brecker plays on it. The blues is one thing that glues everything together for me on all my records. I grew up listening to a lot of blues; it’s in my style, it’s in my writing, and it’s in my playing. Because there’s blues in rock and there’s blues in jazz, the blues is kind of a main ingredient.

There’s a bebop tune on this record as well.

“Coupe De Ville” is based on the standard “There Is No Greater Love.”

How were you able to make such a diverse record sound cohesive?

From the beginning I consciously thought about how it would all flow together. Then you just have to follow your instincts. I think sequencewise, personnel-wise, and the fact that I wrote all the tunes, for better or for worse, it all hangs together. To me the most fun part about doing a record with anybody—with the same band or different groups of people—is to hear how they play your music. It’s really exciting to hear what somebody else does with my tunes and also how they push me into new arenas.