Journey hitting Las Vegas for nine-show residency

Neal Schon has nine reasons to hit Las Vegas.

Carlos Santana is lobbying hard for the 10th.

“He wants me to move up here and be his neighbor,” Schon says with Schon-like exuberance, a short laugh serving as an exclamation point to punctuate his words.

It’s 10:30 on a recent Wednesday morning, and Schon is about to hit the studio with Santana a few weeks before his band, jukebox heroes Journey, hit Las Vegas for a nine-show residency at the Hard Rock Hotel.

Schon, the son of a jazz saxophonist father who was playing a variety of musical instruments before he was even in kindergarten, joined Santana’s band as a guitarist when he was but 15 years old in 1970, playing on one of Santana’s greatest records, Latin rock classic “Santana III.”

Now, Schon’s come full circle, cutting tracks for the forthcoming “Santana IV.”

Santana, a transplanted local who has had his own residencies at both the Hard Rock and the House of Blues, has spoken enthusiastically about his time here.

That may have been one reason Schon was hip to the idea of Journey doing an extended engagement of its own.

But another was the changing face of the city itself.

“I think we’ve become open-minded to it because we’re still doing amazing business in bigger places,” Schon says. “The whole concept of coming and doing a residency in Vegas years back was when you were not able to do that business anymore, and so you went to a smaller scope and it was a cool, safe little place to hang. I think we shied away from it specifically because of that.

“At this point, though, we’re doing as good as business as we’ve ever done,” he adds. “And so this feels like it’s going to be a really cool place to hang for a second. We’ve traveled like demons already this year — and last year, we were all over the place.”

The recent Hard Rock residencies have featured two distinct types. First, there’s the Def Leppard model, in which the band creates a show unique to Las Vegas, posited on a set list unlike any it has done before, with songs it has either never played or hasn’t tried in years.

Then there’s the Guns N’ Roses-Motley Crue-Kiss model, which basically takes all the bells and whistles of the band’s normal, high-watt arena shows and squishes them into a smaller venue for a far more in-your-face experience.

Schon predicts that Journey’s show will be somewhere in the middle.

“If I was somebody who was coming to see us, I wouldn’t want to see the same show every night, no matter how well it was played,” Schon says. “We’re planning on filming all nine shows, and because of that, I said to the guys, ‘Let’s get as much material as we can in the can from the live show, stuff that we don’t ordinarily play.’ ”

Also, Schon hopes to exclusively release his new solo album in Las Vegas while he’s here, offering it in Hard Rock stores and doing record signings.

“It’s called ‘Neal Schon Vortex,’ ” he says. “It’s a double record, 18 songs, and it’s just slamming instrumental music. I got back together with (drummer) Steve Smith on this one, (keyboardist) Jan Hammer is all over it, and, of course, Igor Len, the keyboard player I’ve been working with for years.

“I feel like it’s my best work yet,” he adds. “It’s really, really strong. People who are listening to it, friends of mine who have known me for years, say, ‘This is by far your best work.’ ”

That record is predicated on spontaneity and an anything-goes vibe.

Schon captured that atmosphere in the studio. Now, he’s hoping to duplicate it in the flesh.

It’s a different context, with a different band, but the goal is the same.

“I can’t guarantee exactly what we’re going to play each night, because we’re going to mix it up,” Schon says. “We will obviously play our hits, the five or six mandatory hits that we have to play otherwise you piss people off.”

There’s that laugh again.

“In all those other spots that we have in our show that are interchangeable, we will interchange from show to show,” he says. “So we’re digging deep. We’re going to play new stuff, old, old stuff — we’re going to pull it all out.”