A prolific songwriter, guitarist and internationally-renowned touring musician, with a legion of fans in nations around the world, Richie Kotzen has carved out a remarkably varied, creatively fulfilling, critically acclaimed and successful career primarily because he listens to no other muse but his own. He charts his own course and is unabashed in his desire to share the music that seems to flow effortlessly from his heart and soul.
Kotzen is now 47, and the native of Reading, Pennsylvania has been in the upper echelon of the music business since his late teens. Over that time, he has released a breathtaking 20-plus albums under his own name. As well he wrote a number of the tunes as a member of Poison for their 1991 album Native Tongue, including the hit Stand, and spent some time as a member of Mr. Big in the late 1990s. Since 2012 he has been an integral member of one of the most talented trios in rock music today, The Winery Dogs, which have release a pair of wildly popular albums.
His latest solo album, Salting Earth, is set to be released on April 14, through his own Headroom-Inc. label. It features Kotzen at his musical best, crafting 10 songs that are drawn from his multiple influences, including 1970s rock, blues to soul, yet it’s all wrapped up into a cohesive whole thanks to his superior production, mixing and arranging skills, as well as his soul-filled, powerfully emotive and evocative voice.
A thoughtful, contemplative interview subject, the soft-spoken Kotzen believes the quality of his music continues to rise because of the continual freedom he feels being unshackled from the mainstream music industry and the record label infrastructure.
“I have no rules except my own and I can do anything I want when the mood strikes me, even more so in recent times since I abandoned dealing with record labels more than 10 years ago. I love that aspect of my work now. I remember years ago, one of the first records I put out without a label, Into the Black [in 2006], was a record that just kind of wrote itself and just kind of happened naturally and organically,” Kotzen said from his home in Los Angeles.
“But, really, most of my records are kind of like that. There were a couple early in my career when I was working with a label and had people telling me what I could and couldn’t do, which means of course the art suffers in that instance. Now I don’t even think about what other people may think. I just write what I write and I decide what songs I like more than others and those are the ones I put on the record. That’s really how it all comes together. It’s pretty simple actually.
“And I don’t set out to write a certain song or have a theme for an album. I just write what I write. I might wake up one day with an idea for the piano and I will develop that. Then I might wake up the next day with a melody in my head and develop that, or a groove or a bass line. So the songs kind of just come out of wherever they come from and I try not to analyze it too much because then I fear I might ruin the mystery of the creative process.”
As with most of his solo recordings, Kotzen said some of the material on Salting Earth is brand new, while some of the songs have been compiled from bits and pieces of older ideas that he revisits during each new album cycle.
“I definitely do not decide anything beforehand. I have songs that I have written that are sitting someplace, just waiting – songs that are undeveloped. What usually happens is I will write something and it will sit for a while and then I will write some more things and they will sit there too. Eventually I will have some completed songs and I go back and look at them. When I write something I usually go in and record right away so I don’t forget it. At that point if I have enough of them, I can decide if I have a record or not. And then if I am missing something I can go back to some of the ideas that I never developed and kind of mess around with those,” Kotzen explained.
“One specific example is from this new record. I had written the song End of Earth and a couple of others at the same time and realized I had the makings of a new album. I went back and listened to some older things and I found the song Thunder, and there was a different version of that song I had done years ago and I liked parts of it. So I updated it. I changed the verse, I re-sang the song, but I kept the original drum performance and the original guitar performance. That’s an example of a song that was in development for a pretty long time, until I decided to work on it some more. So songs all come in different ways for me.
“The song My Rock I had sitting around since the beginning of the Winery Dogs, so that’s around 2011 or 2012. A lot of time had passed since I first wrote that. And it’s funny because there is a common feel or tone to the record, but that commonality or thread that goes through the songs is probably more coincidental than anything. You look at the song Make It Easy. That song was originally recorded to be on the Get Up album in 2004, but it just sat, as it is, on my hard drive for a very long time without vocals. I never cut vocals for it. And then last year I just happened to pull the track up and suddenly I came up with lyrics for it. So there you go, there’s a song where the music was written and recorded more than 10 years ago and suddenly I go back in 2016 and I finish it. Honestly, that’s kind of how it works for me at times.”
Even with the current music business climate and the diminishing amount of income that artists get from sales of their music, Kotzen seems unfazed, since the market for his unique brand of rock singer/songwriter music has remained steady, and commercial considerations have never been paramount for him.
“For me the only way I can ever really define a successful album is if I feel that it represents me in that point of time when it was created. That’s the only thing I can define success by. I have never been an artist that sold a lot of records in terms of what is considered a lot of records. Thankfully, I have a base of people who are interested in what I do, enough of a base that I can survive on my art. And I tour and go around the world, which is exciting and fun, so all of that is what I call success. I can’t complain about any aspect of my life or career. I enjoy everything that I am doing with music. It’s provided a lot of great things for me,” he said.
“So, for me, the whole thing is a success. Could I always have a bigger audience? Of course. Could I sell more records? Of course. But at the same time it’s much better for me to focus on the things that I can control, which is the work. I can control what I do, what I create, and how I present it. Those are things I can control and those are things that give me joy. And thankfully there is a reward for that and the reward is the fact that I have a career.”
Kotzen recorded a self-titled album at age 19 in 1989. He had some sort of label deal for the next 27 years – some good some not so good, as he has already discussed. What frustrated him the most was the short sightedness of many of the label officials, and the seemingly nonsensical logic they would use to try and pigeon hole him as an artist.
“Once I abandoned record labels, my career started to flourish and my fan base really started to grow because I was finally being creatively honest. In the old days, when I was signed to major labels, the problem was that they kept telling me I was ‘all over the place’ musically. They complained that one song is a ballad, another is a rocker, another has strings, this one has an acoustic guitar, another one has sax and a double bass line. So the labels really want to narrow the scope; they like being able to categorize things,” he said.
“And it used to frustrate me so much because all of the greatest artists I can think of were diverse. If you listen to the best Led Zeppelin records, you hear how really diverse they are. Not every song has a huge drum beat and Robert Plant screaming. The Who had tons of diversity, Prince and Queen were the same. I can go on and on and on. And yet record company people, especially back in the day, wanted you to narrow your focus. And back in the day you were kind of helpless because you had to have a record deal to do anything.
“But it’s mind boggling how in one breath they would talk about a great artist and in the next breath completely contradict themselves and not acknowledge what made those great artists truly great. I always thought it was a really strange and twisted way to think. These days I really believe that any artist, not just me, that has a base of support, it’s because they are doing something that connects with people. And they’re probably not just doing it one way or with one approach; they probably have a lot of diversity.”
Adding to the diversity of Kotzen’s repertoire was the partnership with drumming maestro Mike Portnoy and bombastic bass icon Billy Sheehan in the Winery Dogs project. What started off a simply a fun musical dalliance and distraction turned to something much bigger – to the genuine surprise of Kotzen.
“It came at an interesting time. I remember I was coming off an album cycle for my record 24 Hours in 2011 and we had been touring the world doing a lot of shows. And I remember complaining to one of my friends that it was like I needed a break from myself. And in that moment I was thinking about the idea of collaborating. I thought it might be an interesting thing to do something with some other people because I had been so focused on my solo records. My solo career is what I love, it’s my priority, it’s who I am and what I do. But in that moment I thought it might be a nice change of pace to collaborate. I didn’t know with who, but it was just a thought. And less than two weeks later I got a call from Eddie Trunk telling me that Mike and Billy were interested in forming a power trio and my name came up,” he explained.
“We got together at my house and really just went into my studio and jammed a few ideas and it came pretty easy. It went relatively painless and it was nice for me to just do something different. And that’s all it really was. In my mind, I wasn’t in the market to start a band. That had never been a dream or goal of mine. I had always been in my studio writing my songs and recording them. My first record was under my name and all the record deals I had were under Richie Kotzen, so that’s clearly me, that’s what I do. I am a solo artist. When the first [self-titled] Winery Dogs album came out in 2013 we were pleasantly surprised at how well it was received and really. Based on the warm reception for the first record, we decided to jump right back in and do another one, which became Hot Streak and that came out in 2015.
“We did two album cycles back to back and frankly I thought we would just do the one record, play some shows in couple of key markets like New York, Los Angeles and some places in Europe. It actually grew legs and went much farther than that. But it was also a lot of fun. We all like each other and there’s plenty of nice things we can say about one another. That being said, from my point of view, I think we made two strong records, but it’s time not to take a step back and do some other things. The good thing is the Winery Dogs are always there for us to go back to and I am sure we will do another album at some point.”
In the interim, Kotzen has a very ambitious international touring schedule plotted out upon the release of Salting Earth. He and his band, which is made up of bassist Dylan Wilson and drummer Mike Bennett, will start April 21 in California and continue through the U.S. to a date in Nashville on May 22, before hitting the road for concerts in Brazil and numerous European nations throughout the summer.
“I hope we can get up to Canada too. We don’t have plans for it on this first North American run, but we’re going to come back and do another North American tour in the fall, so I know we will try to get up there,” he said.
For more information on Kotzen, his touring plans and the new album Salting Earth, visit http://richiekotzen.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for a quarter of a century. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
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