When does a side-project become the main event? As we set up the photoshoot for Adrian Smith and Richie Kotzen at Bristol’s O2 Academy, it seems a pertinent question to contemplate.

Back in February 2020 these two star players traded riffs for the first time on the Turks and Caicos Islands – of course, a few days later and the pandemic would have scuppered the project before it even began.

However, six years on and Smith/Kotzen have a brace of acclaimed albums under their belt, from 2021’s self-titled debut to last year’s Black Light/White Noise (by comparison, Smith’s mothership, Iron Maiden, haven’t recorded since 2021’s Senjutsu).

Having completed soundcheck and now settling on a leather couch, the pair display a complementary chemistry: Kotzen is happy to hold court, while Smith prefers to sit back, hat pulled low, and chip in as necessary.

But as they explain, it’s their opposing guitar styles that has made Smith/Kotzen such an enjoyable enterprise, with both musicians happy to be nudged from their comfort zones.

How does the second album progress from your debut?

Adrian Smith: We actually recorded it in two parts. We did about six songs, then I went on tour with Maiden and Richie went off with his band. Then we came back together the following year.

So it gave us the opportunity to let the dust settle and think, ‘What do we have here?’ I think it’s a more focused album, more ‘up’, more cohesive. You know, we’re developing a writing and playing relationship. It’s more of the same – but a progression.

When did you realise that you clicked as a partnership?

Adrian: “The first time we got together at Richie’s studio. I’ve sat down with other guitarists and you just end up playing blues licks all day and not writing anything. But Richie and I went to work straight away. I had the riff and he came up with the chorus for Running. That was it – “Bang!” – in a couple of hours. We did jam, too, and came up with Scars.”

Richie Kotzen: To me, the creative process is the most important aspect. Even more so than playing, if I had to choose. That’s why I kept at playing the guitar because I wanted to make original music.

Out of everything, I get most satisfaction from an idea coming out of the speakers and going, “Yeah, that’s what I was hearing in my head.” So that’s the part we connect on, the core of what this is. Because anybody can go jam some covers.

Have the songs evolved as you play them live?

Adrian: Yeah, to see that song breathing and living in front of an audience…

Richie: The songs take on this whole other life. And I’ve never done this, but it’d be interesting to write a bunch of music, have the band learn it, then take it on the road and play it for a year – then record it.

Adrian: The trouble is, if you do anything now, it’s on the internet the next day.

Richie: That’s true. The creepy, evil internet!

How do you approach the solos in this band?

Adrian: Richie and I are very different. I’ve been playing in Iron Maiden for such a long time, and the solos are part of the song. Almost without exception, they’re 16 bars and that’s it. There’s no extended solos. And most of the solos I play with Maiden [live] are the same as on the record because that’s what people want to hear, especially with old stuff like The Trooper.

But the way Richie plays is much more improvisational and it’s encouraged me to be more like that in S/K. Trying to keep up with this guy, y’know? And I’m getting more confident about branching out. I’ve only got three solos in the whole set that I play the same every night. The rest is off the top of my head.

Richie: That’s the way I’ve been doing it since I started recording myself. Like, ‘Well, I don’t know what I’m gonna do, but let’s see what happens.’ I’ll do a take and typically I’ll hear a melody in my head. Then I’ll go off from that, record it and say, ‘Okay, I liked the way I started and ended, but I got lost in the middle. Let me see if I can pull this off.’ So I’m kinda constructing in real-time.

On the other side of the coin, there are solos, like, at the end of a song, where I’ll just go for it. That’s a lot of fun. I grew up playing with guys that would jam and improvise, so that’s relatively easy for me.

I know a lot of guys that sit at home and write out the solo: ‘Okay, I’m gonna play this, let me practise it seven times then I’ll go to the studio…’. I’ve never done that. Maybe I should. But it’s a different approach.

It helps that you have a killer rhythm section…

Richie: They’re fantastic. Julia Lage is the bass player and Bruno Valverde is playing drums, and they just really lock in and make it so easy for us. Especially on the solos where we’re improvising. You need a support mechanism. And that was a great thing that I learned from my short time with Stanley Clarke’s band.

We had a band called Vertú in 1999, which seems like a thousand years ago. But I learnt that when someone’s soloing, everybody else is there to support. You don’t go, ‘Look what I can do!’ when someone else has the floor. When the four of us play together, we have that same mentality. So the solo at the end of Running, Adrian can go for as long as he wants and the foundation is always gonna be there.

What particular guitars have you brought with you on the road, Adrian?

Adrian: This is my Jackson San Dimas signature model. It’s a slightly later one because it’s got the adjustable truss rod that you can get at more easily. It’s a great working guitar. Stays in tune. Sounds great. It’s light, easy to play, big frets. That’s a Seymour Duncan JB at the bridge.

It’s a slim neck. I don’t really like chunky necks. That’s why I don’t like old, old Les Pauls. This has a kind of flat profile. When I first hooked up with Jackson, I took an old Strat to the factory and they copied the neck dimensions because it was so comfortable.

I also use this Les Paul Classic. When I was a kid, I had a black Les Paul copy. It was my first guitar and I loved it, and I modded it and put in Gibson pickups. I just maxed it out as much as I could. But, eventually, I sold it. I wish I still had it.

But this one, I bought in New York. It’s not an old guitar. I think it might be a reissue. I use it for a few songs and it’s got the mojo factor. I suppose you play it a certain way, get more sustain, so you can maybe play a little less if you want and get away with it.

And then, this Les Paul Custom, Gibson gave me a few years ago. It’s my favourite guitar, looks-wise. Just absolutely beautiful. But it’s got slightly smaller frets. My hands were slipping, so I’m going to put bigger frets on, then it’ll be back in action. The tuning can be volatile because it’s not got the locking nuts. But it’s a lovely guitar.

Talk us through your guitar rack, Richie.

Richie: This is my signature Fender Telecaster. My ‘main’ Telecaster is at home, and the reason is because that guitar stays tuned at 440 [standard tuning] – whereas with S/K we tune down a half-step.

So this is the dedicated Telecaster for everything Smith/Kotzen, and it’s completely stock, off the rack, with the exception that I take sandpaper to the neck – I just like the way that feels. The pickups are a DiMarzio Chopper T with a regular replacement Tele single coil. And that’s not a tone dial – it’s a series/parallel knob.

I only have two guitars on this tour – and the other one is my signature Strat, in this one-off custom baby-blue colour. They used a really nice piece of maple for the neck. It almost looks like birdseye and it’s not quite as chunky as the Telecaster. And, you know, I love the gold hardware and DiMarzio pickups. I play both guitars almost equally in the set, but I finish the show with Running on the Strat.

I’ll tell you something: all the decisions with my gear were made very early on, very deliberately, because my focus has always been, “What am I going to write,” y’know? I don’t like to exhaust too many resources mentally on gear because I like to reserve that for my creative process.

And all the S/K guitars are dropped a semitone?

Adrian: Yeah. Tuning down was more for the vocals. It’s just the way Richie and I started working together. We immediately dropped. I mean, he’s got more range than me, but it helps me. So this white Jackson, for example, it’s the equivalent of a standard tuning drop D, but this would be a C#. So you get that heavy kind of barring situation. The one-fingered bandit, I call it.

The way a guitar interacts with a physical amp is such a big part of the excitement of rock ’n’ roll. What’s your take on that?

Adrian: With S/K, we’re pretty old-school. We both use amplifiers. I mean, a lot of bands now just don’t use backline: it’s all processed and they’ve got in-ears. We’ve got the wedges and half-stacks and we just go for it. And there’s so much choice of amps these days.

Back when the electric guitar came to the fore – the ’60s and ’70s – there wasn’t much around. You really had to work to get a sound. Having said that, a lot of it is in here [holds up hands] and in here [points to head] and what you feel. You’ve just got to have something that enables you to express that.

Richie: It doesn’t have to be loud to be good. A lot of times, being loud can be a problem.

Adrian: And if I go to see a band, I don’t like ’em to be too loud.

Richie: I want them to be good.

Adrian: Exactly!

What was your go-to amp for the album, Richie?

Richie: In the studio, I had my four-input Marshall Super Lead 1959 Handwired. Adrian was using it as well. I plugged into the top-right input, which is the ‘normal’ channel. And then the cabinet is obviously in another room with microphones on it.

I’ve got a lot of Marshall heads. I have one from 1967, a Super Bass. I bought it when I was in my early 20s at a guitar show in Texas. And back then, I paid, like, $1,100 – now I see ’em go for 12 grand. But I haven’t recorded with that in years because it was blowing fuses.

On the road, I’m using reproductions, like this 1959 HW. When I plug into it, I know what I’m in for. It’s not a guessing game. Again, my concern isn’t gear. It never was. It’s like, ‘Let’s get to it, let’s make music.’ This is the most responsive head I’ve ever played through. If I hit it hard, it barks. And it takes pedals really well.

I don’t use a lot of wah in Smith/Kotzen, so my signature Tech 21 [RK5 Fly Rig] pedal is not with me on the road. But I have my Fly Rig, and this one is modified with more switches for my Leslie simulators.

Then there’s the SansAmp, which is how I get a bit of rock ’n’ roll grit in the sound and not have it absurdly loud. And just as I said that, my tinnitus just kicked off, like it knows that I’m talking about it [laughs].

How about your backline, Adrian?

Adrian: A lot of my equipment is in England and we record in America. And I lost a bit of gear in the LA fire last year as well. So I do some stuff at home with a JVM. But mainly I used Richie’s amp because it’s so easy. It’s so fast: you’ve got an idea, plug in and ‘bash’. Maybe I put a Tube Screamer with that amp [on the road, Adrian is using a Marshall JVM210 with 1960A and 1960B cabinets].

So what’s next for Smith/Kotzen?

Richie: Well, we’ve got more shows and we’re very excited about how well received the album was. It’s a great creative outlet and something that I think both of us would like to see carry on, right?

Adrian: Yeah, I’m having a great time on the road. I love taking these songs on stage. I’m up there and I’m lost in a world where I get to play solos and rhythm, sing, do harmonies – there’s so much going on. It’s so fulfilling.

• Black Light/White Noise is out now via BMG.
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Adrian Smith says his work alongside Richie Kotzen is more freeing than life in Iron Maiden, as he has more room to express himself.

The Jackson signature artist joined Maiden in 1980, five years into their existence, and has remained with them ever since, save for a spell away during the 1990s when he was in the running to join Def Leppard. During that time, he's proved an invaluable figure.

But though he and Richie Kotzen come from very different worlds – Smith says he learned to play to get girls, in contrast to Kotzen’s want to master the craft – the pair have proved a formidable partnership in the eponymous duo, Smith/Kotzen.

“Richie and I are very different,” he says in the new issue of Guitarist. “I’ve been playing in Iron Maiden for such a long time, and the solos are part of the song. Almost without exception, they’re 16 bars, and that’s it. There’s no extended solos.”

Outside of Maiden, then, he’s able to solo outside of those rigid constraints. Though cuts like his Powersalve solo – recorded while hungover, no less – showcase his chops, he prefers being able to spread his wings.

“Most of the guitar solos I play with Maiden [live] are the same as on the record because that’s what people want to hear, especially with old stuff like The Trooper,” he adds. “But the way Richie plays is much more improvisational, and it’s encouraged me to be more like that in S/K.”

He admits that keeping up with Kotzen – whose signature Strat was finally rolled out worldwide last summer – isn’t easy. But he’s embraced the challenge.

“I’m getting more confident about branching out,” he says. “I’ve only got three solos in the whole set that I play the same every night. The rest is off the top of my head.”

The pair welcomed a surprise guest to join them on the Maiden classic, Wasted Years, in London recently, as they continue to promote their second album, Black Light/White Noise.

Elsewhere, Smith has become the latest big-name player to spend some time with Kirk Hammett’s iconic ‘Greeny’ Les Paul – and promptly fell in love with it – while Kotzen revealed why he didn’t get the Nine Inch Nails gig, despite being the best man for the job.

The latest issue of Guitarist is out now, and features a bumper celebration for the Telecaster’s 75th anniversary, including a deep-dive into the new anniversary models, as well as a new interview with Eric Johnson.

Head to Magazines Direct to pick up a copy.

Iron Maiden guitarist Adrian Smith invited a familiar face onto the stage as he and Richie Kotzen performed in London over the weekend (February 21), with Bruce Dickinson making a cameo on a blazing take of Wasted Years.

Away from the galloping rhythms and stadium tours of Iron Maiden, which recently afforded him the chance to babysit the legendary “Greeny” Les Paul for an afternoon, Smith has allied with Strat stalwart, Kotzen.

The straightforwardly titled Smith/Kotzen partnership has produced two studio albums so far, with 2025’s Black Light / White Noise seeing them reveling in their shared love of the blues. And with the group hitting the English capital – marking a hometown show for Smith – the pair were joined by heavy metal royalty for a performance of the Smith-penned song.

The track, inspired by Smith's purchase of a Roland guitar synthesizer, has been on the Smith/Kotzen setlist since day dot, but this is the first time Dickinson has (lovingly) gatecrashed their party.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the one and only, Mr. Bruce Dickinson,” Smith says, introducing the singer to the stage while wielding one of his Jackson signature guitars.

Of course, the trio of musical heavyweights made nailing the song look as simple as breathing; some credit has to go to the band's bassist, Julia Lage, who played Steve Harris's parts superbly. And what a tone.

Each string-bothering member of Iron Maiden was recently bestowed with a new Fender signature model, with Smith staying true to his Jackson loyalty, after Grover Jackson personally convinced him to trade Les Pauls for Super Strats.

Last Summer, Kotzen's sought-after Strat was finally rolled out worldwide, having previously been a Fender Japan exclusive.

Fresh from launching his namesake guitar brand, Nuno Bettencourt has announced the Six String Sanctuary guitar camp, set to take place in Las Vegas in January.

The Extreme guitarist, who recently revealed he turned down the chance to join Ozzy Osbourne’s band, has curated the four-day and four-night event to be a “celebration” of shred, and has tapped into his Rolodex of contacts to make it memorable.

Running January 16–20, 2026, at the Hilton Lake Las Vegas Resort & Spa, the event will host a handful of guest stars, including Steve Vai. He’ll be in attendance across the four days, holding masterclasses, while there’s promise of a “never-to-be-seen-again performance,” too.

Breakout workshops will be held by Rick Beato, Eric Gales, Richie Kotzen, Mateus Asato, and Taj Farrant. They’ll be organized by skill level to ensure all participants get the most out of their time with the elite musicians running the workshops.

There'll be nightly concerts by the house band. Bettencourt has drafted in drummer Marco Minnemann (the Aristocrats, Joe Satriani, Steven Wilson), keyboardist Derek Sherinian (Dream Theater, Black Country Communion), and bass player Vincen García (Funkiwis) on bass for those performances.

Furthermore, there will be late-night jam sessions, with Kyle Brian, Doug Doppler, and Larry Mitchell among those burning the midnight oil.

Attendees will also be among the first players in the world to try out Nuno’s all-new electric guitars, which featured at Back to the Beginning.

Beyond that, attendees will shred over a new, original track penned by Bettencourt for the event.

“I’ve been waiting a long time to do this, and it’s finally happening; four days and nights of nothing but guitars, attitude, and music that hits you in the chest,” Bettencourt enthuses.

“This isn’t just about sitting back and watching us play. Everyone who comes to Six String Sanctuary will lay down a solo on a brand-new track I’ve written and recorded with the house band. You’ll walk out with your version in hand. This is gonna be raw, loud, heavy, and real. If the guitar has ever been your sanctuary, you already know you need to be there.”

Players must be over 16 to attend alone, and you’ll need to bring your own axe, guitar cable, and tuner to the party.

Head to Nuno’s Six String Sanctuary for more.

In related news, Bettencourt has unveiled a wild Mad Max-inspired Custom Shop Washburn that takes the keytar concept to ridiculous new heights.

With Mötley Crüe, John 5 has a job to do. There are expectations and a legacy. Of course, 5 has plenty of cache; he doesn’t allow it to impact what he does with the ‘Crüe. “In my eyes, that’s what the people want,” he tells Guitar World.

“They want the songs performed how they were written because that’s what they hear every day.”

5’s commitment to the ‘Crue brand runs deep, which is why Nikki Sixx, Tommy Lee, and Vince Neil tabbed him for the gig as Mick Mars’ replacement in 2022. Clearly, the band took a shine to what he’s done during his various stops, and according to 5, the feeling is mutual.

“It is so exciting for me,” he says. “I love nothing more than getting up on stage with those guys and playing these songs. It’s so fun, and we have a blast doing it. We are all up there just yucking it up and having a great time.”

By the looks of it, the good times will keep on rolling, as Mötley Crüe has an impending Vegas residency kicking off on October 3, 2025. “I don’t take it for granted,” 5 says. “I’m just so thankful to be playing these songs and having a good time doing it.”

“And I love Vegas,” he says. “To do a residency with my friends, dude, it’s ridiculous. You don’t have to travel. You just go down and play. I’m more excited than anybody. I’m super psyched. It’s going to be a blast, man. We’re going to have a rock ‘n’ roll party. That’s for sure.”

5’s enthusiasm for Mötley Crüe’s Vegas adventures is sky high. But that’s not all that’s stoking his six-string flame. Also in October, he’s kicking off a joint tour with fellow Tele-toting shred-head, Richie Kotzen. “I was like, ‘Oh, my God, this would be a great tour for me and Richie,’” he says.

“Rehearsals for Mötley start next month, and then there’s the tour with Richie, and it’s off to the races until the end of the year,” 5 says. “I’m super excited. I’ve always loved looking forward to things, even when I was a little kid; I was that way. And these are all things that I’m super-excited about.

One last bit that 5 leaves out, which he’s certainly excited about, is the release of his 11th solo album, Ghost. The album is his first solo effort since 2021’s Sinner, and to be sure, he’s jazzed about it, as he kept it old-school. “I was very draconian with how I approached this,” he says. “I play the songs from the beginning to end like they did back in the ’30s or ’40s.”

“It was all live recordings,” he says. “I just started playing, and if I messed up, I’d start again from the top. So, all of these songs that you hear on this record are completely live takes.”

That approach is based on lost-in-time simplicity. And that mindset extends to 5’s gear, too. “I could probably just play the show with the amp and a guitar, and do it that way,” he says. “I just love when things are simple.”

5 has been brandishing his signature Fender Ghost Tele of late, giving his beloved Goldie a much-needed break. Along with the Ghost Tele, an all-black version, the Phantom is on the way, and he’s been using that, too. “You can pretty much do anything on that guitar,” he says. “I’m very proud to be a Tele player, and I’ll always be a Tele player. I love it.”

But besides that, 5’s rig is decided under the radar. “Like, if anything happened to my rig, I could just go to Guitar Center and have anything replaced,” he says. “Nothing is custom, nothing is anything like that.”

If all of this seemed like a lot, meaning it looks like John 5’s schedule is packed to the point that it would exhaust a typical human, you’d be right. But John 5 isn’t your typical human. Sure, he suffers from OCD, but he’s also deeply driven by perfectionism, and a haunting need to learn more, be better, and switch things up.

And so, aside from the Mötley Vegas residency, his tour with Richie Kotzen, and the impending drop of Ghost, he’s got an idea: to perform 50 shows, in 50 states, in 50 days. But it’s not just an idea; it’s officially a thing.

“It’s 50 shows in a row,” he says. “But that answers the question of how obsessive I can be, but I can’t wait. Everybody is dreading it, like, ‘Oh, no,’ but we have backups for everybody in case somebody gets sick, hurt, or anything like that. God forbid, we’ll bring in another guy until they heal up, you know?”

John 5 will need to stock up on extra strings, have his amps serviced, and harden up his calluses, as he prepares to do what most wouldn’t even think of trying. “I’m ready,’ he says. “I play so much every day into the night, so this is gonna be like a vacation for me. [Laughs]”

There’s a lot of players who probably would have vied for the Mötley Crüe gig. What made you perfect for the role?

“I think I have such respect and fondness for the music. I’ve been playing these songs – and this is going to sound funny – but I’ve been playing these songs for as long as they have. I was in my bedroom or at a talent show, and those guys were on a huge stage, but I’ve been playing these songs since they came out.

“So, when Nikki [Sixx] said, ‘Okay, here’s the setlist to learn,’ I was like, ‘I know all these songs.’ Like, of course, we all know the songs, but I could have done the show that night. And that’s just because I have such a fondness and respect for the music, and for those guys.

“And I’ve known Nikki, Tommy [Lee], and Mick [Mars] for years and years and years. But the very first time I met Vince [Neil] was at Tommy’s birthday party when I got in the band, so that was cool.”

Seeing as these are classic parts that Mick crafted, which come with expectations, what’s the key to interpreting songs like Home Sweet Home and Shout at the Devil, for example?

“It’s such a great question. I think when you go to the music store, and you see sheet music written out, and how it was performed, and how it was written by the artist, and how it was recorded, that’s how I look at learning these songs. I look at them as, ‘This is how they were written. Am I to throw a couple of arpeggios in there? No. If that’s what they wanted, they would have done that.’”

There’s also a mystique about bands that stick to what’s on the record, rather than deviating.

“I play these songs live, how they were written, because of the fact that I would go and see these bands when I was a kid, like AC/DC, or Rush, you know, I saw everything when I was growing up. And some of the bands played it just like the record, which I loved. You grow up listening to these songs, and there’s certain guitar licks that you play air guitar to.

“With Mötley, I play the songs exact, exact, exact. And then, at the end of the song, I’ll do some crazy guitar work, or something like that. But what these songs deserve is to be played like they were written. We grew up listening to Home Sweet Home a certain way, and you want to hear them performed how they were written.”

You’ve proven that you’re comfortable with any style, but Mick’s playing is filled with subtle nuance. Are there any licks that don’t come naturally to you?

“Well, how I do everything, how I look at guitar playing, is if things are a challenge… I have such horrible OCD now, I mean awful. Ever since I was a little kid, if I couldn’t get something, I would stay home from school fake sick, and I would just play it over, and over, and over, until I mastered it.

“So, that’s what I do; if I have any kind of trouble with any song whatsoever, I will obsess and just make sure it’s like breathing to me. So, there’s not really anything in my music, or anybody’s music, that I’ve learned that I’ve really had a hard time with because of that fact. I’m not saying, ‘Oh, I could play anything,’ I’m saying that I will sit and obsess about it until it’s like breathing.”

Over the last few years, you’ve made a few additions to your rig as far as amps, pedals, and especially guitars go. Will your rig for Mötley’s Vegas residency be essentially the same as the rig you’ll use while touring with Richie Kotzen?

“I’m so glad we’re talking about this because these are great questions! So, what I’m using are EVH [5150] amps, and I’m using a pedalboard with Boss stompboxes. I’m using a Super Overdrive [SD-1], a Chorus [CE-2], a Digital Delay [DD-5], and a Noise Suppressor [NS-2]. So, I have four stompboxes.

“And then I’ve got the EVH amps and cabinets, so it’s simple. It’s so simple that it’s almost comical. My guitar tech probably has the easiest job ever. [Laughs] And so, I use the exact same thing for my solo tour as I do with Mötley.”

You’ve had your signature Gender Ghost Tele for a few years now. Are there any updates there?

“With my guitars, I have my Ghost, with a Floyd [Rose] on it. And then, I have my new Fender that’s coming called the Phantom, and it’s all-black. It’s just blacked-out. Everything is in black, and then, I’ve got a white binding; it’s just a monster.

“So, that’s what I’m going to be using for the residency, and it’s just beautiful. You can see pictures of it on my Instagram. I’ve been playing it lately, it’s got a black Floyd on it, and it’s just gorgeous. So, I’ve got the Ghost and the Phantom.”

Aside from the looks, are there any updates to the specs of the Phantom compared to the Ghost Tele?

“Actually, there is. It’s minute, but it’s also imperative in my hands and my eyes. Like, there’s the cutaway, which I love… there’s this beautiful cutaway that you can get way up on the neck. And I never knew that, you know? Originally, it got in the way because I had a non-cutaway.

“But there’s also a contour that seems so minuscule, but it’s so imperative to me. And it’s just beautiful because I have the Phantom with a hardtail, you know? And there’s nothing, and it doesn’t have the cutaway, and it doesn’t have the contour. And I’m like, ‘Oh, man, I really miss that cutaway and contour,’ so it’s really cool.”

Your upcoming tour with Richie seems apropos since you’re both versatile players who do things with hot-rodded Teles that traditionally, people think you shouldn’t or can’t do.

“I love the Telecaster so much. It was really our first electric guitar, and pretty much, a huge part of rock ‘n’ roll. I grew up loving the Telecaster because, of course, I saw it on Hee Haw, and everybody on there played Teles. So, I just thought that it was the only electric guitar.

“I thought that was it. I was like, ‘Oh, I want an electric guitar,’ and I saw that shape, and thought that was the only shape. I mean… I was like six years old, and the Tele was just burned in my brain. But there are some Tele players that are terrifying, and it’s just the greatest thing ever.”

How do you see your joint tour with Richie shaking out?

“I love Richie. What a voice, what a player, and what a musician. I always loved how Richie plays, and his voice, of course, is incredible because, you know, I don’t sing. [Laughs] I leave that to the singers. So, I’m really super-excited. We’re playing everywhere, at tons and tons of places.

“I always look at it like, ‘Oh, man, this would be a great night out. This would be something that I would want to see myself.’ I always look at packages that way. I’ve always loved it when an eclectic array of these artists comes together, you know, an amalgamation of different styles of music. I was like, ‘Oh, my God. This would be a super-great tour.’ We bought it to the powers that be, and it was just a runaway hit.”

Elsewhere, you’ve got a new solo album set for release in Ghost. The ghost imagery is something that’s followed you. What’s the genesis of that?

“Well, it’s odd. It didn’t use it just because it’s a cool name, or it’s my guitar, or something. I’ve lost so many people around me in my life, and there’s ghosts all around me. They’re not bad ghosts, but there’s just ghosts all around me, all the time. And I’m aware of it. I’m just in tune with it. So, that’s why I named the guitar that, and that’s why I named the record that. I’m in tune with it, and it’s good.”

So, there's a symbology to it. With your primary form of expression being guitar, how does that extend into the ghost symbology, and how are you relaying that through your music?

“I started writing a long time ago. What I would do is I would do is, well, like I mentioned before, I have OCD, and I’d play, play, play, and that’s all I did. I looked at this music like I was a musician in the ’30s or ’40s, where I’d play everything from beginning to end, with no mistakes.”

Why do you prefer that process compared to punching in and out and editing with multiple takes?

“I just like to have that sense of dedication and authority to go into the studio like that. I hate to be like, ‘Oh, I’m going to punch in,’ or ‘That was out of tune, I think I’d like to start over.’ Doing the way I did is a lost art that we don’t see anymore. Now, we can pretty much do anything, but back in the ’30s or ’40s, sometimes you didn’t even get a chance to practice. Sometimes, you just got charts, and it was like, ‘Alright, don’t mess up.’” [Laughs]

While recording, did you mainly use your Ghost Tele, or was Goldie part of the process?

“Goldie is taking a rest. [Laughs] It’s funny because I played that guitar so much that they had to replace the chrome metal pickguards because there were dips in it. I went through two chrome pickguards, so that’s a lot of playing. I don’t want it to, like, fall apart, and break, so what’s when I adopted the Ghost, and made that my new toy.”

Have you enjoyed connecting with the Ghost Tele as you did with Goldie?

“I’ve been playing it like crazy. And now, I have the Phantom that I’m playing, too. It’s funny… my dad was the kind of person who bought one really good thing, and he had it forever. Like, if you buy one really nice backpack, for example, and it was the best backpack, and you kept it for your whole life, that’s kind of how I am with guitars.”

You’re a guitar minimalist.

“Like, I’ll get a guitar, and I’ll use it so much until I have to be like, ‘Okay, we’ve got to retire that.’ That’s just how I am with things. I have like four pairs of shoes, like 10 shirts, and like five pairs of pants. [Laughs] It’s very strange… I’ll just wear those certain things, along with a couple of jackets, that I’ll wear every day. So, I guess you would say that I’m a minimalist in certain aspects… until it comes to my Kiss collection. [Laughs]”

I can relate with you on the wardrobe and the Kiss stuff! But as far as your connection to the instrumental, how does that tendency impact that? Can you track your growth as a player, and maybe how it’s apparent on Ghost?

“Let me tell you… you are the first one – because I’ve done a billion interviews – you are the very first one that has that question. And I think that if I ever did interviews, that would be like that first question you would ask because of the fact that there are a lot of players where you’re like, ‘Wow, their last record could sound like their first record,’ but I never stop learning. I learn things like once a week. I will learn different styles, tricks, or certain vibes, and I will put them in the record, so I don’t forget them.”

So, if we listen to your early records, we’re not going to say, “Wow, his first record sounds just like his new record.”

“You can listen to my first instrumental record [Vertigo] and then listen to this [Ghost], and it almost sounds like a different player in my eyes. There’s so many different things going on, so many different kinds of licks, and all that stuff. So, I really love to evolve. It’s one of my favorite things to do. I love it.”

About a year ago, you chatted with Guitar World in person, naming a few of your favorite solo licks. You called out My Name is John 5, Land of the Misfits, and The Chorus. As you’re always evolving, has your list of favorite licks evolved, or would you add any of your new licks to that list?

“Oh, yeah. There’s so many to add to the list. I love my song called Fiend. I’m using four-fingered tapping, and like a Jeff Watson thing. And then, I have this song, an old standard, called Moonglow, which is this beautiful jazz standard that I grew up listening to with my parents and grandparents.

“So, I’d add that. And then, there’s a song called The Devil Makes Three, which kind of has a Robert Johnson flash in it. And there’s string skipping, which is kind of Paul Gilbert-esque. So, I’m just so proud of this record.”

Is there any music that influences you that people might not expect?

“One of my all-time favorite bands is Steely Dan. I love Steely Dan more than anything. I love how they were so obsessive. Like, it took them six weeks to pick out a chair, you know? [Laughs] I love Aja, I love Gaucho, I love Royal Scam, and Pretzel Logic. I love everything they’ve done.

“And I love their use of studio musicians. I understand and I love that. I love having a certain musician for a certain song, and having the perfection. I mean… the perfection on this record [Ghost] is not with Pro Tools, or anything like that. It’s with the obsessiveness. With this record, when you hear it, everything there is performed and meticulous. That’s what I love. I’m very proud of it.”

Your attention to detail and drive to progress seem to keep you constantly active. Do you plan to give yourself a break, or is it pedal to the metal for the foreseeable future?

“I think it’s getting worse because, well, I will tell you this, which I haven’t really talked about at all, but I have to stay busy, or I go crazy. I’ve worn out my agent. I’ve worn out my manager. I make them nuts. [Laughs] But next year – and I think only a couple people have done this – I’m going to do 50 shows, in 50 states, in 50 days.”

That’s an aggressive undertaking. How will you pull it off?

“So, I’m going to have a backup road crew. I’m going to have a backup bus that we’ll be able to jump on if something goes wrong. I will have doctors on call. And everybody, you know, after the show, will eat, and then everybody has to go to bed. It’s going to be really militant because of what we’re going to pull off. So yeah… 50 shows, 50 states, 50 days. We’re going to start in Alaska and end in Hawaii.”

• Ghost is out on October 10. Mötley Crüe's Las Vegas residency continues until October 3. See Mötley Crüe for dates and ticket details.

Few vocalists in history are as synonymous with guitar heroics as Ozzy Osbourne. Starting with Tony Iommi and connecting with Randy Rhoads, Brad Gillis, Jake E. Lee, Zakk Wylde and many other greats, Ozzy knew how to pick ’em.

But what about the coulda-beens, shoulda-beens and never-beens? You know – the “close, but no cigar” gang? So many top-notch guitarists have told tales of auditioning for Ozzy and, for one reason or another, weren’t the right fit.

In the spirit of “almost,” GW dials it back to 13 players who were ever-so-nearly the apple of Ozzy’s eye.

George Lynch (auditioned in 1979 and 1982)

The Washington-born future Dokken star auditioned for Ozzy Osbourne not once, but twice. He first tried out in ’79 but lost out to Randy Rhoads. He auditioned again after Rhoads’ death three years later, this time to replace Brad Gillis, who had replaced Rhoads. Lynch insists that he secured the gig but was quickly fired after Ozzy got a load of Jake E. Lee’s look.

“They had two problems with me,” Lynch told Ultimate Guitar last year. “Ozzy had a problem with my short hair. I had short hair at the time. Then his wife [Sharon] had a problem with my green guitar. She said it looked like a booger. [She] didn't care what it sounded like, didn't care what I was playing.”

It’s all a bit hard to believe, given Lynch’s instrumental prowess. That said, Lynch is known as a, shall we say, free spirit. He didn’t jive with Don Dokken, nor did he get on all that well with Oni Logan in Lynch Mob. It’s reasonable to speculate that he might eventually have fallen out with Ozzy.

Richie Ranno (auditioned in 1982)

Back in 2022, the East Coast-raised guitar-slinger Richie Ranno told GW how he met a young Randy Rhoads in 1976 while he was playing with Starz. “Randy was a friend of mine from back in the ’70s,” he told us. “He was a big fan of Starz, and I think he was around 19 when I first met him.”

Fast forward to ’79, and Ranno ran into Rhoads again just before Rhoads left Quiet Riot to join Ozzy’s band. After the fateful plane crash in March 1982, Ozzy called on Ranno for an audition.

“When [the first] two Ozzy solo records came out, I didn’t realize it was that same kid [Rhoads] on guitar,” Ranno says.

“I learned Crazy Train, I Don’t Know, Goodbye to Romance and Over the Mountain. I was trying to play as much like Randy as I could, which wasn’t easy, but it went great. Don Airey told me I was the first person to audition, and I felt like, ‘Fuck, I’m in a bad spot here,’ because you never want to be first.”

Ultimately, Ranno lost out to Bernie Tormé, who wasn’t long for the gig.

Robert Sarzo (nearly asked to join in 1982)

It would have been easy to pivot to guitarist Robert Sarzo, as his brother Rudy was playing bass in Ozzy’s band at the time of Randy Rhoads’ death. In his 2006 memoir, Off the Rails: Aboard the Crazy Train in the Blizzard of Ozz, Rudy wrote that Sharon and Ozzy wanted Robert, nicknamed “the VuDu Man,” to join the band.

Robert would have gotten the job, except for the fact that Sharon’s father, Don Arden – who managed Ozzy at the time – paid Bernie Tormé in advance to replace Rhoads on the Diary of a Madman tour. Ozzy and Sharon reluctantly agreed, and Sarzo missed his chance at stardom.

Vito Bratta (asked to audition in 1982)

One of the less-talked-about would-be Ozzy shredders is New Yorker Vito Bratta, who revealed in 2023 that he had a brush with the Osbournes while Brad Gillis was still in the band.

“Somebody sent a cassette of me doing the Sabbath stuff to Ozzy’s people,” Bratta told GW, revealing this information for the very first time. “And then – if I remember right, it was probably Sharon, but I can’t be sure – called me, saying, ‘Hey, we like your tape, and we want you to come down to the Ritz to play.’”

But Bratta never got the chance to audition properly, as he botched the opportunity over the phone while with Sharon.

“I told her, ’Sure, I can come down. What songs do you want me to play?’ She tells me, ‘Do you know anything from Ozzy’s two solo albums?’ I told her, ‘No, I don’t know anything.’ I did love Randy’s stuff, but I didn't have time to sit at home and learn it. I never got around to it.”

At this point, Bratta knew he’d blown it. “Her voice was getting higher and higher,” he recalled. “I told her, ‘You want me to come down there soon, but I don’t know the stuff yet.’ She said, ‘How long do you need?’ I told her, ‘Give me a week.’ She said, ‘Okay, maybe you’re right, it’s not a good idea.’ And she hangs up, and I bang the phone down.”

Ultimately, Bratta went on to stardom with White Lion, but it sure would have been cool to play with Ozzy. “God almighty,” he says. “I remember being frustrated, you know? I felt like, ‘Fuck… this was the shot.’”

Adrian Vandenberg (asked to join in 1983)

According to Vandenberg’s social media, Ozzy asked the Dutchman to join his band while Jake E. Lee was still with him, during the Speak of the Devil tour. On the day Ozzy died (July 22), Vandenberg said of their first meeting, “I was fortunate to spend time with him, starting with touring the USA with Ozzy and his band in 1983.”

Vandenberg added that “There was never a dull moment” on tour with Ozzy, with “daily practical jokes” and Ozzy giving Vandenberg’s self-titled band “daily soundchecks.”

Those soundchecks are probably where the alleged invitation to join took place, but due to commitments with his own band – not to mention Lee’s presence in Ozzy’s group – Vandenberg declined the offer, which may or may not have been formal.

Jimi Bell (auditioned in 1987)

After Jake E. Lee left Ozzy in 1987, several guitarists auditioned for the gig. One of them was Joan Jett’s guitarist, Jimi Bell. In 2022, Bell recounted the details of that audition on the (Don’t) Quit Your Day Job podcast, saying, “I played on this big soundstage with Ozzy, and it went phenomenal. Ozzy really loved it, and when I got done playing, they sat me down and said it was between me and Zakk Wylde.”

History shows that Wylde was chosen, but it wasn’t all bad for Bell. “After deciding to stay with Zakk, Sharon gave my promo pack to Geezer Butler,” he recalled. “At that point, I was flown to England to work with him.” After that, Bell wrote some music for Sabbath’s Master of Insanity, which appeared on 1992’s Dehumanizer, although he wasn’t credited for it.

Marty Friedman (auditioned in 1987)

Looking back, it seems obvious that a Marty Friedman/Ozzy Osbourne pairing would have been a recipe for disaster, as the guitarist is something of a maverick. We’ll never know, as Friedman “failed miserably” when he took his shot at replacing Jake E. Lee in ’87.

He attributes this to his image, recalling during a Rock ’n’ Roll Fantasy Camp Q&A session in 2023: “I was practically homeless at the time, [but] I thought I played everything absolutely just fine, and I thought it sounded great. Everybody was friendly enough.

“But our images were very different. Those guys in the band [were] totally decked out in 1980s Sunset Strip – what do you call it? – skull T-shirts with handcuffs and long necklaces.”

Jennifer Batten (submitted a tape in 1987)

Jennifer Batten can play with anyone; her work with Michael Jackson and Jeff Beck is testament to that. But Ozzy disagreed, as Batten told Ultimate Guitar in 2022.

“I remember before the Michael Jackson thing came up, I was trying to get an audition with Ozzy. They were auditioning everybody in L.A. at the time, and I know my audio got to the right people, and I didn’t even get a chance.”

Batten says the reason was simple: she was a woman. “Looking back, it’s a super-macho gig, and they probably wouldn’t even consider a female for that. Having said that, if it were the same thing today, I think it’d be a whole different story.” The gig ultimately went to Zakk Wylde.

Chris Impellitteri (asked to audition in 1987)

Yet another fleet-fingered guitarist who auditioned to be Jake E. Lee’s replacement in 1987 was Chris Impellitteri. Notoriously, Impellitteri is one of the fastest shredders of them all, but it’s hard to envision his style fitting with Ozzy’s music — which, while shred-heavy, also require a bluesy player with feel.

Impellitteri’s story is similar to Vito Bratta’s in that it began with a phone call. “I came home one night from rehearsal,” he told GW in 2024. “My roommate goes, ‘You’ve got to listen to this message,’ which said, ‘This is Sharon Osbourne. Me and Ozzy have been checking you out, and we really love your guitar playing. We want you to come down and audition.’”

Unlike Bratta, Impellitteri didn’t blow his shot over the phone. Still, he never got past the talking stage. “I talked to Sharon – and, I think, Ozzy – probably three to five times,” he says. “There was some back and forth. The problem was that I’d already signed a deal with Relativity Records.” In this case, business deals rather than image or gender proved to be the impassable obstacle.

Nuno Bettencourt (asked to join in 1995)

On the surface, Extreme guitarist Nuno had everything Ozzy could want in a guitarist. He had singular talent, he could (and can) rip it up with the best of them, and he was a great songwriter.

But like many guitar-playing musos, Nuno is also a maverick whose heart beats strictly to its own drum. This led him to reject an offer to join Ozzy’s band, which was served up on a silver platter in 1995, just before Extreme broke up.

“Nobody says ‘no’ to Ozzy,” Nuno told GW in 2025. “It’s the gig of a lifetime.” So then, why did he? Simple. As iconic as the position is, Nuno never wanted to be known as just Ozzy’s guitarist.

“For better or worse, I’ve always had my sights set on – and I’ll never reach it, probably – becoming Randy or Edward or Brian May or Jimmy Page, and the list goes on. You have this mission to carve your own path, whatever that is.”

Richie Kotzen (auditioned and was asked to join after Steve Vai didn’t work out in 1995)

If the sometime Poison and Mr. Big guitarist Richie Kotzen is to be believed, in 1995 – after Zakk Wylde had departed and an attempt to record with Steve Vai didn’t work out – he was asked aboard the good ship Ozzy.

“I got a phone call from my manager,” Kotzen told Metal Sludge in 2014. “The way it was presented to me was that they had called and wanted to meet with me. Sharon wanted to meet me, and they needed a guitar player. At the time, they had done a lot of work with Steve Vai and, for whatever reason, it didn’t pan out. Zakk wasn’t involved at that point.”

According to Kotzen, he secured the gig but made the mistake of telling a friend, who leaked it to the press. This didn’t sit well with the Osbournes, leading to Joe Holmes taking his place.

“I remember seeing [the report], and I was so fucking pissed,” Kotzen said. “I said, ‘Why the fuck would you go and fucking make this public? I told you this as a friend, and now you’re blabbing it [in public]!’ The whole deal, everything, went dead.”

Buckethead (auditioned around 2005)

Brian “Buckethead” Carroll has never commented on this story, but Ozzy has. According to the singer, he auditioned Buckethead for his solo band just before the 2005 Ozzfest, as he wasn’t quite sure Zakk Wylde would be available. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t really go well.

“I tried out that Buckethead guy,” Ozzy told Revolver in 2005. “I met with him and asked him to work with me, but only if he got rid of the fucking bucket. So I came back a bit later and he’s wearing this green fucking Martian’s hat thing. I haven’t even got out of the room and I’m already playing fucking mind games with the guy.”

Needless to say, Buckethead didn’t get the gig.

Frank Sidoris (auditioned around 2017)

As Osbourne was gearing up for what was to be his “farewell” solo tour, before Zakk Wylde hopped aboard for round three with the Prince of Darkness, he was – once again – auditioning guitar players. One of these was Frank Sidoris.

Ozzy ultimately went with good 'ol Zakk Wylde due to familiarity, but Sidoris – who is now a touring guitarist with Wolfgang Van Halen’s band, Mammoth – left a positive impression. Ozzy later commented in a letter to Sidoris, “I can see why you’ve had success at a young age.”

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Fender is rolling out Richie Kotzen’s classy signature Stratocaster to the masses after the success of its Japan-exclusive release.

Bearing an ash body with a flame maple top, custom DiMarzio single coil pickups, and a thick “C”-shaped neck, the American virtuoso has strayed away from the classic Strat recipe, ensuring his individualism is all over the signature guitar.

A “striking combination of upscale appointments and high-performance playability” ensures this isn’t another run-of-the-mill Strat – even though it retains much of the instrument’s charm, alongside more daring changes.

Crafted in Fender’s Corona, California facility, it’s a model he “loves dearly,” and continues his long-standing passion for Fender guitars.

“What inspired me to pick up my first Fender was the response,” he explains. “When I picked up the Fender, it immediately responded to what I was putting into it. I realized it was more than just the tone, because it dictates the sound and how the instrument responds. So I went out and bought a Telecaster and a Stratocaster on the same day.”

His signature Strat pays homage to that dynamic responsiveness, with the DiMarzio pickups, tailored for “sweet, punchy tones,” and maple fingerboard key contributors to that, while the neck dimension is a Goldilocks ‘just right’ blend of thickness, curvature, and dimensions.

“Believe it or not, I solo on that middle pickup a lot,” Kotzen adds. “That middle sound gives it a person's voice if you play it a certain way.”

Specs-wise, it boasts a 22-fret fingerboard with abalone dot inlays, and its neck gets a satin urethane finish.

Hardware – including a six-saddle Vintage-Style Synchronized Tremolo with whammy bar and Gotoh tuners with pearl buttons – is finished in gold, while its nut is made from synthetic bone.

Available in Transparent Red Burst and White Burst colorways, each with gold trimmings, this is very much a guitar made in the former Mr. Big and Poison shredder's image.

Though Kotzen – who has reprised his tandem with Iron Maiden’s Adrian Smith – is often seen with a Telecaster in his hands, he asserts that the Strat still reigns supreme for its shape.

“I love the shape of a Strat because when you hold the guitar, it feels like you're connected to it,” he details. “It feels like part of your body and an extension of you. If you're expressing yourself when you play the instrument, you need to have that connection where, when you pick it up, you feel like you're one piece.”

The Fender-Kotzen relationship started in 1995 with the release of his first Tele and Strat signatures. Three decades later, that relationship is still going strong.

The Fender Richie Kotzen Stratocaster is available now and is priced at $1,779.99.

Head to Fender for more.

Former Poison and Mr. Big guitarist Richie Kotzen has revealed he nearly joined Nine Inch Nails after blowing Trent Reznor away during a surprise audition.

In a story that feels like an alternative reality fever dream, the guitarist – who is currently on the promo trail for his second album with Iron Maiden riff-slinger Adrian Smith – could have taken a rather different career path in the early 2000s.

“The closest band that I ever came to joining was Nine Inch Nails, and nobody knows that,” he confesses to Hot Metal.

The worlds of Richie Kotzen and Trent Reznor may feel far removed, but it turns out that bassist Jeordie White (AKA Twiggy Ramirez), who was plying his low-end trade in NIN at the time, was a mutual friend.

“He said to me, 'Listen, you've got to come down. We're having a hard time finding a guitar player,'” Kotzen recalls. “So I went down to Third Encore [rehearsal studio in North Hollywood] and spent the day.

“Trent told me, 'You're by far the best guy that we've tried. I would love to have you in the band. I'm gonna have my manager reach out to you.' And I left that day thinking, 'Wow, okay, I'm gonna join another band.”

Kotzen, however, never got that call.

“A week went by. And then another week went by,” he continues. “I ran into Jeordie and I said, 'What happened?' He said [Reznor] didn't want to open up Rolling Stone magazine and see [the headline], 'Nine Inch Nails gets former Poison guitar player, Richie Kotzen'. He didn't want the association with a hair metal band in that camp.”

Kotzen had joined Poison in 1991 and featured on Native Tongue two years later.

“You know, aesthetically, when you think about the fanbase and you think about how people would read into something... I could see the point,” Kotzen continues. “So I jokingly said, 'Hey, I'll do it under an alias,' because I wasn't doing anything at the time and I think he's a genius and I would have loved to have worked with him.

“That wasn't the first time that that stopped me going in one direction or the other,” Kotzen adds. “On the other side of the coin, I don't regret having been a part of Poison, because I think we made a really great record. And so I would much rather have that record... than have done any of the other stuff that I could have done.

“But that's kind of how the music business is. It's not just about the music, a lot of people listen with their eyes. And it's unfortunate in a situation like that. But it is a reality.”

We’ll just have to file this in the ‘What could have been’ folder, alongside former Ozzy guitarist Gus G turning down auditions for Megadeth and Machine Head, and Kiko Loureiro pushing for Marty Friedman’s return to Dave Mustaine’s band following his departure.

Meanwhile, Harvey Mandel says he nearly became a Rolling Stone, believing he was better suited to the job than Ronnie Wood, and Lita Ford nearly joined Led Zeppelin.

In 2021, longtime Iron Maiden guitarist Adrian Smith and nomadic virtuoso Richie Kotzen came together to form the aptly titled Smith/Kotzen, a blues-based duo showcasing the two veteran guitarists’ chops and vocals.

The self-titled record was a surprise hit, leading to further collaboration by way of album number two, Black Light/White Noise, the title of which reportedly has nothing to do with their idiosyncrasies, though Kotzen admits that “would be a really cool spin.”

According to Smith, Black Light/White Noise is “more cohesive” than Smith/Kotzen, which is interesting as their process is decidedly separate – until it’s not.

“I tend to do guitars on my own,” he says. “Richie will disappear upstairs and have a coffee, and I’ll do a solo. Sometimes, Richie will come down, and I’ll sit there while he plays his solos. It’s quite mind-boggling what he does. I don’t know how he does it. He’s got endurance in his hands that’s natural to him.”

The light and shade throughout Smith/Kotzen’s music shouldn’t be surprising, as the two couldn’t be more different. “I started on guitar because I wanted to be in a band and meet girls,” Smith says. “Richie wanted to be a guitar player, probably because he wanted to play guitar, so his technique is very individual.”

Smith and Kotzen’s vibes and origins are so different that one wonders how the project works at all. But it does, and Kotzen has an idea why. “Maturity,” he says. “We don’t really feel like there’s anything to prove in this situation. If I were playing in a straight-ahead jazz band, I might feel like I’ve got to convince people that I know what I’m doing. But neither of us feels that kind of desperation.

“We find ways to fit together; somehow, that creates a big picture that wouldn’t be there had we not collaborated. I’m not going to drag Adrian into a full-blown jazz-funk-fusion jam-out. And Adrian’s not going to drag me into a full-on heavy metal gallop.”

Black Light/White Noise is your second record together. Has the success of the project surprised you?

Adrian Smith: “I had a good feeling about it and was pleasantly surprised by the success. Although this started as a [Covid] lockdown project, we were determined to get it out. Music isn’t a given; you’ve got to have good music. But getting it out there, and getting it heard meant it did really well. We’re thrilled about that.”

Richie Kotzen: “I’ve learned not to have expectations. I don’t mean to sound dark, but when you’re making music, if you’re doing stuff you like, at that point, you’re winning. That’s always been my attitude. I said to Adrian, “Let’s see what we can come up with,” and we hit it off and had a great time. I’m happy it’s being well-received.”

Adrian, you’re known for metal, but Richie seems to bring out your bluesy side. Would you agree?

Smith: “With [Iron] Maiden, Dave [Murray] and myself grew up playing more bluesy rock, you know? Even [Jimi] Hendrix was heavily rooted in the blues. But, yeah, this gives me an opportunity to do that; the songs have much more space in them, and I like that. Sometimes you don’t have to play so much; it’s about phrasing. I don’t think too many people do what we’re doing by having two singers and two guitarists. It’s different.”

Richie, you’ve been all over the map in your career. What does Adrian bring out in you?

Kotzen: “I think Adrian brings out the blues in me in some weird way. He’s really such a blues guy – but a lot of people don’t realize that. He’s known for being very melodic, which is fantastic, and he’s hook-oriented. I think he brings me in a bluesier direction than I would if I’d been left to my own devices.”

That shared love for the blues aside, what’s the main overlap?

Smith: “Even though Richie’s done things in the blues space, he takes it into the stratosphere. He’s got this whole technical prowess and more of a technical background than I do. With me, it’s more about phrasing, tone and choice of notes. But it just kind of works, even though Richie is far better technically than I am. But as long as you have enough technique to express what’s in your head, it’ll get across to people.”

Kotzen: “Adrian is in the greatest heavy metal band of all time. He’s a primary writer and, like I said, definitely rooted in heavy blues and the soulful rock arena. But [Bad Company’s] Paul Rodgers comes to mind when I hear him sing. I’m a rock guy; I make rock records. I listen to Curtis Mayfield and George Benson, yet I’m plugging a guitar into a Marshall stack.”

What was the process in terms of composing songs and solos for this record?

Smith: “When we first got together, we had a jam at my house and became friends. I’d sit down on my own and think, ‘Where do we go?’ So I’d come up with an idea for a song or a riff, and I’d think, ‘I could see me and him doing that.’ I’d take it to Richie and he’d come up with a chorus. We’d swap vocals, and that became the blueprint for what was to be our double-vocal, double-guitar thing.”

Kotzen: “Sometimes there are parts in a song where it’s obvious, and you say, 'You should play over that.' But that can work either way; it can be me or him. One or the other might say, 'Hey, man, go take that section. I think you’d do it better than I would.' I might say, 'Adrian, do you want to see if you can make this come to life?' It’s those simple conversations that lead us into something that maybe would’ve ended up on the back burner.”

Do you ever feel like there’s not enough space to shine?

Smith: “No. We discuss the whole thing we’re writing, and we’ll come up with sections. The meat and potatoes of the song are the verse and chorus – and we have a little bit of fun with the instrumental bits and split the solos up the middle. We just say to each other, ‘You play this bit,’ but we roughly split it up 50/50.”

Is there a song from this record that best demonstrates who you are as a duo?

Kotzen: “That’s a good question. Black Light is a standout. If someone were to say, ‘Oh, you’re playing with Adrian? I had no idea. Let me hear the new record!’ I might play that song for them.

“It meets in a place where it’s still funky and wacky enough to be associated with Richie Kotzen, but it’s heavy and blues-driven, so Adrian is well represented. And Darkside is unlike anything I might have done on my own. That’s what happens when I’m associated with something outside of my wheelhouse.”

Adrian, what’s the recipe for your tone while working with Richie?

Smith: “It’s pretty straightforward. In the ’80s, when I joined Maiden, I spent many years chasing tone. Something was in my head that maybe didn’t exist. It’s mostly in your fingers. As long as you’ve got a good amp and a good guitar, you should be able to dial in a sound. So I mostly used this little hand-wired Marshall that Richie had. I wanted a little extra pop, so I used a [Ibanez] Tube Screamer for sustain, and I always put on a little bit of delay.”

How about you, Richie?

Kotzen: “It’s the same room and amp we used on the first record. [Laughs] Actually, on the first record, we had one of my Victory amps and some other stuff – and then we went to the Marshall, my hand-wired 1959HW plexi. I have a lot of them, but there’s one in particular that we used on the album; it’s the same amp I used on Nomad. I just plug it in and we mess around with pedals.”

What have you learned from working together that you might not have learned otherwise?

Kotzen: “I’ve been recording myself since my late teens, so I don’t know if I’ve picked up any studio trickery, but through years of being in situations, I think I’ve learned 'people.' The ultimate goal is to move the composition forward and make sure you’re both excited about it.

“It transcends well beyond just working on one album when you’re working with people in a creative environment. You have to feel good. That’s the most important thing. You have to feel good about your music.”

• Black Light/White Noise is out April 4 via BMG.

Richie Kotzen has a new album out. It's titled Nomad. Go check it out. It finds the Winery Dogs guitarist in fine form. But right now he is not here to talk about any of that.

No, we're taking Kotzen back to the beginning, talking about the electric guitar he learned on, and having a quick-fire profile in which he talks firsts, favorites, and resolutions on how he can get better.

What was your first guitar?

“Something from a yard sale when I was seven. I took it to my guitar teacher on the first day of my lessons, but he said, ‘I can’t teach you on this. You need to get a proper instrument.’ So I went out and got a Gibson Marauder and learned on that – so that was my first real guitar.”

What was the first song you learned to play?

“Purple Haze. I learned it in the open position, though, and it didn’t sound like Purple Haze. I remember getting into an argument with my mother when I told her, ‘This is Purple Haze,’ and she said, ‘No, it’s not. I saw Jimi Hendrix live, and Purple Haze didn’t sound anything like that!’ So I got very upset by what she said, as technically I was playing Purple Haze, but because it was in the open position, it didn’t sound like it to someone who wasn’t a musician.”

What was your first gig like?

“The first time I got in front of people was at a school assembly, and I played Jingle Bell Rock. It was within that first year of learning guitar. I was very nervous as I still didn’t know how to tune my guitar, so I was in a panic. Luckily, there was an older kid there that played in the jazz ensemble, and who was very good, so he tuned it for me so that I could go out and play the song.”

Ever had an embarrassing moment on stage?

“I was playing in a full-time bar band when I was a teenager, and we were doing this circuit of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware. And as the guys in the group were older, they were making a living from it – we played four nights a week.

“One night in Delaware, I remember being very sick from some kind of food poisoning. I needed to have a bucket on the side of the stage because I was that sick. It was my worst time ever on stage, and I can still remember it.”

What’s your favorite piece of gear?

“My signature Fender Telecaster, the initial version of which came into production in 1996. It is my main guitar, and one I’ve been playing for a good 14 years. It came off the rack, but I sanded the finish off and added this little tuning device, an electronic LED disc-tuner – made by a company called N-Tune – that’s built into the guitar.

“It plays and feels great, too, and because it is so played-in – and I’m the only person that has ever played it – it feels like it’s part of me.”

The building is burning down; what one guitar from your collection would you save?

“I’ve experienced this first-hand. We lived through the largest natural disaster fire in Southern California history back in 2018. The Woolsey Fire came through my canyon, and we had to evacuate. I didn’t take any guitars!

“My wife was luckily out of town, so I evacuated and took my dog, who’s now passed away, plus a bunch of hard drives that had all my music ideas, a copy of my insurance policy and my wife’s five-string Music Man bass.”

When was the last time you practiced and what did you play?

“I don’t practice like I used to when I was a teenager. These days, the guitar is just a tool for writing music and performing it. But what I will do is, when I write something, I’ll record it. This way, months later when I have to go back and figure out what I did, I’ll learn to sing it and play it at the same time. So that becomes my practice.”

What aspect of the guitar would you like to be better at?

“I think with the guitar, or any instrument, you’re always growing. If you ever feel like you’ve gotten as good as you’re ever going to get, that’s not a good thing. My attitude is that it’s a constantly evolving thing.

“What I love about the guitar is the ability to be expressive on it. I’m one of those guitar players that doesn’t work out solos. I don’t know what I’m going to play when I get on stage. So there’s a bit of excitement in that for me as I love reacting as a musician.”

What advice would you give your younger self if you could?

“Keep at it, follow my instincts, believe in myself and be open-minded. I always made sure I played with guys who knew a little bit more than me in other styles. My guitar playing is kind of what it is.

“I’m not a guy who sits around and thinks about guitar playing or practicing and technique. I think about the stuff that’s in my head; the melodies and lyrics and song ideas, and getting it out of the speakers.

“I function in that way. I don’t function like a guitar player. I have to rid myself of this noise in my head, which is the creativity. So the guitar is just a vehicle for me to use.”

• Nomad is out now via BMG.

‘Musical differences’ have driven a wedge between many creative relationships, but in the new issue of Guitar World, Richie Kotzen recalls falling out with his own mom over the very first song he learned to play: Purple Haze.

It’s pretty telling of Kotzen’s early ambitions that the track he tackled first on the instrument was the signature tune of the man often held up as the world’s greatest electric guitar player – but we’ve always said aim for the stars.

“[The first song I learned was] Purple Haze,” recalls Kotzen. “I learned it in the open position, though, and it didn't sound like Purple Haze.”

While he probably didn’t need the feedback, Kotzen notes that, in this case, his mom had some pointers and, perhaps more annoyingly, first-hand experience of the electric maestro.

“I remember getting into an argument with my mother,” he tells GW. “I told her, "This is Purple Haze, and she said, ‘No, it's not. I saw Jimi Hendrix live, and Purple Haze didn't sound anything like that!’”

Kotzen has no trouble with collaborators, having served alongside some sizeable names (and, quite probably, egos) at the ’80s/’90s shred rock face – not least, Poison, Mr Big and, later, in supergroup The Winery Dogs. However, it seems the criticism still stung the burgeoning virtuoso – as well, it might.

“I got very upset by what she said, as technically I was playing Purple Haze,” insists Kotzen. “But because it was in the open position, it didn't sound like it to someone who wasn't a musician…”

Let the record show that Kotzen certainly nailed his Hendrix licks in the years that followed, but we appreciate Kotzen’s humility in sharing the tale.

Not least, because ‘The problem is that you're not a musician’ is perhaps the best playing excuse we’ve ever heard. It certainly beats feigning RSI the next time we throw a solo at a covers gig… [Not that that would ever happen – Ed].

Elsewhere in the entertaining piece, Kotzen gamely recalls his first show, onstage disasters and why, when he was quite literally faced with the building burning down, he actually didn’t take any of his guitars…

For more from Kotzen, plus new interviews with Matteo Mancuso, Grace Bowers and Nita Strauss, pick up issue 586 of Guitar World at Magazines Direct.

“I don’t have a regular pedalboard. It’s one pedal and, basically, a multifunction deal.

“I like things to be simple and efficient because I want to focus on performing and delivering my song instead of worrying about a tap dance. But I also sing, so maybe I’d have a different attitude if I were only playing guitar.

“Many years ago, I had all these pedals that I liked and a traditional ’board that I combined with a Fender combo, but I wanted them to be easier to use. I went to Home Depot, got a metal box, took the components I liked and put them in that box. I had pedals – reverb, delay and tremolo – and suddenly they all lived together in this metal box, which I rigged up to have plugged into that single Fender amp.

“I showed it to my friend Andrew Barta [inventor of the SansAmp] at Tech 21, and he came up with the very sleek Richie Kotzen RK5 Fly Rig, which I’ve been using since 2013. It’s one giant pedal with five buttons on it, and it contains two-state overdrive, fuzz/distortion, reverb, delay and boost, which also can be a compressor.

“There’s even a button I can press where it turns into a Leslie [rotary speaker effect], where the delay feature becomes the speed of the rotary.

“We’re discussing a new version, but the 2013 version has served me well. Aside from the Fly Rig, I have a wah, too. It’s a standard Dunlop Cry Baby, and it’s got an optic thing where, if you press it, the pedal activates in such a way that it’s immediately focused.”

If I had to choose one pedal for an entire show...

“It would be my two-step overdrive. Without it, I’d sound way too clean because of the [Victory Rk50] amps I use. I need something to saturate my sound, and my overdrive, which covers boost and distortion, really screams.”

• Nomad is out now via BMG.

Richie Kotzen is at it again with his latest single Cheap Shots, part of a grander plan, an album titled Nomad. He also begins a 95-date UK/European tour this month, which will see the iconic Tele-toting virtuoso slug his way through an array of new and classic cuts.

How did Cheap Shots come about?

“This one was funny because I was playing some ideas for my wife and I said, ‘I’m not sure what I’m going to sing.’ As I was playing, I heard a melody, and I just started singing. I said to her, ‘Don’t be offended, but you’ve got to get out of here because I don’t want to forget this!’”

And you’ve got a full-length record on the way.

“I’m using the title Nomad. Compared to my previous work, there’s a lot of stuff on here where I’m soloing with a very clean tone, which is very specific for guitar. I don’t know if it’s my age, but I’m enjoying less distortion and more clear tones where you can hear the roundness of the notes.”

Is that indicative of your overall progression as a guitarist?

“I’ve kind of gone into another realm with the instrument. There’s some long solos and interesting chord changes. It’s not just playing over a typical riff and saying, ‘Okay, here’s a solo over eight bars, and a simple chord progression’. The songs are more complex harmonically. I think people will be intrigued.”

What led to this direction?

“Once I started taking my voice more seriously, that changed my guitar playing. I’ve moved away from the ‘stun guitar’ approach and started phrasing differently. Instead of thinking about patterns and shapes, I started thinking about melodic phrases, knowing where the notes are, and executing them.”

Which of your new songs best reflects this approach?

“I don’t want to give too much away, but why not get people wondering? There’s a song called Nihilist, and it’s one of the most interesting compositions I’ve released in a long time. It’s unique to me, so that would be a song that I’d think people would want to check out.”

What’s the latest on your touring rig?

“I’m using a Marshall 59HW. It’s the original four-input plexiglass panel Marshall. There’s a certain percussiveness, snap, and thump that I love. I plugged that into a 4x12 cabinet and was turned onto these speakers called ‘Creambacks,’ which are 60w Celestions. And for pedals, I’ve got my Tech 21 fly rig, the RK5, which is my multi-effects pedal.”

Any updates to your signature Tele?

“It’s funny – there’s nothing to update! The first launch was in 1996, and it was Seafoam Green, and we quickly went to the Tobacco finish. There’s nothing to change, man. Out of the gate, that’s been my main guitar. I couldn’t ever think of anything to change.”

What’s your best piece of gear advice?

“There’s nothing like plugging into a great amp without anything in front. It’s like Italian food – it doesn’t have to be complicated, and uses great ingredients. If you’re looking for a great rhythm sound, keep it simple.”

• Cheap Shots is out now.

Last Saturday, the 2024 Monsters of Rock Cruise set sail with a host of hard rock music fans (and some electric guitar royalty) on board.

The cruise played host to six days of all-out rock music, with performances from the likes of Joe Satriani, Extreme, Ace Frehley, The Darkness, KK’s Priest, Accept and many others spread out across the trip’s itinerary.

Now, the Monsters of Rock Cruise is coming to an end, which means passengers onboard the ship have had a chance to upload all the footage they’ve captured while on the cruise to their respective YouTube channels.

That means an abundance of clips showcasing the many on-stage link-ups that attendees were treated to are now making their way online.

One of the most eye-catching examples comes courtesy of Masters of Shred, who was on hand to film Joe Satriani, Nuno Bettencourt and Richie Kotzen stand side-to-side for what has been described as “a jaw droppingly Shredrageous performance”.

You won't find that word in the dictionary, but “Shredrageous” certainly fits, and is an apt descriptor of the trio’s take on the classic G3 favorite – and timeless Jeff Beck standard – Going Down.

Spanning eight minutes in total, the video picks up at the point where all three players are circling the rhythm progression, with each stirring their own off-the-cuff embellishments into the melting pot.

Bettencourt, with his Washburn signature guitar, dutifully takes the first stab at a solo, using the mic to help vocalize his range-spanning pentatonic turnarounds. A Tele-toting Kotzen then follows in his stead, and borderline steals the show by ramping up the intensity with some upper-fret sleight of hand. 

Satch, unsurprisingly, then takes things even further, starting as he means to go on with a barrage of dizzying shred maneuvers.  

And so begins the rondo, whereby each player takes up temporary position in the spotlight in a bid to outplay their peers through some of the most, erm, “Shedrageous” licks they have in their locker.

Naturally, commenters were quick to note the G3 connection, and some even started to voice hopes for a potential 2025 tour lineup comprising the trio – one that could follow in the wake of the OG reunion tour that we had this year.

“This could be one hell of a G3 tour lineup,” one commentators wrote. “Richie, Joe & Nuno easily in my top 10 all time favorite guitar play[er]s.” “This could be a helluva G3 tour,” observed another.

“I've been a fan of Richie Kotzen for many years,” a third offered. “I always wanted to see him in G3. This video is sensational.”

Visit Master of Shred’s YouTube channel to watch more of their Monsters of Rock 2024 Cruise videos.

Richie Kotzen gave Winery Dogs fans a bit of a scare back in 2017 when he announced that the supergroup trio (which also includes bassist Billy Sheehan and drummer Mike Portnoy) would be “taking a break,” a phrase commonly uttered – along with “we’re going on hiatus,” another good one – when a band is close to kaput.

“I probably overstated the point, and it caused some confusion,” Kotzen now says. “We toured pretty hard on our first two albums, and we just needed to catch our breath. That’s really all there was to it. It was a break – lots of bands take breaks. The last thing you want to do is tour to the point that you’re burned out.”

As it turned out, the band’s hiatus didn’t last long, and by 2019 they were back on the road while making plans to record their third album. 

“We were feeling fired up again,” Kotzen says. “But then the Covid pandemic hit and everything pretty much stopped. We couldn’t play anywhere. Nobody could play. So we just decided to take our time and work on the album.” He pauses, then adds, “And I think it’s our best one yet.”

He just might be right. The Winery Dogs already aced their way through their sophomore album (2015’s Hot Streak), and on album number three – which just so happens to be titled III – they prove they’ve got plenty of gas in the tank. 

Right from the get-go, the band lets us know they’re not messing about. Xanadu, a walloping hard rock chest-beater, busts out of the gate with an outrageous, almost absurd guitar and bass unison riff – and the energy stays pinned throughout the 10-song set. 

But while the highly pedigreed chopsmiths toss out ferocious licks as easily as they breathe – the time-shifting barn burner Pharaoh and the righteous blues-rock album closer The Red Wine feature colossal moments of warp-speed musical mojo – they wrap all the fancy-pants stuff around widescreen hooks and solid arrangements that go down easy.

“Everybody in the band has achieved notoriety in musicians’ circles, but when we get together, we really try to concentrate on writing songs,” Sheehan says. “Each one of us has a love of classic rock bands, soul and R&B, and they all have one thing in common: great songs.” 

He notes that the spunky, slinky groover Mad World exemplifies his affection for Sixties and Seventies Motown. “It’s got that feel, so I was thinking of the Temptations and one of my bass heroes, James Jamerson, when we cut that track. I think it’s one of the best songs on the record.”

Interestingly, when the three bandmates convened at Kotzen’s home studio in Los Angeles to start work on the album, they had no songs at all – as in none. “It sounds scary, but it’s my favorite way to work,” Sheehan says. “There’s a certain amount of tension when you plug in and look at the other guys; it kicks your ass on an improvisational level and forces you to make something happen.”

Kotzen agrees, saying, “Too many musicians freak out about writer’s block. I’ve never really had that problem, because my general attitude is, if something wants to be written, it’ll get written. If you have to beat yourself up on a song, it’s best to move on to something else.”

Detailing the writing process for III, Kotzen explains that Sheehan and Portnoy would start jamming, which inevitably sparked the guitarist to respond with riffs and scat-singing. “Before you knew it, we had skeletons of songs,” he says. “I didn’t try to write actual lyrics for a while, though. I like to live with the music, so over a period of a few months I tried a bunch of things out and thought about what I wanted to sing. Then I did my thing and sent the songs off to the boys for their input.” 

The manner in which Kotzen composed lyrics and sang vocals differed dramatically from how he cut guitar solos. “My general attitude toward solos is always the same: ‘Let’s go for it and see what we get,’” he says. “I like the fire and adrenaline rush of being on the spot. You start with nothing and suddenly it’s like, ‘OK, something’s there.’ Sometimes I’ll get a solo that’s an immediate keeper; most of the time I’ll keep the front and back, and I’ll say, ‘The middle is garbage. Let me fix that.’”

For all three members, aligning their schedules hasn’t always been easy. Kotzen maintains a thriving solo career and has also enjoyed success with his ongoing collaboration with Iron Maiden guitarist Adrian Smith, while Sheehan and Portnoy busy themselves with a host of musical activities that include yet another supergroup, the prog-flavored Sons of Apollo. 

Having not toured in four years, Kotzen, Sheehan, and Portnoy cleared the deck for 2023, and are concentrating exclusively on the Winery Dogs. 

“Whenever you have a band in which the members do other things, it can get a little crazy,” Sheehan says. “Fortunately, this band is a three-piece, so that makes things a bit easier. We’ve got the first round of dates right ahead of us, and we can’t wait to take this record on the road. Thankfully, there’s a lot of excitement from the fans, so here we go!”

• III is out now via Three Dog Music.

On the surface, the collaboration between ex-Poison and Winery Dogs guitarist Richie Kotzen and Iron Maiden’s Adrian Smith is one of the more surprising double acts of recent years. 

However, they are united by a shared love of classic rock, having grown up listening to bands such as Deep Purple and Kiss. They both sing on records and on tour, and the live band is completed by Kotzen’s wife Julia Lage on bass guitar and drummer Bruno Valverde. Although their debut album is built on classic rock, there are R&B, blues and soul elements here, and even moments that lean towards jazz-fusion.

The pair began writing together remotely in 2019, then recorded and self-produced the album on the Caribbean islands of Turks and Caicos. They were joined in the studio by Nicko McBrain and Tal Bergman who played some of the drums, although Kotzen played the majority of drum tracks, while Smith and Kotzen both contributed bass.

Having started on the Mike Varney Shrapnel label along with Jason Becker and Paul Gilbert, Kotzen’s style is the more technical of the two, whereas Smith has always been rooted in blues-rock, even though he is one of the pioneers of heavy metal guitar. On recordings and at gigs their different guitar playing and vocal styles complement one another perfectly.

The track this month is built on an E minor rock riff and chord progression and with bluesy pentatonic playing from Smith and speedier Kotzen style licks in the solos. 

We’re in E minor (E-F#-G-A-B-C-D) but with the inclusion of an A major chord (A-C#-E) and the C# note in the Kotzen style solo. The E Dorian mode E-F#-G-A-B-C#-D is also used frequently. This leads to a more upbeat sound than E natural minor.

The guitar in the left channel is Smith style, while the right channel is Kotzen. When playing as two guitarists we have the opportunity to vary the parts in terms of timing, tone and delivery which can create interesting results. 

This is very different to the common double-tracked parts which are usually played as tightly together as possible. The recording and the chart have a second rhythm part to signify the Richie Kotzen input (bars 9-16), which is different to the guitar in the left channel. 

Get the tone

Amp settings: Gain 7, Bass 4, Middle 6, Treble 6, Reverb 3

Both players use Marshall style tube amps, with Smith’s tone being more high-gain. Smith also uses a Jackson electric guitar with a humbucker in the bridge and Floyd Rose vibrato, while Kotzen uses Stratocasters and Telecasters with single-coil pickups. 

Set your main sound to a medium gain (Smith), then jump on an overdrive pedal for your Kotzen tones. Add light delay or reverb.

Example 1. Rhythm

Richie Kotzen stopped using a pick a number of years ago, so it would be good practice to try playing the right channel guitar with fingers and thumb, as it is on the recording. This will likely lead to a few new challenges both in terms of rhythm and lead playing.

Example 2. Lead

There are some fast legato lines in this Kotzen style solo using both picking and fretting-hand hammer-ons, so it would be good to practise this slowly and also to focus on string muting. The Smith part is less demanding, but will still require attention to your timing, and the pitching accuracy of string bends.

Justin Hawkins has long been channeling his thoughts on anything music-related via his Justin Hawkins Rides Again YouTube channel. In his latest post, Hawkins watches the new video from The Winery Dogs, and reacts to Billy Sheehan’s dazzling bass chops, at one point commenting: “What?! Split harmonics on the bass? First of all, how? And second of all, why?”

After watching the video for Xanadu, Hawkins goes on to provide further musical analysis on Kotzen’s guitar sound. “That sort of guitar playing you only really hear on Strats. It’s not as abrasive as a Les Paul. I’m dying to know which pickup setting he’s using there.”

Elsewhere, he delves deeper into his own rock tutorial. “What I love about the guitar solo is that the rhythm guitar stops,” he says. “It’s just  him with the drums and the bass, which reminds me of Van Halen records where the bass is enough of a harmonic accompaniment for the guitar solo to really hit you in the face.”

Having played literally thousands of gigs with Talas, his band from Buffalo, New York – not to mention his high profile work with David Lee Roth, Mr Big, Niacin and more recently Sons of Apollo – Billy Sheehan’s no-holds-barred bass lines have ensured his status as a rock bass icon. 

This month though, Sheehan’s announced that he'll be hitting the road with The Winery Dogs once again. In addition to the tour, fans will be excited to hear that following a seven-year hiatus from the studio, the trio has released the opening track and lead single from their aptly named third album III. Directed by Vicente Cordero, the video for Xanadu can be found on the band’s YouTube channel.

The new single is typical Winery Dogs – with Sheehan enhancing Kotzen’s big riff energy with his own signature licks and screaming harmonics. Sheehan has always had a very guitaristic approach. The pinch harmonic that you hear at 00:20 is a case in point.

Pinch harmonics (or split harmonics as Justin refers to them in his analysis) have long been popular among guitarists, but they’re much less common in the bass world. “When a guitar player plays a pinch harmonic he slips off the pick and the soft part of his thumb hits the string,” said Billy in a 2014 interview for The Flo Guitar Enthusiasts.

“Since I don’t have a pick, I use my fingernail up against my thumb. I actually got it from Billy Gibbons who I saw opening for Alice Cooper. I just had to figure out a way to get that sound. Since I didn’t have a pick, I found a way to do it with my fingernail.”

For a full list of tour dates, and to preorder III, head over to The Winery Dogs' website. Xanadu is available on digital formats here. 

The Winery Dogs – the supergroup headed up by Richie Kotzen, Mike Portnoy and Billy Sheehan – have announced they will be releasing their first studio album in eight years in just over two months’ time.

Titled III, the long-awaited follow-up to 2015’s Hot Streak will arrive February 3, 2023, and has been previewed by Xanadu – the record’s high-octane lead single, which is headed up by some superb electric guitar and bass guitar interplay from Kotzen and Sheehan.

Though listeners may be tempted to think of a more prog-leaning track of the same name from the late ‘70s, The Winery Dogs’ Xanadu is a classic rock beast in its own right, featuring bounding guitar-and-bass hooks, infectious riffs and some world-class soloing from the former Mr. Big guitarist.

At the 2:22 mark, Kotzen continues his red hot form with a knock-out guitar solo – one that, had it arrived a few months before, would’ve almost certainly been included in our best guitar solo of 2022 poll.

And, in case you were wondering, yes – that is the sound of Portnoy throwing his drumsticks at the end of the song. However, the Dream Theater co-founder explains it was done “not in frustration, but very much in satisfaction of what we had just done.”

Furthermore, according to Portnoy – who calls the single “a barnburner” – Xanadu is “one of the fiercest tracks on the album."

Check out the track below.

As well as announcing their new album, The Winery Dogs have also dropped a host of tour dates for next year, with the supergroup set to embark on a sprawling tour of America, South America and Europe next year.

The US leg of the tour will kick off on February 15 at the Palace Theatre in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, and conclude on April 6 at Nashville’s Brooklyn Bowl.

Three shows in Brazil, meanwhile, will take place on the 27, 28 and 30 of April, with the band set to conclude their tour with 11 European dates across the month of June.

For a full list of tour dates, and to preorder III, head over to The Winery Dogs' website.

As well as holding down a solo career, Richie has enjoyed stints with Mr Big and Poison, as well as critically acclaimed fusion collaborations with Greg Howe in the 90s; Tilt, released in 1995, is considered a hidden gem of instrumental guitar music. 

Richie clearly likes to keep busy as he is also a member of hard rock trio Winery Dogs with Mike Portnoy and Billy Sheehan. The Kotzen style stems from hard rock and blues attitude, fuelled by fast organic legato, and quick-fire pentatonics with fusion-esque intervallic choices which add a unique colour to the Kotzen canvas. 

In this lesson we will explore some of the elements for which Richie Kotzen is best known, starting with a three-notes-per-string pentatonic shape. Combining two neighbouring pentatonic positions into a larger three-notes-per-string shape is a great way to speed up your pentatonic playing and make it more legato friendly.

Example 2 focuses on two-notes-per-string picking for a big E minor pentatonic lick covering most of the fretboard. When using a pick, Richie tends to keep the tip of it slanted upwards, so instead of picking each string ‘down-up’, it is actually more an ‘in-out’ motion. 

The upward and outward motion frees the pick from the strings, making the next string transition and downstroke cleaner and more accurate. For Example 3, we delve in to Richie’s fusion side with a D Dorian lick played in a swung 16th-note feel. This means the second and fourth notes of each beat are twice the length as the first and second, creating a triplet feel. The notes themselves can be viewed as sets of two-string triad arpeggios, drawn from the wider scale shape.

Richie’s style features a lot of slinky slides, and Example 4 shows a cool method for sliding between scale fragments. In latter years Richie has opted to ditch the pick completely and plays everything fingerstyle. This would be a good lick to experiment with such an approach.

Our final example is a high-speed, high-energy blues-rock lick based in B blues scale. The lick begins with the three chromatic blues scale notes and incorporates some string skipping to other notes in the position. Next we use legato to stretch out to wider intervals on the treble strings, as well as mixing up note groupings for an organic approach to the phrasing.

Play each example slowly and accurately and focus on producing a strong, clear tone while keeping the unused strings muted. Once the lick sounds clean and tidy, then gradually speed up and play along with the backing tracks provided. 

Get the tone

Amp settings: Gain 7, Bass 6, Middle 7, Treble 7, Reverb 3

Richie Kotzen is a Telecaster fan and has a Fender signature model. The Tele’s bridge pickup can be bright and cutting, but pile on the gain and it fattens up superbly. If you have a T-type guitar, great, but if not select your bridge pickup and crank the gain to about 7, add light delay or reverb, and get rocking. Add a low-level drive for even more fatness!

Example 1

Hammer-on the first three notes with first, second and third fingers, then roll your fourth finger onto the fifth string as you pick the note; repeat this fingering on the fifth and fourth strings. 

For the remaining strings use first, second and fourth fingers. Finish with a unison bend using first and third fingers.

Example 2

Use your fourth and first fingers on the first string, followed by third and first on the next two strings. Repeat this fingering with a sextuplet feel for the first three beats. 

Now walk down fourth and fifth strings with four-note phrasing before finishing with a six-note phrase. Use strict alternate picking throughout.

Example 3

For this D Dorian (1-2-b3-4-5-6-b7) based lick use your second finger to play the 10th frets on sixth, fourth and second strings, and use first and fourth fingers to hammer-on the two-note groups on the remaining strings. 

Use your pick to smoothly and lightly pick each string in a sweeping motion. Next slide up with your fourth finger and descend using the same fingering and pick each string with a soft upstroke.

Example 4

Hammer-on with first, second and fourth fingers, then roll your fourth finger onto the first string in order to mute the second string. Next roll back to the second string and pull-off back down to 5th fret. 

After completing that seven-note phrase, slide up one scale step and repeat the fingering in the new position. Repeat this method as you ascend one note at a time through the A Aeolian mode (1-2-b3-4-5-b6-b7).

Example 5

On the fifth string, hammer-on and pull-off with your first, second and third fingers while using first and third digits to grab notes on the higher strings. In bar 2, string skip up to the third and first strings and stretch up to the 12th fret. 

The legato phrasing here is six notes, seven notes, then eight notes per beat. Improve general accuracy and timing here by targeting the notes on the downbeats, in order to stay with the pulse of the track.

Adrian Smith and Richie Kotzen took to the stage for their first-ever live gig as Smith/Kotzen last night (January 20) at the Whisky A Go Go in West Hollywood, California.

As well as hearing debut live performances of tracks from the pair’s self-titled debut album those in attendance were also treated to a rendition of the 1986 Iron Maiden classic, Wasted Years.

Thanks to a few eagle-eyed attendees, plenty of up-close-and-personal footage from the gig has made its way online, meaning we get to see Smith roll back the years and – with the help of his new bandmate – revisit the track he originally wrote.

With his Jackson X Series signature guitar in hand, Smith can be seen reeling off the intro’s open-string motif, before taking up the lead vocal baton that had previously been held by his Iron Maiden bandmate Bruce Dickinson.

As per the original, a return to the opening melody precedes Smith’s solo – a fiery tour of the E minor pentatonic scale and surrounding area that culminates in some flashy bends and a dive on the whammy bar.

There’s no room for a Kotzen solo, which perhaps feels like a missed opportunity – having the pair trade open-string licks, or maybe harmonize a run or two, could have provided a neat addition to the track.

Joining Smith and Kotzen onstage was Kotzen’s wife and bass player Julia Lage, whose credits include the Latin Grammy-nominated Brazilian rock band Barra De Saia. A selection of videos from the concert can be found below.

Last year, Smith and Kotzen teamed up to release their self-titled debut effort, which was followed up with a four-track EP titled, Better Days. 

Smith/Kotzen have five more dates in the US as part of their current tour, in a run that will see them play Les Vegas, San Diego, Morro Bay, Ventura and Roseville between the January 23 and 28.

After that, they will head over to the UK to play a string of cities across February and March.

For a full list of tour dates, visit the Smith/Kotzen website.

Iron Maiden guitarist and virtuoso rock journeyman Richie Kotzen have announced their first US shows under their Smith/Kotzen moniker.

The run of six dates kicks off in January 2022 and sees them stick mainly to the West Coast, playing five shows around California, with a quick stop in 'Vegas. In addition, the duo will play seven shows throughout the UK, beginning in late February.

“It’s always been our intention to take these songs on the road and give them a good kicking about,” says Smith. “We’re delighted that we’ve been able to set up this tour around a very hectic 2022 schedule and we both can’t wait to finally get out there and play live.”

The pair released their debut album S/K back in March and quickly followed that up with the four-track EP, Better Days, in November. 

Kotzen and Smith reportedly traded signature guitars during the sessions, so it will be interesting to see if the gear swaps play in to the live dynamic. Indeed, it seems like both players are looking to loosen their collars a bit on the shows.

“We’re excited that we can take Smith/Kotzen to the next level and bring our music to the stage,” says Kotzen. “We’re still figuring out which musicians we’ll be bringing with us to deliver the songs in the way we’ve always envisaged to give fans a dynamic live experience. We’re really looking forward to this tour and we’re planning to have a lot of fun!”

For more information on tickets and Smith/Kotzen US/UK dates head here.

Smith/Kotzen 2022 US and UK tour dates 

• January 15 Ventura Theatre, Ventura, CA    
• January 20 The Whisky A Go-Go Los Angeles, CA          
• January 22 Count’s Vamp’d, Las Vegas, NV 
• January 23 Brick By BrickSan Diego, CA 
• January 26 Goldfield Trading Post, Roseville, CA
• January 27 The Siren, Morro Bay, CA

• February 27 Club Academy, Manchester
• February 28 Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
• March 02 Garage, Glasgow
• March 03 KK’s Steel Mill, Wolverhampton
• March 05 Winters End, Leamington Spa
• March 07 Fleece, Bristol
• March 08 Islington Assembly Hall, London

Smith/Kotzen – the super-duo project formed by Iron Maiden’s Adrian Smith and The Winery Dogs’ Richie Kotzen – only released their debut self-titled album earlier this year, but it seems as though the pair have absolutely no intention of resting on their laurels.

As such, the duo have announced an all-new four-track EP, titled Better Days, which arrives on Record Store Day – November 26 – via BMG.

Accompanying the news is the effort’s lead single, which can only be described as yet another demonstration of the pair’s undeniable musical chemistry and compositional compatibility.

Adopting a slightly heavier approach than the duo’s debut material, Better Days is supercharged with some moody overdriven riffs and complementary counterpoint exchanges that see one axe-slinger serve up a melodic motif while the other assumes chordal duties.

Of course, there’s a boatload of tasty lead work scattered throughout the five-minute run time, with highlights including Kotzen’s first fingerpicking-loaded extended effort on his Fender Telecaster, Smith’s uber-melodic interlude passage and some gnarly call-and-response interplay between the pair.

While the final two tracks of the EP – Hate And Love and Rise Again – were recorded in March 2020, Better Days and Got a Hold On Me were composed at The House recording studio in LA, when Smith and Kotzen finally reconvened to record after lockdown.

Of the upcoming offering, Kotzen reflected, “When Adrian came over to LA earlier this year, we got together and started throwing ideas around and we very quickly came up with the new songs. 

“Better Days almost seemed to write itself,” he continued. “It’s got a nice groove to it. Adrian came in with the riff and we came up with a melody for the chorus together, pretty much working to the same formula we used when writing the S/K album, bouncing ideas off each other.”

Smith added, “Better Days is a song I’m really excited about. I think it’s slightly different to the songs on the Smith/Kotzen album – it’s kind of heavy but melodic. I’d played Richie the riff and I was looking for a reaction, and I got one! 

“Kind of like the old grey whistle test scenario – there was a spark and we started building the song from there,” he said. “I’d have an idea, then Richie would have an idea and we’d go back and forth, like building blocks.”

• Better Days is available to preorder now ahead of its November 26 release.

The Winery Dogs – the power trio supergroup comprised of Richie Kotzen, bassist Billy Sheehan and drummer Mike Portnoy – are writing material for a new studio album.

Sheehan confirmed the new activity in a Facebook post that reads: "It’s a beautiful day here in Los Angeles. And what a great reason to visit – with The Winery Dogs writing new songs! I am very happy and excited about this."

The trio's last activity came in May 2019, when they set out on the Who Let the Dogs Out tour of the United States. 

"It was a nice time," Kotzen said of the tour to Eonmusic in an interview this past March. "We had a good time on the road, and we were talking about the idea of doing something again in the studio, the third record.

"The pandemic hit, so now I just don't know," he said at the time.

"I mean, everybody asks, and I'm very positive about the idea of doing it, but I just don't know what's going to happen now. You know, we have the situation where we still don't really know when we can tour, and The Winery Dogs are an interesting situation; we're not going to just phone it in."

Thankfully, the music industry's gradual re-opening seems to have also extended to this talented trio.

Of course though, individually, the band members have kept themselves quite busy over the last year and a half. 

Kotzen released a triple album to mark his 50th birthday and formed a duo with Iron Maiden's Adrian Smith, Portnoy re-teamed with former Dream Theater bandmate John Petrucci for the latter's solo album and for a Liquid Tension Experiment reunion, and Sheehan worked with Sons of Apollo (which, for good measure, also features Portnoy) on that band's second album.

It’s telling that the new collaboration between Iron Maiden’s Adrian Smith and genre-hopping virtuoso Richie Kotzen was one born out of friendship. 

On the pair’s new album, titled simply Smith/Kotzen, the way their vocals and guitars trade off is much like a conversation, each telling their own bluesy chapter in the unfolding story.  

Adrian is often considered the most technically driven of Maiden’s guitar trio, and has played a central role in evolving the metal genre into what it is today, while Richie has progressed from his roots as an 80s shredder and one-time member of glam rock stars Poison to make a series of modern soul-tinged solo albums in which he marries his sky-scraping voice with finger-twisting fusion lines and improv blues to stunning effect.  

As fate would have it, Adrian buying a house in close proximity to Richie’s is what got the pair initially acquainted... 

“I bought a place in California seven or eight years ago,” Adrian explains. “And obviously there’s a great music scene in LA and everyone knows everyone. I was vaguely aware of Richie from the early bands he played in, but hearing him do all this bluesy rock and sing was very cool. I think maybe 20 years ago someone brought one of his solo albums to a barbecue and I was impressed then. 

“It was actually Pat Cash, the tennis player, who is a big fan of Richie’s! We met a lot later through mutual friends and got to know each other a bit, doing Stevie Ray Vaughan and Bad Company songs in my jam room. My wife said we should get together and try to do some writing, see what happens...” 

For Kotzen, who once told TG he wore his Iron Maiden shirt to school like it was uniform, it’s been quite an experience. 

“To now have an album out with someone like Adrian is pretty darn cool,” he says. “I would have The Number Of The Beast as my wake-up song in the mornings, ‘Woe to you, oh earth and sea!’ I would start every day like that. Over the years we’ve had various jam sessions and dinners, just socialising whenever Adrian would be in Los Angeles. There was a lot of common ground to build a foundation from, everything just fell into place...”

You’ve both mainly played in standard tuning over the years, so it’s interesting you chose to record this half a step down…

Richie: ”That’s an interesting point. And yeah, I’m generally in 440, although there was one album I did called Get Up that had some songs a whole step down. It just happened out of picking up a guitar and it already being tuned to that. On this album I guess being a semitone down gave it a heavier tone...”

Adrian: ”And some tracks like Running have the E-string tuned down even further. It is a driving rock song but having that low string in it gives a bit of a modern twist. It does sound a bit more metal, yeah, which is great! Of course, it was also helpful for the singing because it gives you a bit more range.”

What were the main amps used during the sessions? 

Richie: ”My new 100-watt Victory signature ended up being the main one for most of the record, we were plugging into it quite a bit. For me, it was 100% Victory. It’s loud, powerful, clean and sings well. I’ve really fallen for this amp.” 

Adrian: ”To be honest, because of how we recorded, I didn’t have access to all my gear. It was in a warehouse in England and getting it out of storage would have been a real pain. I used Richie’s Victory and my Marshall DSL a bit too – you always get a good sound out of a Marshall. 

”I had a wine-red Les Paul Standard and my favourite green Jackson, the new one I used on the last Maiden tour... And that’s it! I didn’t have any effects so I ended up going through whatever Richie had. He ended up using more and I kept it pretty straight.

”I did use a bit of wah on Taking My Chances and chorus on Scars, where I was trying to get that eerie Soundgarden-y effect. I didn’t have a lot to choose from, but in some ways keeping it simple is good. After all, it should mainly come from the fingers!”

So your prized ’72 Goldtop didn’t make the record? 

Adrian: ”No, sadly that one was also over in England. I just didn’t have access to it, but it’s still one of the best guitars I’ve owned. I bought it as a teenager and when I first got home with it I was frustrated because I didn’t immediately sound like Gary Moore [laughs]. 

”I was only 19, I quickly realised there’s a lot more work in between getting a Les Paul and making it sound good. But that guitar has aged really well. I think when guitars are new, it takes a while for the wood to settle down. 

”You get intonation and tuning problems, which I’ve had with the Goldtop, but now it just never goes out of tune. The wood is seasoned! I had the same problem with a new Les Paul Custom, the intonation and tuning was terrible but 10 years on that guitar plays like a dream.

Richie, you’ve used Leslie sounds in the past – but it sounds like you kicked in the rotary mode on your Tech 21 Fly Rig quite a bit more this time round... 

Richie: ”Yeah, I guess I went a little berserk with it [laughs]. And you nailed it, the Fly Rig is what you’re hearing. In the old days, I would have had the Leslie mic’d up and I also had this Mesa/Boogie rotating speaker cabinet. But on this album, I actually used the pedal. Maybe subconsciously, I may have wanted to mix the tones. 

”I tend to go back and forth between the Tele and the Strat, this one was pretty down the middle. The Telecaster can be a very versatile guitar, especially my signature – you can really do a lot of damage with that thing because of the bridge pickup.

”The Strat is expressive in a different way, because there’s the option of the tremolo. And interestingly, towards the end my brain was moving faster than my body so rather than setting up my own guitar, I ended up grabbing Adrian’s Jackson!

”He already had a tone dialled in so I did a couple of leads using that. Listening back to those leads, I felt like I was hearing the 18 year-old Shrapnel-era Richie Kotzen because I got a little crazy with the tremolo arm. You can do things on that which you can’t with a traditional Strat. I was digging the way it played, it’s badass!

Adrian: ”It was quite something watching him do that close up [laughs]. I think because of that whammy bar, he really got into using my guitar...”

Adrian, there’s a really powerful rhythmic delay at the beginning of the Running solo – which nods back to some of your late-80s tones... 

Adrian: ”We had the chord sequence for that breakdown and I just thought of this guitarist called Pat Thrall who used to play with Pat Travers. He used to do a lot of things with delay – this was back in the day before U2 – with all these repeating lead lines. It’s great on record but it can be very hit or miss live. 

”I did it on a Maiden track called Moonchild many years ago and to recreate it live you have to play at exactly the same tempo... which, as any player can imagine, can be very difficult – especially when you’re in a band and everyone’s getting carried away. 

”When we recorded that track with Maiden, the way I had my rig set up at the time was one cab dry and one wet. Of course, they didn’t mic the wet one, so for my solo, there was no delay on it. I guess it was a bit like that Bill Bailey sketch, where he plays The Edge without effects! [Laughs] It can be a bit like that when you’re not careful. But when it works, it’s a great little trick.”

Taking My Chances features some great cues, like the opening tapping riff and the unison line before the solo section... 

Adrian: ”The intro I play is actually a pretty simple part. We already had the riff but put that intro on afterwards, thinking it would set it all up nicely. Especially as it was the first track on the album, we almost wanted a bit more of an overture.” 

Richie: ”The line before the solo is a bit left-field! We wanted to do something a bit crazy to open the solo. I got into that stuff back in the day when I was listening to David Lee Roth’s first record [Eat ‘Em And Smile] with Steve Vai and Billy Sheehan doing all these amazing unison licks. 

”That specific line is quite interesting, because if you were to write it out, it would be quarter-note triplets. But because of how it’s phrased, we’re really pulling it back. It became this really feel-oriented thing, in order to create this musical tension.”

Adrian, this is quite possibly the bluesiest album you’ve put your name to. Which players left the biggest mark on you? 

Adrian: ”When I was a kid, it wasn’t so much the original ones, but more the people who were influenced by them. Players like Gary Moore, Pat Travers, Johnny Winter, Brian Robertson, Scott Gorham. They were sort of second-generation, influenced by the old blues guys but passing it on. That’s just the way it goes. But I went back and listened to the originals and was blown away.

”BB King was amazing, lovely playing just because of the phrasing of the notes. Eric Clapton, too – if you think about him versus Eddie Van Halen, you’ll probably think Van Halen was a far superior guitarist, but Clapton’s phrasing is perfect. He puts every note in exactly the right place, which is really difficult to do. I’ve been trying for years, aspiring to that idea of clean phrasing and maximum effect.”

But as for the busier lines, what’s the secret to getting so much mileage out of the humble blues scale?

Adrian: ”It’s interesting, I think it’s a scale that hit you in the gut and will always be the simple go-to. But it depends how you play it, one person might play a lick and it will sound okay, someone else might play it and it might sound fantastic. It comes down to feel and where you place the notes, what you’re playing over and so many other things. 

”I feel like I’ve almost gone back more to playing pentatonics these days. I do like to use other scales and mix it up, but that’s always the main attack. You just know, that’s the blues scale, that’s the one that hits you in the chest. I have tried to get into jazz, but to me it’s like mathematics!”

• Adrian Smith and Richie Kotzen's Smith/Kotzen is out now via BMG.

Note: this article is also featured in Australian Guitar #142, which is out now wherever great magazines are sold! Click here to read more about what’s in this jam-packed issue!

Especially true in the last two decades, hard‑rock supergroups and team-up albums come at a dime a dozen: it’s an easy way to sell one product to multiple fanbases, and brand value alone means quality can be an afterthought. We’re not saying it’s okay, but we get why so many veteran rock dogs – especially those whose primary outlets have either run their course or severely minimised their output – turn to these types of releases. 

The upside is that when it’s easy to see behind the cheap gloss of most supergroups, it’s also easy to see when one comes about out the collaborators’ legitimate, genuine passion for their art. Such is certainly the case with Smith/Kotzen, the self‑titled debut effort from Iron Maiden’s inimitable lead shredder Adrian Smith and The Winery Dogs’ genre‑bending singer-strummer Richie Kotzen (who’s also played in Poison and Mr Big, amongst a slew of other projects and solo LPs). 

Meddling well-seasoned blues and volcanic metal vibes, the record works for two equally compelling reasons: it combines each player’s individual strengths and creative idiosyncrasies, but it also takes them both out of their respective comfort zones, etching out otherwise unrealised potential – ideas that Smith wouldn’t have had without Kotzen, and vice versa. Considering both players have had their hands on fretboards for over 40 years, that alone is undoubtably impressive.

Before the record lands at the tail end of March, Australian Guitar got down to wire with both Smith and Kotzen.

Let’s start at square one: how did this collaboration come about? 
Kotzen: I met Adrian a long time ago. Actually, to be honest, I met his wife Natalie first. She ended up introducing me to Adrian and we just hit it off right away; whenever he and Natalie would come out to Los Angeles, we’d all get together and catch up. 

Adrian’s got a really nice room in his house out here where he’s got a few guitars, some amps and a console set up, so we’d lock ourselves in there and jam for hours. And we’d done this for years. Usually around Christmas, they’d throw a party and everybody would come around, and one year, I believe it was Natalie who said, “Hey, you guys seem to really play well together, why don’t you try to write something?” And the rest is history! I think the first song we actually worked on together became “Running”.

So how did the project evolve from that first idea to what we hear now?
Kotzen: Well y’know, we kind of just went for it. I think the reason the record sounds the way it does is because of the influences we have – I grew up listening to a lot of classic R&B music, and Adrian loves the American blues, and we like a lot of the same bands – Bad Company, Free, The Who… A lot of those kinds of groups. And then when we got together, I think we really complement each other very nicely. I’ve got this history of doing everything on my own, singing and guitar playing, while Adrian is more accustomed to the two-guitar band setup. 

So right out the gate, one thing I was really excited about was Adrian’s sensibility in the studio, between the production and his approach to the second guitar. Many times I’d do something and think, “Okay, we’re done,” and he’d be like, “No no no, I’ve got an idea!” And he’d come up with some cool countering guitar line – something I wouldn’t have thought of. So y’know, I think the style of the record came about the way it did because of our instincts and how we naturally play together.

Did you find that in working together, you were both encouraged to explore some different playing techniques, or try any new things out with the guitar?
Smith: It was certainly a little different to how it works in Maiden – Maiden is obviously quite metal and I’m quite ingrained in that way of playing, but I love bluesy rock as well. I always have – I grew up in the early ‘70s listening to bands like Free and Deep Purple, so that sort of bluesy rock is in my blood. I wanted to explore that a bit. I’d been playing more blues guitar in the last ten years or so anyway; I’ve gotten deep into it. 

I always thought the blues would be pretty easy to play, but to actually nail the phrasing on a guitar – to get all the notes perfectly in the right place – is a real art. Take someone like Eric Clapton: although he’s not an Eddie Van Halen-type guitarist, he’s putting all the notes in all the right places, and every single note counts. So that’s what I wanted to try doing a bit more with this project. Richie’s got a lot of that spirit in his musicianship; when I discovered his music seven or eight years ago, I was surprised by how good a singer he was and how much soul he put into his playing.

How did you utilise effects to capture the energy you were looking for? 
Smith: Well y’know, I didn’t have access to a lot of my equipment because we recorded abroad; most of my stuff was locked up in the warehouse with all the other Maiden gear. So I just had a Les Paul Standard and my green signature Jackson guitar, which I’ve been using on the latest Maiden stuff. And we used one amp, mainly, which was a Victory amp. It was very straightforward. We got a good sound and mic’d it up, and away we went. I didn’t have any of my effects with me either, so for any effects I wanted, I had to rummage through Richie’s collection – I’d pick out a chorus and a wah pedal, and that was about it. It was pretty stripped-down, really. 

Richie, I have to ask about your stunning cherry red signature Telecaster – is that what you played on this record? 
Kotzen: That, and the Telecaster version of the same guitar. However towards the end, there was a song or two where I had to do a solo and Adrian had his Jackson with the Floyd Rose tremolo set up, so I thought to myself, “Hm, let me try this.” It’s funny – a couple of the solos I did on Adrian’s guitar sound like the old Richie Kotzen, back when I was 18 and I had the Ibanez with the locking tremolo; I’d listen back and go, “Ah, that sounds like me when I was a kid!” So that was kind of fun – and that would have never happened had I not thought to grab Adrian’s guitar. Things like that made it such a fun collaboration. It’s nice to play with a guy that has good taste and a great facility, and that you can bounce ideas off. I’d never really had that type of a partner before.

Do you think a second record could be in the pipeline one day? 
Kotzen: Sure! Why not? As long as we feel inspired and actually want to do it, let’s do it. But y’know, it’s funny because everyone else has asked that too – “Is there going to be another record? When’s the next one out?” We haven’t even released the first record yet! Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves! But if we’re just talking in the sense of what we’d like to do, then yeah, of course, I’d love to do more. 

While we’ve all swapped rigs with our bandmates, not many of us are in the position where we can swap our very own signature electric guitar with our friend who, erm, also happens to have a signature six-string.

For Adrian Smith and Richie Kotzen, however, this is exactly what happened, with the rock icons recently revealing in an exclusive interview with Guitarist that they traded signature models while recording their upcoming self-titled debut album.

This means that, at points during the record, Smith wielded Kotzen's signature Fender DiMarzio-loaded Stratocaster, while Kotzen can be heard slaying Smith's signature Jackson San Dimas.

“I did do something I’ve not done in a long time," recalled Kotzen when asked if the pair tried anything new with their gear in the studio. "Towards the end of the recording, I grabbed Adrian’s Jackson a few times.

“He has a locking tremolo and I was joking that on a couple of those solos, I sound like the 19-year-old Richie Kotzen,” he continued. “I found myself doing some tremolo bar things that I just couldn’t do on my guitar.”

Smith certainly had no desire to be left out of the signature-swapping action, and decided to take Kotzen’s own signature six-string for a spin, saying, “I tried his rig too. On the song Running, I used his signature Strat with the DiMarzio pickups.

“It’s got quite a chunky neck,” he mused, before adding, “I’ve never really got on with the Telecasters, but he gave me one of his signature models, which I haven’t had a chance to get going on yet. So many guitars, so little time…”

On whether their rig swapping made any difference to their individual tone, Kotzen commented, “If I get a guitar and amp, and neither are mine, I’ll start fiddling with the knobs to get the sound I hear in my head… So in the end, I’m pretty much gonna sound like me.”

Elsewhere in the interview, the duo touched on their experiences of sharing bass duties and leapt to the defense of bass guitar players around the world, with Kotzen stating, “Not any guitar player can play bass. Bass is a different instrument.”

Commenting on the theory that any guitarist can play bass, Smith added, “The few times I’ve jammed on bass it’s very difficult because you can’t always hear what you’re playing. It’s a boomy bottom-end, it’s like you’re playing in the dark."

Kotzen continued, “It does something different to the guitar. As I evolved, I had the luxury of playing with great bass players. I have a long history of playing with great bass players. 

"I’ve actually studied what the bass does at the same level that I’ve studied guitar. So I am a bass player. I’m not a guitar player who plays bass.” 

Head over to Magazines Direct to pick up the latest copy of Guitarist, which features in-depth interviews with Adrian Smith, Richie Kotzen and Angus Young, as well as a close-up look at a collection of anniversary Gibson Les Paul models from the mid-'70s.

The year is 2021, and the Foo Fighters have made a funky, pop-influenced post-rock album in a haunted mansion... Anything is possible in these crazy times, we suppose! To celebrate the wicked new set of tunes that is Medicine At Midnight, Australian Guitar caught up with shredder extraordinaire Chris Shiflett, chatted all about the gear, grooves and ghosts that led to it, and immortalised the yarn in an epic six-page feature for the cover of our 142nd issue!

Of course, there's much more in Australian Guitar #142 that'll have your inner rockstar going mental – like the ultimate guide to mastering the style of Led Zeppelin's legendary lead riffer Jimmy Page. Or for the history buffs out there, a loving look back on the history of Fender to celebrate the Californian legends' 75th birthday. And for those with a soft spot for true crime, we take a deep dive into the vexing story behind the most iconic stolen guitar of all time, Eric Clapton's "Beano". 

Once you've learned how to play it like Page, try punching it like Perry with the full tablature to Aerosmith and Run DMC's classic "Walk This Way". And we know what you're thinking – "Man, how wild would that track sound if you threw a loop pedal in the mix?" Well, what a coincidence – flip to page 74 and you'll find a shootout of all the biggest and best loopers on shelves right now! Flip back a few pages, and you'll find our DIY special on how to add a killswitch to your guitar – y'know, just in case you wanna make your cover of "Walk This Way" extra crazy.

But what if simply playing the song is not enough? Why not record it and share your virtuoso shredding skills with the world? Don't worry if you're green to the world of guitar vlogging – Australian Guitar #142 features a special on the best new camera to commit your jam sessions to memory. And speaking of recording guitars, we got down to the wire with one of the most storied producers in the world of Australian heavy music, Shane Edwards. 

You can read all about how Shane's making punk and hardcore history in this issue's Producer Profile column, then suss the Fresh Frets column to find your new favourite local band, and the Spotlight column to catch up with some of the buzziest names on the scene right now. There's also the Hot Gear column hated by wallets everywhere – and once you've drooled over all the goodies in that, head to the last pages of the magazine for a stack of reviews for the latest and greatest gear on the market.

That just about covers all the biggest features in Australian Guitar #142 – that is, aside from over 20 one-on-one interviews with such red-hot acts as Greta Van Fleet, Chrissie Hynde, Adrian Smith and Richie Kotzen, Tomahawk, NOFX, Cheap Trick, Evanescence, Yvette Young, Mogwai, The Pretty Reckless... Honestly, we're starting to run out of breath – there's too many top-shelf names for us to fire off in the one sentence!

Australian Guitar #142 is available now from newsagents all around the country, and online via techmags.com.au or iSubscribe.

Artist interviews in this issue:

• A Day To Remember
• Adrian Smith & Richie Kotzen
• Carla Geneve
• Cheap Trick
• Chrissie Hynde
• DZ Deathrays
• Epica
• Evanescence
• Foo Fighters
• Greta Van Fleet
• Lande Hekt
• Melvins
• Middle Kids
• Miss Grit
• Mogwai
• NOFX
• The Pretty Reckless
• The Rubens
• Tigers Jaw
• Tomahawk
• Yvette Young
• Shane Edwards (Producer Profile)
• Axel Carrington of New Talk (Spotlight)
• Jack Gray (Spotlight)
• Kai Cult (Spotlight)
• Marie Ulven Ringheim, a.k.a. Girl In Red (Spotlight)

All the hottest gear reviews:

• Empress Effects ZOIA
• Blackstar Live Logic
• MXR Timmy Overdrive Pedal
• Boss Acoustic Singer Live LT Amp
• Ernie Ball Music Man Jason Richardson 7-String Cutlass
• Godin Radiator
• Vox Valvenergy Pedals
• Fender American Professional II Stratocaster + Telecaster Deluxe
• Fender Play
• EVH Striped Series Frankie
• Epiphone Prophecy Flying V
• Epiphone Joe Bonamassa Black Beauty Les Paul Custom
• Electro-Harmonix 1440 Stereo Looper
• Eventide PowerMax + PowerMini
• Orange Crest Edition Wireless Headphones

Subscribe to the print edition of Australian Guitar, and you'll enjoy each new issue on the day it's published, delivered straight to your door. Click here for all the details, including how to get 12 issues delivered for under a hundred bucks and win a ZOOM G6 Multi-Effects Modelling Floorboard valued at $799!

Adrian Smith and Richie Kotzen's long-awaited debut album is out March 26, and we’ve already been treated to two singles, Taking My Chances and the bluesy Scars.

Now the duo have unveiled a third track, the straightforward rocker Running.

The new song finds the Iron Maiden and Winery Dogs electric guitar players sharing guitar and vocals duties, as well as writing and production credits. Kotzen also plays bass and drums on the track.

Said Smith of the song, “It’s a really cool sort of driving track, one of the heavier ones on the album and we’re excited to get it out there ahead of the album release. We’ve both been thrilled by the reaction to our music so far and are very much looking forward to meeting up again as soon as we can, to write some more songs together.”

Added Kotzen, “Running was the first song Adrian and I worked on. Adrian came in with that heavy verse riff which lead me to conjuring up what lives as our chorus to the composition. Running is surely one of my top three favorites on the Smith/Kotzen album and I really look forward to playing this one live.”

Smith/Kotzen was recorded on Turks and Caicos in February 2020, and features guest appearances from Smith's Iron Maiden bandmate Nicko McBrain and Kotzen's touring partner Tal Bergman. You can preorder the album here.

With the release of Adrian Smith and Richie Kotzen’s long-awaited debut album looming, the pair have treated fans to a new ‘70s blues-rock-inspired follow-up single, Scars.

The latest offering from the upcoming album comes after the release of the duo’s stomping debut single, Taking My Chances, which served up a tasty mix of high-gain electric guitars and heavy-hitting riffs.

Scars pays homage to classic blues-rock tones of the 1970s – a style that the pair found particularly fun to work on.

Recalls Kotzen, “I remember Scars being one of the songs we wrote in the very beginning of the process. There is something moody and mysterious going on in this track that I find quite engaging.”

The Winery Dogs frontman went on to say that Scars “would be a great track for us to stretch out live for some guitar improvisation between the two of us”.

As well as sharing guitar, vocal, writing and production duties with the Iron Maiden axeman, Kotzen also plays bass guitar and drums on the track.

The single is accompanied by another music video, which closely follows in the footsteps of the Taking My Chances video. Featuring ominous black and white landscape shots, the video also shares footage of the two guitar heroes in action at their London and LA-based home studios.

Commenting on Smith/Kotzen, Smith said, “Pretty much everything on the album is handled between Richie and myself including the production. We had developed a really strong idea of how we wanted it to sound and I’m very pleased with how it turned out.

“There’s a lot of cool songs on there that we are really happy with.”

Smith/Kotzen is available now for preorder, available in CD, digital and vinyl formats.

Adrian Smith and Richie Kotzen have revealed their highly anticipated debut album Smith/Kotzen will be released on March 26, while the music video for its lead single, Taking My Chances, is out now. 

Recorded on the Turks and Caicos Islands in February 2020, the nine-track long-player is set to feature guest appearances from Smith's Iron Maiden bandmate Nicko McBrain and Kotzen's touring partner Tal Bergman.

Says Smith, “Richie and I started working together a couple of years ago. We’d been jamming as we’d been friends for a few years before that. We both share a love for classic rock and bluesy rock so we decided to get together and start writing some songs and it went from there. 

“Pretty much everything on the album is handled between Richie and myself including the production. We had developed a really strong idea of how we wanted it to sound and I’m very pleased with how it turned out. There’s a lot of cool songs on there that we are really happy with.”

“We had a very fluid process in writing,” Kotzen adds. “Sometimes Adrian would send me a riff and I would immediately hear some kind of melody or a vocal idea. And sometimes it was the other way round so it was a kind of circular motion. 

“We’d get together whenever we could and throw some ideas around and it just evolved, which was great because there was no pressure and nothing other than just a natural course and I think the record really speaks for that.”

Smith/Kotzen is available now for pre-order, with CD, digital and vinyl formats up for grabs. The full tracklisting is as follows:

1. Taking My Chances
2. Running
3. Scars
4. Some People
5. Glory Road
6. Solar Fire
7. You Don’t Know Me
8. I Wanna Stay
9. ‘Til Tomorrow

Back in August, Iron Maiden's resident axe-wielding angler Adrian Smith alluded to a potential collaboration with Winery Dogs frontman Richie Kotzen. At the time, he confessed he was “sworn to secrecy”, but now, the veil has been lifted, as the pair introduce Smith/Kotzen's debut single, Taking My Chances.

The '70s classic rock-inspired track was recorded in February 2020 in the Turks and Caicos Islands in the West Indies, and the pair promise there'll be more to come in 2021.

“I think Richie and I complement each other really well,” Smith says. “He’s a virtuoso guitarist but he’s got a great sense of melody - the whole thing just felt very natural.”

Echoing Smith's thoughts, Kotzen adds, “We found common ground in classic and blues-based rock. We both come from that mentality. We’ve been writing and recording together for the past year and I’m ecstatic with the results.”

Smith's August revelation was, of course, not the first time a collaboration between the pair has been alluded to. Back in February, Kotzen posted a photo on Instagram of Smith and himself walking on a beach in the island of Providenciales with the caption, “Adrian Smith and I discussing the magic of writing songs in C-sharp minor.”

The same month, Kotzen told the Another FN Podcast, "I don’t like talking about things until they’re finished, but if you look at the photographs and who I’m with, and that sort of thing, you could assume that there may be a collaboration in the works.” 

• Smith/Kotzen's debut single Taking My Chances is out now via BMG.

Adrian Smith might be gearing up for the release of his first book, Monsters of River & Rock: My Life as Iron Maiden’s Compulsive Angler, but the Maiden electric guitar player also has something else more musical in the works, hinting at a rumored collaboration with Richie Kotzen.

"I'm very excited about it, but I can't say," he told Eonmusic. "I'm doing a lot of singing, but the person I'm working with, we're sort of splitting the vocals. But that'll be coming. I'm very excited about it, but I'm sworn to secrecy at the moment."

As for whether there’s a possibility of any live dates from the project, Smith said, "Hopefully, hopefully. It depends on the bloody virus, you know? At the moment, everything's screwed, so…"

Recently, Kotzen has posted photos his Instagram page of he and Smith spending time together, leading to speculation that the Winery Dogs singer and guitarist has been working with the Maiden man on new material.

Elsewhere in the interview, Smith answered affirmatively when asked if he might have a “guitar book” in him as a follow up to Monsters of River & Rock.

“Yeah, I was bitten by the bug when I was a kid, you know; Ritchie Blackmore, Paul Kossoff, all those people, I was just fascinated,” he said.

“I actually started off as a singer / guitarist. I was more of a singer because I hadn’t really played a guitar. I kind of blagged my way into [Maiden guitarist] Dave Murray’s world – he was already quite competent – by saying I was a singer. So we started jamming, and I learned as I went along.

“But yeah, I had a love/hate relationship with the guitar. I used to beat myself up about it. I was never really taught by anyone, I didn’t have a mentor; it was all self-taught.

“Don’t forget, at the time when I joined Maiden, we were going out with Judas Priest; we had Yngwie Malmsteen open up for us; Michael Schenker, and I was thinking; I grew up idolizing Michael Schenker, and he’s opening up for me? I just felt a bit of insecurity about it – not so much now, but because I didn’t really have any training." 

Each week at Guitar World, we're setting out to bring you a handful of fresh guitar tracks you need to hear, spread across a range of genres. What they'll all have in common is a host of six-string moments that continue to prove the guitar is very much alive and well in a wide variety of musical contexts.

Full disclosure: we're playing catch-up after the madness of NAMM and a site relaunch, so forgive us if a couple of these are from January.

This week, we've got everything from a stirring cut from Southern-rock institution Drive-By Truckers to one of shred guitar's foremost icons returning to his '80s roots - in more ways than one.

Joe Satriani - Nineteen Eighty

Shred’s most melodic guitarist reins in the legato (well, a bit) and harks back to his roots in the first single to be released from 17th (!) album, Shapeshifting.

Nineteen Eighty delivers a refrain that’s more than a little reminiscent of Satch’s landmark Surfing with the Alien release, but supercharges the Dick Dale vibe with fat Marshall tones, harmonized pick tapping and even a little Phase 90, all of which bodes well for Shapeshifting’s release on 10 April. (MAB)

Lamb of God - Checkmate

Marking the upcoming release of their self-titled and first studio album in five years, Lamb of God have unveiled Checkmate, a politically charged groove-metal onslaught which reminds us of their revered position within the genre. The track kicks off with an impressive solo line courtesy of lead guitarist Mark Morton over a primitive version of the brutal Pantera-esque main riff to come.

Replacing Chris Adler, new drummer Art Cruz smashes his first recorded track with the band, adeptly laying down technical beats that bolster the face-melting guitar work, reassuring us that Lamb of God are back, and as mighty as ever. (SR)

Richie Kotzen - Devil’s Hand

The virtuoso’s virtuoso has always been prolific, but even Kotzen’s most ardent fans must have been a little surprised by his plans to release a 50-track album for his 50th birthday on February 3.

Devil’s Hand is our first taste - it possesses an undeniable AOR vibe and accompanying journeyman music video, but it’s Kotzen’s playing that sends this song far and above anything his contemporaries could muster.

From the deft use of a Strat whammy to wring more emotion out of the middle eight solo to the George Benson-on-steroids outro sing-scat leads, this is likely to be among the best playing you’ll hear this year. (MAB)

Incubus - Our Love

Brandon Boyd and co have had numerous flirtations with straight-up pop since their nu-metal heyday, but Our Love is perhaps their most successful yet.

Mike Einziger’s knack for writing infectious guitar parts shows no sign of abating (after all, this was the guy who practically soundtracked 2013 with his six-string bro-down in Avicii’s Wake Me Up), and his latter-day Tele-meets-Mesa tone has never sounded better. We have absolutely zero qualms about him sending the track to bed with a reverb-heavy wigout, too. (MAB)

Bury Tomorrow - Cannibal

This five-piece is at the helm of British metalcore, and rightly so. Following the release of their acclaimed 2018 album Black Flame, Bury Tomorrow have released Cannibal, the lead single and title track from their upcoming sixth studio album.

For metalcore players, the track features everything you’d hope for and more: a creative tapping intro/chorus line, a verse riff that pounds in perfect unison with the kick drum, and a middle-eight that takes the opening line down an octave and adds new motifs. This track is a showcase in fretboard mastery, and if it’s an indication of what to expect from the rest of the album, we're very excited indeed. (SR)

Drive-By Truckers - Slow Ride Argument

Patterson Hood has more than earned his place as Drive-By Truckers' public face and conscience (how many rock stars do you know have written New York Times op-eds on politically charged topics?), but Mike Cooley is in every way his equal - in songwriting and guitar playing.

Cooley's Slow Ride Argument is a salve on the band's viscerally political new album - and for a world where horror reigns everywhere you look - a stately, authoritative post-breakup meditation with the propulsion of the best road-trip rockers.

Of course, the song is given its momentum by DBT's speciality, that comforting wall of gritty riffing - dense and humid, like the summer air of the South they so perfectly encapsulate in their music. (JM)

Anna Calvi & Courtney Barnett - Don’t Beat The Girl Out Of My Boy

The Brian Eno-championed, Jeff Buckley-channelling British Tele wielder has brought compositions from her third album Hunter into stark clarity with Hunted, a series of collaborations that reimagines Calvi’s first recordings for that album with input from the likes of IDLES’ Joe Talbot, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Julia Holter.

The ludicrously acronymed DBTGOOMB features fellow alt-rock darling Courtney Barnett, and its stripped-back arrangement lays bare Calvi’s wailing slide overdubs and crunchy, almost Springsteen-esque rhythm playing, while emphasizing the track’s transfixing use of dynamics. (MAB)

Have anything special planned for your 50th birthday? Richie Kotzen sure does for his – a new 50-song album titled, appropriately, 50 For 50.

The three-disc effort from the rock/blues/soul/jazz/funk electric guitar shredder and singer, who also fronts the Winery Dogs, is out February 3 via Kotzen’s own Headroom-Inc. label.

In addition to self-producing the collection, Kotzen also wrote and performed all 50 songs. And if that sounds overly ambitious, keep in mind that 50 For 50 is, amazingly, the guitarist’s 22nd solo album overall.

Said Kotzen about the new record, “The idea of a 50 song album came to me while I was on tour sometime last year. I had completed what would have been your typical 10 to 12 song album and was anticipating a 2020 release. Somewhere along the line, I discovered a few completed songs that for whatever reason were never released. Along with that, I found a massive collection of material that was in various forms of completion.”

He continued, “I decided to take that summer and fall, stay in the studio, and see how many of these ideas I could bring to completion. The concept was to include the already completed works and finish the other ideas and then stop once I reached 50 songs.

“Reality is we’ve got way more sitting on the hard drives waiting for attention. I figured if I can walk out of the studio with 50 songs (that I like) mixed and mastered, I can release a 50 song package on my 50th birthday.”

Keep your eye out for the first 50 For 50 track, Devil’s Hand, to be released digitally on February 3.

And for more info, head to RichieKotzen.com. 

Winery Dogs guitarist Richie Kotzen recently stopped by Fender to try out the company’s new Tone Master Twin Reverb electric guitar amplifier, which boasts a 200-watt digital power amp and two Jensen N-12K neodymium speakers.

“It looks like a normal Fender Twin but really what it is, is an all-digital replication,” Kotzen says in the above video. “It’s emulating to perfection an all-tube Fender Twin like I’ve never heard a digital amp do before.”

Beyond the sound of the Tone Master, Kotzen admits there's another thing he loves about the new amp.

“For someone that’s into the sound of the Fender Twin, if I were to do local gigs this is the ultimate amp to throw in the back of my car,” he says. “I could lift this up and swing it over my head if I wanted to – it’s super light.”

But, he adds, “I’m not going to do it now because I don’t want to wreck the place.”

You can check out the video, which also features plenty of Kotzen-style Tele shredding, above.

For more information on the Tone Master Twin Reverb, head to Fender.

Victory Amplification teamed up with Richie Kotzen in 2017 for the RK50 Series of guitar amps, and now the company has announced a new collaboration with the guitarist, the rather spectacular Richie Kotzen RK100 Custom Limited Edition.

Each amp is individually numbered and signed by Kotzen, with the run limited to just 20 pieces in total.

Designed to evoke the tones of late-'60s British valve heads, the new model boasts three 12AX7 preamp tubes and four EL34 power amp tubes for 100 watts of output.

Additionally, a low-power mode makes it possible to attenuate the amp down to 30 watts, while a bias switch allows for the option of swapping the EL34 power amp tubes for 6L6 valves.

In place of a traditional two-channel/four-input setup, the RK100 CLE features Normal and Bright channels (with additional bright switch) with a single input; the channels can be used independently or mixed together.

Front-of-amp controls are bright and normal volume, master volume, three band EQ (treble, middle, bass) and a global presence knob. There’s also a bypassable series effect loop located on the back of the head.

Victory is offering the amp, finished in a sharp white/black/gold color scheme, for £1,999.00 (approximately $2,465) through direct order only. For more information, head over to Victory Amps.

Richie Kotzen has shared the official music video for his new single, "Venom." You can it out above.

The track is Kotzen’s first new solo music since the 2018 single, “Riot."

Kotzen recently wrapped a tour with the Winery Dogs, his trio with bassist Billy Sheehan (Mr. Big, David Lee Roth) and drummer Mike Portnoy (Sons of Apollo, Dream Theater). The trek, titled Who Let the Dogs Out, was their first tour in close to three years.

For more information, head to RichieKotzen.com.

The Winery Dogs, featuring singer and guitarist Richie Kotzen (Poison, Mr. Big), bassist Billy Sheehan (Mr. Big, David Lee Roth) and drummer Mike Portnoy (Sons of Apollo, Dream Theater), recently kicked off their Who Let the Dogs Out 2019 U.S. outing, their first tour in close to three years.

Above, check out the band ripping through “Oblivion,” the lead off track from their 2015 sophomore album, Hot Streak, at Denver’s Oriental Theatre on May 23.

Talking to Guitar World about "Oblivion," Sheehan said, “We wrote that while we were getting ready for another leg of our last tour and popped it together while we were rehearsing at Mike’s house. It went through a few variations until we went in the studio and fine-tuned the lyrics and arrangements.”

For more information head over to TheWineryDogs.com.

Tech 21 has updated the Richie Kotzen RK5 Signature Fly Rig, which the company first released in 2014. The new V2 version was jointly developed with Kotzen to incorporate new features and follow the same form factor as later Fly Rigs, such as the Bass and Acoustic.

The RK5 V2 retains the same delay with tap tempo, a boost and Kotzen’s Signature OMG overdrive. New features include an independent reverb with choice of room size, a rotary speaker mode, compression, fuzz, a tuner, headphone capability and an XLR Output. There’s also an on/off button for the SansAmp section.

Additionally, Tech 21 has unveiled a V2 version of its Fly Rig 5, which, in addition to the all-analog SansAmp technology, now also features an independent reverb with choice of room size, an effect loop, a tuner and an XLR output.

The Richie Kotzen RK5 Signature Fly Rig V2 is available now for $329, while the Fly Rig 5 V2 is expected to be available beginning in May.

For more information, head over to Tech 21.

The Winery Dogs, featuring singer and guitarist Richie Kotzen (Poison, Mr. Big), bassist Billy Sheehan (Mr. Big, David Lee Roth) and drummer Mike Portnoy (Sons of Apollo, Dream Theater), have announced new U.S. tour dates for May 2019.

The outing, dubbed the Who Let the Dogs Out 2019 tour, will begin in Derry, New Hampshire and wrap in Los Angeles. It will be the band’s first tour in close to three years.

See below for the full itinerary, and for more information head over to TheWineryDogs.com.

The Winery Dogs tour dates: 

May 01 - Derry, NH - Tupelo Music Hall
May 02 - Jim Thorpe, PA – Penn's Peak
May 03 - New York, NY - Sony Hall
May 05 - Ridgefield, CT - Ridgefield Playhouse
May 07 - Hopewell, VA - Beacon Theater
May 08 - Nashville, TN - Basement East
May 09 - New Orleans, LA - House Of Blues
May 11 - Dallas, TX - Gas Monkey
May 12 - Houston, TX - Warehouse Live
May 15 - Ft Wayne, IN - Pierre's
May 16 - Milwaukee, WI - Potowatami Casino
May 17 - Milwaukee, WI - Potowatami Casino
May 18 - St Charles, IL - Arcada Theater
May 20 - Minneapolis, MN - First Avenue
May 23 - Denver, CO - Oriental Theater
May 24 - Grand Junction, CO - Mesa Theater
May 25 - Las Vegas, NV - Vamp'd
May 28 - Sacramento, CA - Crest Theater
May 29 - Santa Cruz, CA - Rio Theater
May 30 - Anaheim, CA - The Grove
May 31 - Los Angeles, CA - Saban Theater

Jason Becker has unveiled a new song, “Valley of Fire,” from his upcoming album, Triumphant Hearts. The nine-minute track features Becker alongside “The Magnificent 13,” a guest list that includes Steve Vai, Joe Bonamassa, Paul Gilbert, Neal Schon, Marty Friedman, Michael Lee Firkins, Mattias IA Eklundh, Greg Howe, Jeff Loomis, Richie Kotzen, Gus G, Steve Hunter and Ben Woods.

Becker first rose to prominence as a teenager when he was one half of the technical guitar duo Cacophony with Marty Friedman. In 1989, at only 19 years old and after wowing audiences all over the world, the young virtuoso became the guitarist for David Lee Roth, following in the huge footsteps of Eddie Van Halen and Steve Vai. He wrote and recorded with Roth for the former Van Halen frontman’s third solo album, A Little Ain’t Enough and was poised for superstardom when a nagging pain in his leg was diagnosed as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), a fatal condition with a life expectancy of maybe five years. 

That was 29 years ago. Becker lost the ability to play guitar, walk, talk and breathe on his own. But never lost his will to live or his desire to create music. Communicating through a series of eye movements with a system developed by his father, Jason spells out words as well as musical notes and chords. He imparts his musical vision to his team who then can input the notes into a computer, edit the parts to his exacting standards, and then generate charts for session musicians. His inspiring music and life story have been the subject of countless news articles, magazine cover stories, and an award-winning documentary, Jason Becker: Not Dead Yet. 

The 14 tracks on Triumphant Hearts showcase Jason’s gift for melody and his deep knowledge of classical composition and orchestral arrangement. Many of the guitar parts are performed by a who’s who of guitarists including Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Neal Schon, Steve Morse, Paul Gilbert, Joe Bonamassa, and many others. Becker's own playing—recorded in the Eighties and Nineties—also features throughout.

The album opens with the title track, featuring Jason’s old bandmate Marty Friedman and an astounding violin performance. “I wrote ‘Triumphant Heart’ and it made me feel triumphant,” says Becker. “When Marty found out I was making this album, he told me he would play anything I needed. I sent him this, and his wife, Hiyori Okuda, who is a cellist, also offered to play on it. The great violinist, Glauco Bertagnin, recorded my violin parts in Italy. That fast solo section I wrote is way too hard; I don’t know how Glauco pulled it off. He put so much soul in the whole song.”

"Hold on to Love" is the first vocal song on the record, although it didn’t start out that way. “It was going to be an instrumental,” explains Jason, “but after I wrote the chorus with lyrics, I knew I had to tell my story, to explain how I can continue living without feeling hate. I hadn’t written many lyrics before.” In addition to its beautiful, gospel-tinged choir, the heartfelt song features Bay Area singer Codany Holiday on lead vocals. 

"Fantasy Weaver" features Jake Shimabukuro and harp arpeggios that were written back in his Cacophony days. ‘Once Upon a Melody’ not only features two Jason Becker guitar solos from his Cacophony era, but also audio of him as a three-year-old. "We Are One," meanwhile, features soulful Flipsyde vocalist Steve Knight, and more Jason Becker guitar delights.

Uli Jon Roth appears on "Magic Woman," along with ex-Megadeth guitarist Chris Broderick who counts both Uli and Jason as big influences. Fans of Jason’s work with David Lee Roth will be thrilled by the inclusion of two previously unreleased outtakes from the A Little Ain’t Enough sessions, the hard rocking "Taking Me Back" and the blues-infused ‘Tell Me No Lies.’ There are also performances by Joe Satriani, Guthrie Govan, Steve Morse, Trevor Rabin, and many others. 

“Some people feel sorry for me,” he concedes, “and I understand that. I really feel lucky though. I don’t miss playing guitar anymore. I’m sure that’s out of necessity, but I am grateful for so much more. I am surrounded by loving people, and I can still make music.”

Triumphant Hearts will be released on December 7 via Music Theories Recordings/Mascot Label Group. The album is available for pre-order here.

Triumphant Hearts track list:

Triumphant Heart (feat. Marty Friedman, Glauco Bertagnin, Hiyori Okuda)

Hold on to Love (feat. Codany Holiday)

Fantasy Weaver (feat. Jake Shimabukuro)

Once Upon A Melody

We Are One (feat. Steve Knight)

Magic Woman (feat. Uli Jon Roth & Chris Broderick)

Blowin' in the Wind

River of Longing (feat. Joe Satriani, Aleks Sever, Guthrie Govan, Steve Morse)

Valley of Fire (feat. The Magnificent 13)

River of Longing (feat. Trevor Rabin)

Taking Me Back

Tell Me No Lies

Hold on to Love (feat. Codany Holiday) [Chuck Zwicky Remix]

You Do It

In this clip from DiMarzio Pickups, axman Richie Kotzen gives us a tour of his impressive guitar setup. 

In addition to his signature Fender Strat and Tele models and Victory RK50 amplifier, Kotzen is big fan of DiMarzio Twang King and Chopper T pickups. The guitarist also discusses his new Strat Replacement Pickguard, which he developed in collaboration with DiMarzio. Watch Kotzen explain in detail in the video below.

To find out more, head over to dimarzio.com. 

Richie Kotzen has premiered the music video for a new song called "Riot." You can check it out above.

The video—which features Kotzen, plus bassist Dylan Wilson and drummer Mike Bennett—was shot in Los Angeles, and directed by Vicente Cordero. The single will be available Thursday, June 7, on all digital platforms.

"We made a music video to go with the song and really wanted to focus on the performance of the band more than a story line," Kotzen said about the video. "One of the things I love about this track is the interplay between the guitar, bass, and drums. Although I wrote the musical lines we are playing, my goal was to somehow capture the live energy of my band on the final recording."

"Dylan, Mike, and I have been touring together for seven years and there are some live recordings out there, but we never spent much time together in the studio recording," he continued. "I feel like this new recording is a great example of all three of us playing at the top of our potential."

Kotzen's most recent full-length solo effort was 2017's Salting Earth.

For more on Kotzen, head on over to richiekotzen.com.

Guitar greats Richie Kotzen, Vinnie Moore and Gus G are teaming up for a 10-date tour of the West Coast this September. You can check out the full itinerary below.

Kotzen will be promoting his most recent solo album, 2017's Salting Earth. “It’s [the record is] something I really needed to do in order to reset myself,” Kotzen told Guitar World about Salting Earth in a 2017 interview. "[It] really shows me in the realm of what I do as far as being a recording artist."

Moore's most recent solo album is 2015's Aerial Visions, which features drummer Richie Monica, and bassists Dave LaRue, Rob DeLuca, Dorian Heartsong and Elliott Dean Rubinson.

Gus G will be promoting his brand-new solo album, Fearless. The album is the Firewind mastermind's first since leaving Ozzy Osbourne's band in 2017 (he was replaced by Zakk Wylde) and is the follow-up to 2015's Brand New Revolution. It was recorded with vocalist/bassist Dennis Ward (Pink Cream 69/Unisonic) and drummer Will Hunt (Evanescence, Black Label Society).

For tickets and more info, head on over to richiekotzen.com, vinniemoore.com or gusgofficial.com.

Vinnie Moore and Gus G. tour dates:

• Sep. 13 - Houston, TX - Scout Bar
• Sep. 14 - San Antonio, TX – Rock Box
• Sep. 15 - Dallas, TX – Trees
• Sep. 16 - Lubbock, TX - Jake's

Richie Kotzen, Vinnie Moore and Gus G. tour dates:

Sep. 18 - Scottsdale, AZ - BLK Live

Sep. 19 - Las Vegas, NV - Count’s Vampd
Sep. 20 - San Juan Capistrano, CA - The Coach House
Sep. 21 - Sacramento, CA - Holy Diver
Sep. 23 - Portland, OR - Hawthorne Theater
Sep. 24 - Seattle, WA - Studio Seven
Sep. 26 - Oakland, CA - Yoshi’s
Sep. 28 - Santa Clarita, CA - Canyon Club
Sep. 29 - Agoura Hills, CA - Canyon Club
Sep. 30 - Pasadena, CA - The Rose

In this new clip from DiMarzio, Richie Kotzen takes the company's The Black Angel DP234 and The Black Angel Piezo DP235 pickups for a spin. You can check out the demo above.

Kotzen—playing a handmade acoustic by Larry Dimarzio and Kevin Kopp—shows the effectiveness of the pickups through a rendition of "Grammy," a track from his 2017 solo album, Salting Earth.

Dimarzio's Black Angel DP234 and Black Angel Piezo DP235 pickups are available now.

For more info on the pickups, head on over to dimarzio.com.

A new instrumental album of hard-rock covers of classic Disney songs, Disney Super Guitar, has been announced, and it features a jaw-dropping team of world-class guitarists.

Zakk Wylde, Paul Gilbert, Orianthi, Phil X, Richie Kotzen, Tak Matsumoto, George Lynch, Mike Orlando, Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal and Jeff Watson all contribute to the album, which will be released today via Walt Disney Records.

Each track on Disney Super Guitar features a backing band comprised of guitarist John Bruno, drummer B.J. Zampa, bassist Chris Vescera and keyboardist Michael Vescera, who co-produced the record with the album’s mastermind, producer Death-Rider.

The guitar virtuosos on Disney Super Guitar enjoyed re-imagining famous Disney tunes in their own ways. For example, Zakk Wylde gave "Beauty and the Beast" a brutal metal touch. "Originally, it was a beautiful, dreamy piece," Wylde said in a press release. "Now, it’s a cruel nightmare. I take pride in that."

"Everyone knows this beautiful melody, and I tried to express it in my own way," said Tak Matsumoto, who tackled “When You Wish Upon a Star." "I am so honored to be a part of this album," he continued. "I hope you enjoy the guitar sound from Fujiyama country!"

On "Hellfire," George Lynch adhered to the contours of the original, while adventuring off into his own territory in a number of places. "I mixed in everything from Roy Buchanan and Jeff Beck tricks to pick swipes and vibrato-bar moves," Lynch said. "I threw in everything but the kitchen sink."

Meanwhile, Paul Gilbert decided to craft an electric version of "Under the Sea." "To create an under-the-sea sound, I operated my wah-wah pedal as quickly as possible while playing my guitar parts," he said. You can listen to Gilbert's cover, and the album's full tracklist, below.

Disney Super Guitar Tracklist:

1. Zakk Wylde - Beauty and the Beast [Beauty and the Beast]

2. Paul Gilbert - Under the Sea [The Little Mermaid]

3. Tak Matsumoto - When You Wish Upon a Star [Pinocchio]

4. Mike Orlando - A Whole New World [Aladdin]

5. Orianthi - Someday My Prince Will Come [Snow White and the Seven Dwarves]

6. George Lynch - Hellfire [The Hunchback of Notre Dame]

7. Richie Kotzen - Can You Feel the Love Tonight [Lion King]

8. Jeff Watson - Colors of the Wind [Pocahontas]

9. Phil X - Chim Chim Cher-ee [Mary Poppins]

10. Ron Thal - Reflection [Mulan]

Pat Torpey—longtime drummer and a founding member of Mr. Big—has died at age 64, the band confirmed on Twitter. He had been suffering from Parkinson's disease.

"With breaking hearts we tell you that our brother, friend, drummer and founding member, Pat, passed away Wednesday, February 7 from complications of Parkinson’s disease," the band wrote. "Family, band and management request privacy at this very difficult time."

Torpey was a mainstay of Mr. Big, having been one of its founding members in 1989. He remained with the group until they broke up in 2002 and was a part of their reunion in 2009. Though he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 2014, Torpey remained with the group as a percussionist and backing vocalist.

"Pat Torpey has been my closest friend in music for over 30 years," Billy Sheehan, the group's bassist, said in a Facebook post. "Pat was one of the finest human beings I've ever had the privilege of knowing and the honor of working with. All of us in Mr. Big had nothing but the highest respect and admiration for him. He is loved by anyone and everyone who ever met him. And surely one of the finest rock drummers the world has ever known."

"So saddened to learn of the passing of my friend and former band mate Pat Torpey," Richie Kotzen, the band's guitarist from 1997 to 2002, said in an Instagram post. "We spent years touring the world, making music, family holiday gatherings, and even remodeled a house together. Pat’s sense of humor, wit, and smile lit up any room the moment he walked in. I am grateful and thankful to have had you as an incredibly important friend and influence in my life. You will be missed beyond words."

What initially inspired you to pick up a guitar?
I was one of those kids that loved to sing and dance and try and entertain my family. I have a picture of me from when I was four or five, dressed in some kind of crazy costume with a plastic guitar and mic stand and singing—lip-synching—for my family. And then someone suggested that I should take piano lessons. So I had a few lessons and then I just didn’t really take to it very well.

And then a few years later, I was at a garage sale and there was a guitar there, and I realized that’s what I wanted to play. Around the same time, I became a fan of the band Kiss. So I kinda put it all together that those guys dressed up really cool, played really loud music and they were holding guitars. So I figured that must be the instrument I should be playing.

What was the first guitar that you owned?
My first real guitar was a Gibson Marauder. I was a seven-year-old kid and I wasn’t working, so my parents bought it for me. Maybe five years later, once they realized I was really serious about the guitar, they bought me, for Christmas, a Yamaha SBG2000. That became my main guitar for a long time.

What was the first song you learned?
“Jingle Bell Rock,” because I had to perform it at a school function. I think I was in sixth grade. Then shortly around the same time, I learned “Purple Haze.”

What do you recall about your first time playing live?
It was at that school recital. I remember being very upset because I couldn’t tune the guitar. And finally there was another kid there that was much older who was in the school jazz band. He tuned it for me and I went out and played.

Have you ever had an embarrassing moment onstage, or a nightmare gig?
I can remember being booked in some really awkward places. Most of them have been on European tours. One in particular, I remember playing in what felt like somebody’s basement. It was always crowded and it felt like a fire trap. Those kinds of gigs can be really nerve-wracking, ’cause you can’t really see anything, it’s hard to hear and there’s a lot of people. I’ve been in some dangerous situations with gigs in the past, but I think that’s all part of paying your dues.

Is there a particular moment on your most recent album, Salting Earth (Headroom-Inc), that you’re particularly proud of?
I think my favorite track on the record is “This Is Life.” I really love the way that turned out. The song was initially written and recorded on the drums. I know that sounds insane, but I heard something in my head. So I went into the studio, sat behind the drums with no click track, and played as if I was playing with a band. Then I put down a guitar track, and then I added the bass. And that’s what you’re hearing: the original tracks. Later on, I came up with lyrics. And then I added the piano and, of course, the guitar solo at the end. So any song can be written in any way, but that one in particular, just because of the way I recorded it, I just think it’s so unique.

What is your favorite guitar or piece of gear?
My favorite piece of gear is the RK5 Fly Rig. This was a pedal I put together where I took my favorite overdrive and my favorite delay and the controls from my Fender amp, and I mounted it into one little pedal. Because, before the Winery Dogs, I was doing a lot of fly dates, where I would fly down to South America for three weeks, do a bunch of shows, come home. Then I’d fly to Europe for a month, do a bunch of shows, come home. So I needed a small rig. So I showed it to the fellows over at Tech 21 and we found a way to improve it and put it into a more professional enclosure. And now it’s available to everyone.

Along with that, my favorite guitar is a Fender Telecaster; I have a signature model that’s been sold since 1996. It’s a Fender Tele that’s based off of a Custom Shop model they gave me back in 1991.

Do you have any advice for young players?
Follow your heart and learn the music you love. And once you have a handle on the instrument, the ultimate thing is to create and write your own music. That’s a fantastic thing, to have an idea and bring it to fruition. And the great thing about playing any instrument, and the thing that I love, right up there equal to writing, is just improvising. Just follow the creative flow.

On a Wednesday night in January, a few friends got together for a low-key gig at Hollywood's Lucky Strike—a hidden bowling alley that doubles as a rock venue.

The gig, which was dubbed Soundcheck Live, was hosted by none other than Nuno Bettencourt.

He and his friends—including Steve Vai, Phil X, Richie Kotzen, Tom Morello, Stu Hamm and Kenny Aronoff—filed on and off the stage all night long, performing a host of classic rockers along the way.

For instance, check out Vai and Bettencourt's performance of "Yankee Rose," a song Vai recorded with David Lee Roth more than 30 years ago. It was—of course—one of the highlights of Roth's 1986 Eat 'Em and Smile album. Nuno plays bass in the clip; the band is rounded out by Carl Restivo on vocals, Glen Sobel on drums and Steve Ferlazzo on keyboards.

If you keep watching the video, you'll see Kotzen, Morello and Hamm join the band before they break into Jimi Hendrix's "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)."

"Yankee Rose" starts at 1:56. "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)" starts at 10:15.

To see more videos from this show, plus a slew of photos and social media pics/clips and embeds, head to californiarocknews.com.

Described as his most personal work to date, Greg Howe's new album, Wheelhouse—which will be released on September 1— marks the guitar legend’s highly-anticipated return to solo instrumental work.

Tracks like “Tempest Pulse” and “Throw Down” showcase Howe’s infectious tone and fretboard wizardry while eclectic tracks like “2 In 1” combine a funk-infused vibe with Forties swing. But perhaps one of the biggest highlights on Wheelhouse; and one that long-time followers of Howe’s career will certainly find appealing, is the track, “Shady Lane”.

A song originally written by Howe and his brother back in the early Nineties, on Wheelhouse, "Shady Lane" is given a 21st century spin with an emotionally charged vocal performance by Richie Kotzen (Winery Dogs, Mr. Big). Kotzen also complements his fellow Shrapnel alumni by contributing a blistering guitar solo to the track as well.

Wheelhouse is an album that will once again raise the bar for guitarists, and a fitting return for one of the genre's most dynamically diverse artists.

I recently spoke with Howe about Wheelhouse and more in this exclusive new interview.

How would you describe Wheelhouse in terms of its sound and maybe as it relates to some of your previous work?

From a guitar perspective, I’d describe it as an almost higher quality of the type of tone I was getting on Introspection. It's very clean and there’s a lot of gain behind it but it doesn't sound like it. I was also getting a little more into single coils and more "Strat" kind of tones, so it's a different kind of expression. As far as direction, I feel like it's a little more honest.

I can get carried away in the studio sometimes, and then I'll listen back to what I recorded and decide to scrap it and end up writing something that's either really complicated or putting together solos that border on unrealistic in terms of what I would sound like. I really wanted this to be a lot of one-take stuff and the material to sound like something I would want to play over. It's a very natural, honest record.

What's your writing process like?

There isn't really a process. It ranges anywhere from going through drum loops and finding something cool that inspires the riff to waking up in the morning with a song idea already in my head. Sometimes, if I'm searching for inspiration, it can come from just watching a movie, thinking about something or connecting to something that's happening in my life at the time. It’s a starting point that inspires and triggers the creative process.

Let’s discuss a few tracks from Wheelhouse, beginning with “Tempest Pulse”

That song was one of the first I wrote for the album and has a slight Latin feel to it. I went through a phase where I was listening to a lot of Michel Camilo and that opened up some of this Cuban influence. There's also something really festive and sexy about not hitting on the downbeat.

“2 In 1”

That was a fun one. I’ve always loved the Forties swing era of music. It really resonates with me. Originally, the song was going to be a vocal track based on the middle section, where it sounds like a classic standard with those chord changes. We ran out of time for the vocal but as we were working on the idea, the girl I was working with asked if there was any way to make the track a little funkier.

So, the first part of the song that you hear (which is really a completely different song) came from her suggestion. It was something very different from anything else I had done and segues into that Forties swing era.

“Throw Down”

That one is raw, energetic and bluesy rock. It’s one that doesn't really fit the typical instrumental format, but I like to do things that break rules and tradition.

“Shady Lane”

My brother and I wrote that song back in the early Nineties. It's always been one that's connected with a lot of people so I thought it was time to do something with it. I had asked Richie to sing it. He agreed and it all came together. Originally, Richie wasn't going to take a solo but I extended the length and let him blow through some notes. I'm happy the song is finally able to get out there after 20+ years.We’re coming up on 30 years since your self-titled debut album on Shrapnel. Can you tell me how that all came about?

I was in a band with my brother called Duke and we were a cover band that specialized in Van Halen. We really just wanted a record deal and had showcased and submitted demos to almost every major and independent label. We were even under the wing of CBS for about a month, but we didn't get the deal. Around that same time, Mike Varney had a monthly column where he'd spotlight three unknown guitarists and if he really liked them he would sign them. On a whim, I decided to throw it all against the wall.

So, I recorded some backing tracks that were just excuses for me to blow over and sent it to his P.O. box and sent another via FedEx. My thought was that someone would have to sign for the FedEx package and would physically have the demo in their hands. Turns out, that worked because the very next day I got a call from Mike who said he had the demo and really liked it and asked if I’d be interested in doing an album. We ended up negotiating a four-album deal which allowed me to have two of the albums be with my band. That's really how it started.

What are you most looking forward to about this next phase of your career?

I'm looking forward to all of it. For a while, I had gotten myself into the mindset of only wanting to do a vocal album. Now, I’m embracing the instrumental thing again and have a lot of song ideas. There's a momentum that’s kicking in and it feels like a lot of what I’ve prepared for and have been working toward is starting to pay off.