Adrian Smith and Richie Kotzen detail debut album Smith/Kotzen

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