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Having recorded and toured for more of his life than not, Richie Kotzen has had a multi-faceted career like no other. Prior to his joining the band Poison at 21 years of age, Richie had released solo recordings and put out a guitar instruction video. After his run with Poison, Richie did some time in the major label world, only to wind up as the guitarist of Mr. Big — the poster band for the “big in Japan” concept — in 1999. Following Mr. Big’s breakup in 2002, Richie went back into solo mode, also playing on other artists’ albums. 2003’s Shine was naturally a big hit in Japan, where Richie opened for The Rolling Stones on their 2006 tour dates.
In 2012, Richie joined up with Mr. Big bassist Billy Sheehan and former Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy to form The Winery Dogs. Widely considered a supergroup, The Winery Dogs came out with their first album in 2013, which the group made at Richie’s house in Los Angeles. The trio just put out their second full-length — titled Hot Streak — last week via Loud And Proud Records. In support of the new release, The Winery Dogs come to the Best Buy Theater on Saturday, October 10th.
In talking with Richie, it quickly became apparent that he marches to his own beat as both a musician and a general human being. He only takes on the projects that he is interested in, and prefers to handle as much of those projects’ logistics as he can. The “Dog Camp” that he described during our chat is another example of that, as Richie also makes himself very accessible to his fans. In turn, it was a pleasure to chat with Richie, who also has his first-ever DVD coming out this week.
Richie Kotzen
A lot of people think of The Winery Dogs as an all-star band. Is that something that you like or something that bothers you at all?
Richie Kotzen: Doesn’t bother me…Billy [Sheehan] has his pedigree from Talas and the band Mr. Big, and obviously Mike Portnoy with Dream Theater, so it kind of makes sense. We didn’t bill ourselves that way, we didn’t think of ourselves that way. As a matter of fact, the whole approach we had with this band was “Hey, let’s get in a room and see if we can even make music together.” We had a very relaxed attitude. A couple of years ago we wrote a few songs and thought they were pretty cool. Tried to write a few more and eventually had enough for a record and here we are. Played tons of shows and getting ready to launch our second CD campaign. So call it whatever you want, it’s fine with me. From our perspective, we’re just three guys who got together in my garage and jammed and came up with some songs that we wanted to share with people.
So for someone who hasn’t seen The Winery Dogs live before, what does one of your setlists usually look like? Is it only songs from your albums?
R: The first time we around, we played over 100 shows, and so we had to put a setlist together based on the fact that we had one album with 11 or 12 songs on it. Back then we did put a couple of covers in. We did a couple of songs from my solo catalog, we did a song that Billy used to play with Talas called “Shy Boy” [Editor’s Note: David Lee Roth recorded this song years later for the Eat ‘Em And Smile album] and a few covers to round out the setlist. This time out, we have over 20 songs that are our own songs that we can choose from. That’s kind of exciting to me, because that means that when we do our multiple legs — we come around the United States the first time — we do our set featuring some of the old stuff, some of the new stuff. Second time around, we can alter that and play that we haven’t played. We’re in a pretty good position and there’s a lot of things we can do with the setlist.
Do you now view The Winery Dogs as a full-time band?
R: I never ever had the dream to be in a full-time band, I never thought of it that way. My dream as a kid was to write original music and perform it and to be a solo artist. Those are the people that inspired me when I was young. Jimi Hendrix or Prince, and several others, I was always someone that had solo record deals…I did have a stint with Poison, and a short-lived run with Mr. Big, but I put out albums under my own name. No matter what I do, that’s what I am. I can’t cannibalize myself or lie to myself, I’m a solo artist. But I’m not in any other bands, so when I’m doing The Winery Dogs, I’m fully-committed, fully-focused to doing The Winery Dogs.
We made a really cool record the first time out, played over a hundred shows, and then I went back to doing my solo thing and I had a great time with my guys. I’ve also got a live DVD coming out the same day that The Winery Dogs album comes out, and I’m really excited about that. It’s the first-ever professional quality DVD that I’ve ever done. Now that my solo cycle is done, I’m 100 percent committed to The Winery Dogs and I think we outdid ourselves on this record. It’s a much stronger, much deeper record, in my opinion, than the first one. So I’m ready to go out and do another cycle with The Winery Dogs. And look, the three of us agree, we don’t have to do it. We’ve all done a lot of cool things and continue to do a lot of cool things, we’re doing this because it’s fun, because we enjoy it. We’re not teenagers, we don’t need to be on the road 24/7…As long as we enjoy it and there’s people that want to celebrate with us, we’ll do it. If it becomes a grind or no one responds, then we maybe know it’s time to stop.
That all makes sense. Going back to your solo career, your style has evolved, especially over the past three or four solo albums. Your solo albums used to be more about the guitar-playing, and eventually they became more about the songwriting…
R: It happened early on. I made my first album when I was 18. There were compositions on that record that I was wrote I was 15, 16. A lot happens in those years, a lot of changes personally and creatively. So when I did my second record a year later, I was singing on that record and it was clear to me that I wanted to make music that I could sing. I had no interest in being an instrumentalist whatsoever. So that was the line that I followed, and once I committed to that, it changed my guitar-playing. It made me a better guitar player just by singing…I feel like I kind of fell into my style in my early 20s. By the time I was 21, I pretty much was doing what I’m doing now, it’s just that I’m much better at it now. But I realized that’s the path I wanted to take, and here I am now years now. I would never separate it and just play guitar, and I wouldn’t just go out and sing, it’s both together, it’s who I am.
I lived in Japan briefly, and I noticed that you were widely-accepted by the domestic audience, not just by the hard rock fans or the people into guitar heroes. Was there a manager that made that happen?
R: No, I’ll tell you exactly what happened…I had done three solo records, I was signed to a major label, and I ended up fighting with them over direction and got dropped. I did a stint with the band Poison. Right after that ended, Geffen [Recprds] signed me to a solo deal and did an album called Mother Head’s Family Reunion. By the time that record was ready to be released, the man who signed me to Geffen left the record company, so I had no one there in my corner. What ended up happening was they told they’re not going to promote the record, they’re going to print 15,000 copies and they’re going to write it off as a loss. They didn’t even give me a chance. However, in Japan, I guess it was MCA [Records], whoever was distributing Geffen back then. They loved the record and they said, “We’re not gonna shelve it, we’re gonna promote it.” That’s what happened, that was the first time I ever went to Japan was to do press on that record.
So they kind of took a liking to what I do, it’s been a great audience, and since then over the years I’ve been able to build my audience worldwide. I’ve spent a lot of Europe, I started in Italy, I’ve been to every little town in Italy. I have an agent over there, I was in Europe three times a year whether I had a record out or not. So Europe became a great market for me to tour, then South America started happening. For the last 15 years I’ve been touring a lot internationally, and now with The Winery Dogs, it’s almost like people in the United States have been rediscovering what I do, it’s been really great. It’s not that big of a differential between what I do with The Winery Dogs and what I do solo. It’s just The Winery Dogs is a super-charged version.
So you have solo career, you have The Winery Dogs, I presume you do some guitar clinics of some sort?
R: I don’t. I’ve never been a clinic guy. If I do it, it’s more of a lecture, a conversation, a hang. I’m not a very good teacher, in my opinion. I’m a good talker when it comes to concepts about music, and I think some of the things I say when I talk to fans can be enlightening, but I’m not a clinic guy. I don’t feel confident in getting on-stage and talking an hour about techniques…But we do this with The Winery Dogs called Dog Camp, they’re kind of like clinics and kind of not. I invented this thing for the camp called Discovery Rooms, where we all sit in these rooms, I’ll have one, Billy will have one, Mike will have one…We have conversations and the conversations can be anything from gear, to what do I think about when I write a song, to “Hey, can I come on-stage and jam with you?,” to “I wrote this song, can you critique it?” So it’s sort of an open forum thing, we’ve done two of them now.
Along the lines of the Dog Camp, is there someone you model your career after in terms of having multiple projects going on at a given time?
R: You know, I don’t want to say anything really cocky, but I don’t think I’ve modeled my career after anyone other than myself and finding a way to exist off my art, off of what I love to do…So for example, when I was very young, I realized that to do what I want to do, I’m going to have to be very self-sufficient so I started playing other instruments. When I started making records, I was very curious, “What is it you’re plugging in? Why does that sound that way?” so I learned to engineer. I pretty much taught myself how to do literally everything so I could go in the studio with an idea for a song and come out a day later with it completely finished, so you can hear what I hear in my head through the speakers. That was the core of what I focused on so that I can get my ideas out and get them recorded. Then when the industry changed and you didn’t need a record label, that was the best thing that ever happened for me. I had already gotten somewhat known and somewhat had a fanbase internationally, it was always hard for me to get new music out without a label. So once I had a direct way to get the songs out, my career really started to grow and develop. It was through the touring that I was able to really survive and then obviously people buying records and downloads helps. But I don’t think there’s a lot of guys that are really that direct. You’ve got guys that might have their own label and then work with a producer. You’ve got people that can produce their albums but don’t have the wherewithal to distribute it. So I’m pretty self-contained to just hand it over to somebody else.
So when you had bought the building that became the recording studio you owned, was that an investment or meant to be a proper studio?
R: The first thing I did when I bought my home was create a space where I could record. We did the first Winery Dogs record in my house, half of the second Winery Dogs record we did in my house, all my parents we did here. The deal with the studio was strictly an investment at that point. I wanted to do something smart and I found a commercial building that was affordable to me, renovated it, converted it to a studio, and for three years pretty much paid the holding cost of the building. In that time, the real estate marketing exploded out here. I sold the building for four times what I paid three years after I bought it, so it worked out amazing for me. But I never wanted to be in the studio business, that was never my point…It was really funny when I had that studio, I took all the gear out of my house and I loaded it up down there. When I had an idea for a song, I’d have to get up and drive through traffic, get down there, open the gate, turn the alarm off, turn the lights on, fire up the system. By the time I actually sat down and picked up an instrument, I’d forgotten why I went there…I didn’t have the same fire or inspiration to work on it. So I realized after a while, I was way more productive when I had the studio in my home. Once the building went, I brought all the gear back and went back to the old way of working with all the gear at the house.
When you’re not working, do you have a main hobby? Or is there something you like to do most with your free time?
R: Yeah, I like to work in the construction world. I like remodeling and updating. Unfortunately for me, I’m running out of things to do on my current house…My hobby for years has been renovating my home. I re-did the bathrooms, I re-did the kitchen, a lot of things I’ve done here at the house. I’m going to either have to find a new place to live or a new hobby soon.
So, finally, any last words for the kids?
R: I’m looking forward to coming back out with The Winery Dogs. The record will be out on October 2nd. So there’s a little bit of time to get familiar with the new songs before you come to see us. You’ll also be able to purchase the live DVD of mine, which I’m excited about. It’s set up to be an amazing year, we’re planning on staying on the road well into next year to support our record. And if it goes anywhere close to as well as the first one went, we’ll be very happy.
-by Darren Paltrowitz