Venue: Bluesiana, Velden (Austrian Carinthia)
Concert date: 22.07.2008
Attendance: 170
Ticket price: 27,00€
Richie Kotzen is a musician who has been successfully cultivating an incredibly wide range of musical heritage for years. For a player of his caliber, it’s baffling that you can practically catch him in the same spot every two months, namely Bluesiana. Not that we’re complaining, but too much is just too much! Richie’s increasingly frequent stays in Austrian Carinthia clearly don’t bother him much. And why would they, when somewhere in the last gasps of last year the dude grew into some kind of demigod of the beloved Velden scene.
So Richie Kotzen remains the number one hero of Bluesiana. This is home turf for him, where the always upbeat guitarist has always been welcomed with open arms. Last night was, of course, no exception. For a while now, the fervor of the Bluesiana crowd, thanks also to ever more visits from Slovenian music enthusiasts, has been genuine and in most cases simply a given. Too bad that this time it was Richie himself who let us down on that front. His seriously grumpy face at first gave no impression of a happy man, though most of the crowd, caught up in the fever of impatient anticipation, I think didn’t notice at all.
Richie didn’t waste time on chatter; in fact he got on stage pretty tight-lipped. The awkward silence, accompanied onstage by a few suspiciously shot glances, was luckily broken soon enough by Go Faster. The ice was broken in an instant, at least from the point of view of a crowd that was clearly starving for Kotzen’s wizardry and had turned out in respectable numbers. Surprisingly, Richie at first didn’t want to share the excitement with the crowd. With a stony face he went on with Fooled Again in a rather reserved mode, which you could hear in the way he handled the raspy vocal lines, which often dropped an octave lower between the verses. The fear that some kind of unexpected apathy would take over Richie right at the start of the night turned out to be unfounded, though. A Love Divine was already a spectacular return to form!
“I’m not much of a talker, and even less of an actor… but I love music” were the guitarist’s words, and with that we dove into a fight with the fearsome temperament of Bad Things. With Used the tempo dropped even further. The gentle ballad quickly grabbed everyone’s attention; live, the song really has a special balm-like effect, in which Richie’s vocal characteristics shine at full strength. Vocally, Kotzen is truly incredible, a real maestro of vocal acrobatics who juggles colors like it’s a bet, but always boldly and in service of each individual song’s interpretation. With Faith the vocals kept their role as the lead instrument, at least for a few more minutes. The song has clearly gotten under the “yodelers'” skin long ago, judging by the on-key singing you could catch all around. With Faith, Richie Kotzen left his soul and heart right there in front of us. Literally. It felt like the song caught him in exactly the right mood, like a chilling definition of the guitarist’s state of mind. Heart-wrenching!
“Faith” poured new strength into Kotzen, plenty of fresh drive, which finally launched him into a galloping rush with So Cold. The energetically delivered number traditionally morphed in the middle into a proving ground for showing off the band’s individual musical qualities. Richie topped off the convincing, maybe even slightly boastful performance with an incredible guitar solo, dynamically polished down to the smallest detail. Kotzen climbed one more step higher with Sara Smile, a simple blues that once again gave the spotlight to the remarkable color of the guitarist’s voice. Richie’s distinctive feel for dynamics, as well as melody, stayed finely tuned and boldly helped build an almost supernatural atmosphere that forced the audience into silent admiration.
After a (too) short break, during which a glass of something cold went down really nicely, Richie’s crew quickly picked the show back up. You’d almost think the guys were in a hurry to wrap the gig up as fast as possible. Those dark suspicions, in the breathless chase for form in the first half of the set, were confirmed as if on an assembly line by Mother Head’s Family Reunion, Feed My Head and Change. Richie had clearly given the guys more room to maneuver in the second part, and the band soon launched into a merciless sprint, which luckily ended without casualties when it finally met Shine. Shine soaked up the mass of loosened-up energy from its predecessors beautifully, and the crowd singing along finally drew a wide smile on Richie’s face too. Of course, this time too it didn’t go without Stand. Despite being obviously overplayed, the song still defies time, not to mention space. And that was something that suddenly ran out in front of the stage. With Gudrun at the helm, Bluesiana closed ranks one last time that night and, with a song on its lips, happily threw itself into the arms of the now-famous Poison classic.
Kotzen pulled off the show with routine and, as expected, without a single noteworthy slip-up. Interestingly, even though I’ve seen the dude live three times in the last six months, every time I could pick up on some of that mysterious magic that made each of those evenings special. Richie Kotzen is one of a kind, you can’t argue with that. Gudrun is clearly smitten with his presence too, at least judging by the numerous photos of the guitarist proudly greeting you from a good half of Bluesiana’s walls (the other half is jealously guarded by delta blues hero Eric Sardinas). After what I saw yesterday, there’s no sign at all that Gudrun is running out of enthusiasm for hot-blooded American fiddlers, quite the opposite! Richie will visit Bluesiana again in just over two weeks, on August 11 to be precise. And it wouldn’t be a surprise if on our next night stroll through Velden we bump our noses into the freshly painted facade of the Richie Kotzen Memorial Center. God forbid! Fingers crossed that Gudrun settles for just a garden statue.
Text: Daniel Pavlica
Photos: Mojca Perdih
Setlist
1.Go Faster 2,Fooled Again 3.A Love Divine 4.Bad Thing 5.Used 6.Faith 7.So Cold 8.Sara Smile 9.High 10.Shapes Of Things 11.Feed My Head 12.Mother Head’s Family Reunion 13.Change 14.Shine 15.Stand —encore— 16.Remember 17.You Can’t Save Me
Photo Gallery
