Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Trieste / Teatro Miela / Italy
Concert date: 19.03.2012
Attendance: 250
Richie Kotzen, that razor-sharp wizard of devilish guitar playing, really doesn’t need a big introduction these days. He’s always on tour, always writing and creating new music. Even though in the hail of tour dates across Europe in recent years he’s managed to visit Slovenia only once, his regular stops in the Slovenian border regions have carried his name into the tighter circle of Slovenian rock fans, the same people we keep running into at Kotzen shows abroad.
Kotzen’s new tour once again (as expected) grazed Slovenia, with dates in Zagreb (Croatia), Velden in Carinthia (Austria) and Trieste (Italy). Of the three destinations, each of which offered the visitor a special concert experience of its own, the show in Trieste was especially tempting. To be honest, until this day I’d never managed to catch Richie Kotzen live on a proper concert stage. Always on the floor of the cozy living room of the Bluesiana club in Velden, and once on the little ship Nina II in the middle of the harbor in Rijeka, Croatia.
Teatro Miela is an ideal space for this kind of show. Not long ago the incorrigible blues guitarist Eric Sardinas and the velvet-voiced John Waite (ex-Bad English, ex-The Babys) both played here. Just like at the shows of those two, Richie Kotzen was greeted by a good 250 enthusiastic fans, which was a real minor salvation for him, considering the crushingly dismal 80 people in the Croatian capital the day before.
At nine in the evening, Luxembourg’s Porn Queen were already on. The quartet comes at you with a raw, straight-ahead, rolling rock n’ roll attitude, into which they try to mix blues cues and add a veil of Southern melody on top. With their heavily weathered faces, Ray-Ban shades and tattooed skin, the band put their cards on the table in a heartbeat. The set certainly didn’t lack a decent dose of fun and tidy playing, but the quartet failed to win the room with their stage presence, because they lack real charisma as well as songwriting sharpness. Everything Porn Queen showed us, others do far better, or used to do far better. Starting with The Black Crowes and onward…
Porn Queen were quickly forgotten, and a little after ten, our old soulful friend and great guitar hero Richie Kotzen was already up on stage with his backing crew. Last year Richie released his new solo studio album »24 Hours« and he put it front and center in the live repertoire. And yet the set was a bit of a surprise. Richie included as many as seven songs from the album »Into The Black«, which is actually three quarters of the whole record. It’s an excellent album released in 2006 that didn’t get nearly as much live attention when it came out as it does on this very tour. So the show kicked off with Sacred Ground, a track from that album, and in the first part songs from the new album and from »Into The Black« traded places. You could say Kotzen came out this time with a more wound-up setlist and delivery than his shows at the Bluesiana club would lead you to expect. At least the stage impact was like that! The punchy trio really opened up, even though the spacious stage didn’t »lead Kotzen astray« and the man didn’t pull any special tricks of stage show theater. A musician who left the years of testosterone-venting with Poison behind long ago doesn’t need that. For him it’s clear that on stage only the music does the talking. Wielding a black Fender Telecaster, which he hasn’t parted with for even a moment in recent years, and playing with a right hand that has also long been working only with fingers. The voice serves Kotzen perfectly. It has that full, convincing and instantly commanding weight of bitter blues melancholy, which still fuses phenomenally with his rock approach, weaving in funk and Motown soul influences, all of it backed by strong blues roots. Kotzen also surprised by including the song Player. It’s a lost track from the »Piece Sign« (2009) sessions that Kotzen never put on the album. Right after it the crowd wakes up for the popular Fooled Again (»Go Faster«), and after Peace Sign comes a longer instrumental jam, where Richie’s one-of-a-kind guitar playing, laced with flowing sweeping, once again speaks loud and clear.
The man remains a deeply respectable, polished stage figure of a true frontman, who is at the same time a unique guitarist and vocal interpreter. His playing, even after what he showed in Trieste, keeps all the trademarks that have always made Richie so respected in the music world, especially the elements of unpredictability, spontaneity and glowing sensitivity, which set this musician apart from the average and put him in the league of the best. Those are the elements of his expression that the singular language of this musician’s guitar playing still translates so flexibly, honestly and shamelessly.
The whole concert can boast superlatives, with one single exception. About an hour in, Kotzen takes a few moments to snap at the sound guy to please stop moving the settings on the mixing desk and to put them back at zero, meaning the point defined during soundcheck. Teatro Miela, with its high ceiling, can be a sound trap. At this show, the ones who got it worst were those sitting under the balcony, and even in front of the mixing desk the sound was diffusely getting lost in the room. You had to stand right at the front, or within two, at most four meters of the stage, to catch the optimum sound picture of the concert.
The band took its energy to a peak in the finale with a wild version of the »Peace Sign« album track Paying Dues, and finally enchanted the hall for good with the hugely popular Go Faster, which they played in the encore. That number was opened by a longer instrumental jam, where the band gave it their all one last time and »went berserk« on their instruments, and then Kotzen established one last great connection between audience and band with the aforementioned, very catchy standard that has to be on every Kotzen setlist.
When the show ended, people absolutely refused to accept it was over, and kept applauding enthusiastically in the hall for a few more minutes, calling Kotzen back to the stage. That was real proof that Kotzen and his crew had once again fully ignited and conjured up one more unforgettable concert session that touched the audience deeply. And that authenticity of stage performance is exactly what concertgoers are looking for. No faking, no prosthetics of artsiness, no hiding behind effects or distracting from the music with piles of stage scenery and endless chatter between songs. For Kotzen only the music and its honest delivery count. Always a little different and always brilliant. So convincing and sincere that by the end of the show you keep telling yourself, again and again, that you’ll gladly come back to a concert like this at the first opportunity.
Setlist
1. Sacred Ground
2. 24 Hours
3. Fear
4. The Shadow
5. Help Me
6. Love Is Blind
7. Player
8. Bad Situation
9. Fooled Again
10. My Angel
11. Livin’ In Bliss
12. Peace Sign
13. Instrumental Jam
14. You Can’t Save Me
15. Till You Put Me Down
16. Lie To Me
17. Paying Dues
—encore—
18. Go Faster
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